Free Republic

US secretary of state says her country focusing on trying to change Iranian behavior, not planning anything other than sanctions US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said her country has no plan for military action against Iran over its nuclear program, in a television interview broadcast on Wednesday. "Obviously, we don't want Iran to become a nuclear weapons power, but we are not planning anything other than going for sanctions," she told al-Arabiya television.

JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq. Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh. President Obama has nominated Koh -- until last week the dean of Yale Law School -- to be the State Department's legal adviser. Koh. He's a fan of "transnational legal process," arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish. If Canada, the...

Christopher Hill: Deep Kimchee for Iraq Of the many things that will be written about North Korea this week, the least likely of these is, “Now there’s the kind of diplomacy we need more of.” Consider just the events of the last few days: the missile test itself, which may have hit closer to home than originally thought; the failure of the United Nations to enforce two of its violated resolutions; the broader failure of deterrence and counter-proliferation; and North Korea’s final repudiation of a February 2007 agreement in which it had agreed to verifiably dismantle all of its nuclear...

On October 31st 1999 EgyptAir Flight 990 struck the ocean with the loss of all on board. The end of the NTSB's final summary reads thusly "The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the EgyptAir flight 990 accident is the airplane's departure from normal cruise flight and subsequent impact with the Atlantic Ocean as a result of the relief first officer's flight control inputs. The reason for the relief first officer's actions was not determined."

Bush Owes His Successor A Tough Finish on Foreign Policy By JOHN R. BOLTON September 6, 2008; Page A11 As the Bush administration enters its last months, its pursuit of a "legacy," especially in foreign policy, becomes ever more frenetic. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's travel schedule is packed. State Department "signing ceremonies" are blossoming, even for agreements that would not have attracted high-level attention just last year. Editorial writers are being quietly encouraged to laud administration successes. While neither unique nor unexpected, the legacy frenzy masks what should be our real concern until Jan. 20, 2009: the risk of...

Salvaging Our North Korea Policy.... By JOHN R. BOLTON There are signs, albeit small ones, that the Bush administration may be reaching the end of its patience with the Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. These signs could prove illusory. But as it nears its end, the administration has a serious responsibility: It must not leave its successor with an ongoing, failed policy. At a minimum, President Bush should not bequeath to the next president only the burned-out hulk of the Six-Party Talks, and countless failed and violated North Korean commitments. Since they were conceived in spring 2003,...

A Republican Party activist and former top GOP congressional aide who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is harshly criticizing the U.S. diplomatic effort in Iraq, accusing American diplomats of gross and potentially criminal negligence and incompetence.

The U.S. State Department of North Korea In the Six-Party Talks with North Korea, it gets ever more difficult to tell which side of this erstwhile hexagon Condi Rice’s State Department is negotiating for. On Feb. 6, the U.S. special envoy to these talks, Chris Hill, gave the Senate Foreign Relations Committee an update on the North Korea denuclearization agreement reached almost a year ago, which keeps running into snags such as North Korea’s insistence on first receiving a refund of some $25 million in allegedly crime-tainted funds frozen in Macau (which Hill arranged for Kim Jong Il to receive...

    Shadow Warriors   By David ForsmarkFrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, February 04, 2008 Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of SurrenderBy Kenneth TimmermanCrown Forum, $25.95, 404 pp. At long last, the CIA and the State Department have targeted a government they have identified as an aggressive threat to world peace and largely countered its foreign policy through psy-ops, propaganda, selective leaks of intelligence and covert operations.And who was the target of this covert campaign? Are these operations aimed at the Islamofascists in Iran? How about Vladimir Putin and his increasingly fascist government in Russia?...

Foggy Bottom Apostate January 25, 2008 Jay Lefkowitz, President Bush's special envoy for human rights in North Korea, has recently pointed out that our current approach to Pyongyang is failing. Lord help a diplomat who tells the truth. Mr. Lefkowitz, growled Condoleezza Rice at a Tuesday press conference in Europe, "doesn't work on the six-party talks [on North Korea], he doesn't know what's going on in the six-party talks and he certainly has no say in what American policy will be in the six-party talks." For good measure, the Secretary added that she "would doubt very seriously that [the Chinese...

(Adds North Korean media report) SEOUL, Jan 4 (Reuters) - North Korea said on Friday it would boost its war deterrent, a day after the United States said it was sending its nuclear envoy back to Asia to discuss an atomic disarmament deal on which Pyongyang has missed a deadline.North Korea failed to fully account for its nuclear weapons programme or answer U.S. suspicions that it has secretly tried to enrich uranium for weapons. It was supposed to have made the declaration by the end of 2007. "(We) will further strengthen our war deterrent capabilities in response to U.S....

Optimism about North Korea is sadly misguidedBy Richard Halloran Sunday, Dec 16, 2007, Page 9 Once again, rosy optimism is billowing out of the Korean Peninsula. And once again, the rest of the world might remember that atop the regime in Pyongyang sit world-class thugs who have repeatedly refused to abide by their agreements. US President George W. Bush started off the latest surge of hope two weeks ago with a personal letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, urging him in polite but firm terms to keep his pledge to abandon his nuclear weapons. Six years ago, Bush made...

Sri Lanka Sank 6 N. Korean Ships Carrying Weapons between this Feb. and Oct. 12/14/2007 Sohn Ji-heun /begin my summary Six N. Korean ships were sunk by Sri Lankan Navy between Feb. 28 and late October of this year. They were shipping weapons for Tamil Tigers, which were designated as a terrorist organization by U.S. State Dept. Both N. Korean crews and Tamil terrorists were aboard the ships. They were all presumed to be killed. Sri Lankan Navy was able to sink them with the help of U.S., which passed on intelligence on the location of (N. Korean) ships in...

British spy chiefs have grave doubts that Iran has mothballed its nuclear weapons programme, as a US intelligence report claimed last week, and believe the CIA has been hoodwinked by Teheran. Iran 'hoodwinked' CIA over nuclear plans Analysts believe that Iranian staff, knowing their phones were tapped, deliberately gave misinformation The timing of the CIA report has also provoked fury in the British Government, where officials believe it has undermined efforts to impose tough new sanctions on Iran and made an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities more likely.

Top US State Department negotiator Christopher Hill was spotted yesterday at Washington's Dulles International Airport by Japanese TV reporters and crews.When pressed, he indicated that he would be going to "one additional stop" on the way to China from Japan.Later it was confirmed he is going to Pyongyang, North Korea. He will meet his counterpart, Kim Gye Gwan, Kim Jong il's chief negotiator.He will apparantly be in the "Peoples Paradise" between 3-5 December, to work out details facilitating the removal of North Korea from the US Government's list of "Terrorist Countries", which is expected within the next few weeks...

Remember Nancy Pelosi's spring break in Damascus? Condoleezza Rice apparently does not. When the House Speaker paid Syrian strongman Bashar Assad a call back in April, President Bush denounced her for sending "mixed signals" that "lead the Assad government to believe they are part of the mainstream of the international community, when in fact they are a state sponsor of terror." Today, said sponsor of terror will take its place at the table Ms. Rice has set for the Middle Eastern conference at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Only at Foggy Bottom would Syria's last-minute decision to go to...

BY CLIFFORD MAY As America's ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton was the White House's most effective defender. Now, as an ex-diplomat, he has become among the administration's toughest critics. But he critiques from the right, not the left, which probably explains why the elite media are not eager to focus on what he has to say. The son of a Baltimore firefighter who attended Yale Law School on scholarship, Bolton combines a combative nature with a keen intellect. He is a conservative without the prefix - neither neo-con (he's skeptical about nation-building and democracy promotion) nor paleo-con...

A bitter dispute over forced assignments to Iraq has erupted inside the State Department with diplomats taking decidedly undiplomatic potshots at one another. The latest public salvo came Tuesday with a harshly critical post on the department's official blog in which a foreign service officer in Iraq skewered those who spoke out against the prospect of ordered tours of duty at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and outlying provinces. The message, titled "A Letter From Iraq to My Overwrought Colleagues," accused opponents of being spoiled elitists whose revolt against so-called "directed assignments" is embarrassing. "To my vexed and overwrought colleagues,...

JACK CRODDY, FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICER: It's one thing if someone believes in what is going on over there and volunteers. I am sorry, but, basically, that is a potential death sentence, and you know it. And then another thought—who will take care of our children? Who will raise our children if we are dead or seriously wounded? REP. DUNCAN HUNTER, R-CALIF.: I think we should fire those folks that don't want to go. You can't have people on the payroll who refuse to be deployed to the tough places. (END VIDEO CLIP) BRET BAIER, CO-HOST: There you see some of...

Listen to this audio file at LiveLeak. This guy is emblematic of the US Department of State. I've lurked at FreeRepublic for years, but when I heard this, I blew a gasket and registered. I looked at the Dept of State website for his email address, but could not find it. However, his phone is: 202-647-1318.