Free Republic

Global politics is mostly about resource sharing, like oil. The free flow of oil is the main strategic reason that the US is involved in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. That’s not a bad thing; it’s just a reality. And until the mean Greenies can make an economy that runs on water, that’s not going to change, no matter how many withdrawals and retreats Obama orders from around the world.Think the “end” of the Iraq War as announced by Obama is the beginning of peace? Not so fast. In fact, it could be the beginning of bigger...

A wave of violence ripped across Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing at least 57 people and injuring nearly 200 in a coordinated attack designed to wreak havoc in the Iraqi capital just days after American forces left the country.

After almost nine years, the Iraq War has come to an official end, ending a chapter in U.S.history that claimed the lives of almost 4,500 Americans, and left more than 32,200 more wounded. For many Americans who served in the war, as well as their families, the feeling is bittersweet.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This afternoon, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Obama addressed the troops. Listen to this. OBAMA: Nine years ago American troops were preparing to deploy to the Persian Gulf and the possibility that they would be sent to war. Many of you were in grade school. I was a state senator. Many of the leaders now governing Iraq, including the prime minister, were living in exile. RUSH: "I was a state senator." Meaning I didn't have anything to do with it. Now he's praising the troops. This is October 2nd, 2002. Listen to this. OBAMA: I don't oppose war...

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysian-led activists will hold a symbolic trial this month for former President George W. Bush and British ex-leader Tony Blair on charges of committing crimes against peace in the Iraq war, the event’s organizers said Tuesday.

Barack Obama was a principled opponent of the Iraq War from its beginning. But when he became president in January 2009, he was handed a war that was won. The surge had succeeded. Al-Qaida in Iraq had been routed, driven to humiliating defeat by an Anbar Awakening of Sunnis fighting side-by-side with the infidel Americans. Even more remarkably, the Shiite militias had been taken down, with American backing, by the forces of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. They crushed the Sadr militias from Basra to Sadr City. Al-Qaida decimated. A Shiite prime minister taking a decisively nationalist line. Iraqi Sunnis...

(Reuters) - They remembered friends who died and brave Iraqis they had met, but news on Friday that the Iraq war was ending couldn't erase questions among U.S. veterans about whether it has all been worth it.

If a cop and a promising student were gunned down and the shooter was caught, only to be freed after four years, the outrage would be palpable. Politicos would fall all over themselves to register their indignation and the press would be on it for weeks. It happened in the case of New York State Trooper John McKenna and Pace University law student Michael Glover, who were serving in Iraq with the Marine Corps Reserve. Yet this story is virtually unknown, even though the injustice is enormous and systemic. Five years ago, Lance Cpl. Glover, having put a scholarship on...

The U.S. war in Iraq has just been given an unexpected seal of approval. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in what he billed as his “last major policy speech in Washington,” has owned up to the gains in Iraq, to the surprise that Iraq has emerged as “the most advanced Arab democracy in the region.” It was messy, this Iraqi democratic experience, but Iraqis “weren’t in the streets shooting each other, the government wasn’t in the streets shooting its people,” Gates observed. The Americans and the Iraqis had not labored in vain; the upheaval of the Arab Spring has only underlined...

The former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has been convicted of unlawful contact with a minor for exchanging explicit messages in an online chat room with someone he believed to be a 15-year-old girl. Ritter, 49, exchanged messages with a detective posing as an underage girl and masturbated, even after the undercover officer stressed during the chat that he was a minor, Pennsylvania prosecutors said. A jury found Ritter guilty of a total of six counts including indecent exposure and criminal attempt to corrupt a minor.

A former Guantanamo detainee “was identified as an Iraqi intelligence officer who relocated to Afghanistan (AF) in 1998 where he served as a senior Taliban Intelligence Directorate officer in Mazar-E-Sharif,” according to a recently leaked assessment written by American intelligence analysts. The former detainee, an Iraqi named Jawad Jabber Sadkhan, “admittedly forged official documents and reportedly provided liaison between the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq.” Sadkhan’s al Qaeda ties reached all the way to Osama bin Laden, according to the intelligence assessment. He reportedly received money from Osama bin Laden both before and after the September 11 attacks. Identification by...

Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter has been found guilty of unlawful contact with minors and five lesser charges after a three-day trial in Monroe County Court on charges stemming from an online sex sting. Ritter, 49, of Delmar, N.Y., was found guilty of unlawful contact with a minor for masturbating on a Web camera and engaging in a sexually graphic online chat with an undercover Barrett Township police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl in 2009. The jury deliberated for more than six hours after the prosecution and defense both gave closing arguments in the morning. During the...

<p>AP BAGHDAD -- Gunmen wearing military uniforms and suicide bomb belts stormed a local government headquarters in northern Iraq on Tuesday in an attempt to take hostages that killed at least 21 people, officials said.</p> <p>Three lawmakers who were inside the Salahuddin provincial council building in Tikrit when the gunmen overran the compound are missing, said provincial governor Ahmed Abdullah. He said the lawmakers were not answering their mobile phones and could not immediately be located - indicating they may be held hostage.</p>

Rumsfeld and O’Reilly in shootout over Iraq War. On his tour to promote his new book, “Known and Unknown,” and also defend his handling of the Iraq War, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made an appearance on the O’Reilly Factor last night. In a wide-ranging interview that covered Afghanistan, the Secretary’s experiences, and the Iraq War, Rumsfeld did his best to defend his involvement and planning with regards to Iraq, but O’Reilly was having none of it. The Factor host essentially gave Rumsfeld hell on the issue of his apparent failure to be more forthcoming with the American public...

Former British PM Tony Blair testified in front of another Iraq inquiry today and for the second time this year he testified about the very real danger of Iran and al-Qaeda working together. Of course the storyline by the British papers, the biased MSM, and the lefty blogosphere, is regarding the regret offered by Blair over the loss of life: At the end of his evidence this afternoon he said it had never been his meaning. "Of course I regret deeply and profoundly the loss of life," I'm sure everyone else would cheer the loss of life huh? I...

Two U.S. troops were killed Saturday by an Iraqi soldier who apparently smuggled real bullets into a training exercise and opened fire, raising fresh concerns about insurgents worming into the nation’s security forces as the Americans prepare to leave by the end of the year. A U.S. military official said the shooter was immediately killed by American soldiers who were running the morning drill at a training center on a U.S. base in the northern city of Mosul. The U.S. official said the exercise was not meant to involve live ammunition, and an Iraqi army officer said the shooting appeared...

William Scott Ritter Jr., a former United Nations weapons inspector who gained renown for his criticism of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, contends his online sexual encounters with teenage girls were only fantasy. Nearly two years ago, Ritter, of Delmar, watched his computer screen reveal that an anonymous person who had been exchanging sexually charged messages with him for 80 minutes was not a 15-year-old girl. It was a cop from a small town in northeast Pennsylvania, alone in his station house and trolling the Internet for suspected child predators. Ryan Venneman, a detective for the Barrett Township...

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90 percent of the public do not want us out right now. Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed...

Earlier this month the website entitled RevoutionMuslim.com was shut down by US authorities after publishing a threatening message to the MP’s of the UK, who voted in favor of the Iraq war. Their threatening message which calls for Muslims to kill the MPs, was posted right after UK Muslim Roshonara Choudhry, was sentenced to life for stabbing former minister Stephen Timms. Since then another Muslim in the UK, has been arrested in connection with the threat. Bilal Zaheer Ahmad who is only 23 years-old has been charged with soliciting murder.

The largest unauthorized disclosure of classified government documents in U.S. history confirms a long-standing assertion of President George W. Bush at the start of the 2007 troop surge: Iran was orchestrating one side of the Iraqi insurgency. Field reports made public by the website WikiLeaks on Friday show that U.S. military intelligence agencies had many strands of evidence revealing that Iran provided paramilitary training to Shiite Muslim insurgents at the height of the civil war in Iraq.

Meet ‘Baghdad Barbara,’ ‘Weasel Waxman,’ and ‘Jihad Jodie’In November and December of 2004, U.S. Marines were involved in the heaviest urban combat since the Vietnam War as they went house-to-house rooting out insurgents in the terror stronghold of Fallujah, Iraq. In all, fifty-one brave Americans would be killed and 560 wounded in the battle that would be the bloodiest of the Iraq War but one which would eventually turn the tide toward victory in Iraq and signal a significant defeat for America's radical Islamic enemies.Shockingly and tragically, at the same time our servicemen were staring into the eyes of evil,...

Some people are absolute fools and the Scioto County Sheriff’s Department needs our help in identifying one of them by name. At a public rally for Democrat Ted Strickland in Ohio, an Iraq War Veteran was filming the rally when a Strickland scumbag supporter poured a hot cup of coffee down his back. The man sounds like an idiot with obvious mental problems. He then comes back around and shoots the finger at the camera. Just a complete nutcase. If you know or can identify this man please contact the Scioto Country Sheriff’s Department at 740-355-8245. VIDEO

BAGHDAD — More than 600 looted artifacts that were retrieved by the United States, shipped back to Iraq and then mysteriously lost finally have been found in the prime minister's warehouse alongside boxes of kitchen supplies, the Iraqi tourism minister said Monday. The ancient pieces — including clay pots, a bronze Sumerian figurine and stone tablets etched with cuneiform writing — were returned to the Iraqi National Museum, resolving a real-life caper that began when many of them were stolen from a museum in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk in 1991. Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/20/100849/missing-iraqi-antiquities-discovered.html#ixzz108SKoh00

The person responsible for the "Here you have" email worm, which wreaked havoc last week on businesses across the United States, may be part of a cyber-jihad group upset over American military presence in Iraq. The malware author, who uses the handle "iraq_resistance," is believed to be part of the cyber-jihad organization "Brigades of Tariq ibn Ziyad," whose goal is to digitally infiltrate U.S. Army agencies, Joe Stewart, director of malware research at SecureWorks, a network security company, told SCMagazineUS.com on Monday. Researchers concluded this after determining that a worm launched last month, but on a much smaller scale, was...

It has often been observed that whoever controls the past controls the future. Unhappily for Harry Reid in an age of Google, YouTube—and golly even the tape recorder–this is easier said than done. Thus it is that Senator Reid, who finds himself in the fight of his life with Sharron Angle for reelection in November is attempting to use a very small eraser to expunge details of his past that might as well be carved in granite. Preeminent among these (although there are multiple contenders) are a series of statements he made in April 2007 declaring the war in Iraq...

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama told Americans from the Oval Office: ...So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country. The Associated Press thinks that's not quite an accurate reflection of how things really are in Iraq. In a memo to the wire service's staffers posted on AP's website, standards editor Tom Kent writes: ...To begin with, combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they...

There were quite a few important points that Obama failed to mention in his speech the other night about the Iraq War. Many have commented about his opposition to that war and to the “surge”; others have commented about Harry Reid’s, “the war is lost”; John Kerry’s, “our soldiers are terrorists”; Dick Durban’s, “we are no better than Hitler or Pol Pot; John Murtha’s, “our Marines are murderers”; and other outrageous comments from the left. But little has been said about the fact that the entire Iraq War cost less than Obama’s “stimulus” (porkulus) bill.

Ve haf certain powers, Miz Maddow . . . In the midst of bashing Pres. Bush over Iraq this evening, Rachel Maddow's mic went suddenly dead, forcing her MSNBC show to go to commercial. When she returned, Maddow, after paraphrasing Macbeth, let it be known she was "such a conspiracy theorist" but didn't dare tell the audience what she was thinking because "it would discredit me forever." View video here.

Tonight President Obama will be giving a speech with Iraq as a major theme and I have just two words that he really ought to include. Thank You. And that ought to be addressed to George W. Bush. He should man up and admit that he was wrong about every single thing he said about the Iraq War while he was in the Senate and he should thank President Bush for being resolute enough to ignore him, Hillary, Reid, Pelosi and the rest of the cut and run chorus. If we had followed the advice of then Sen. Obama, we...

<p>As President Obama prepares to tie a bow on U.S. combat operations in Iraq, Congressional Budget Office numbers show that the total cost of the eight-year war was less than the stimulus bill passed by the Democratic-led Congress in 2009.</p>

VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. (AP) -- President Barack Obama said the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq means "the war is ending" and Baghdad is in position "to chart its own course." Obama used his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday to highlight Tuesday's formal end to U.S. combat missions in Iraq and remind people that he's keeping a promise he made as a candidate in the 2008 election.

Today’s headlines announce the final withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq. So, I’m wondering: when will we see a victory parade? The US has a tradition of celebrating victories in war by parading troops in major US cities. Certainly, US service members deserve to be recognized and thanked for their sacrifice and victory. Will the President organize such a parade? Will he be on the reviewing stand to receive the salute? If this parade never happens, what does this say about our President? If this parade does happen, how will the anti-war left and MSM react? I think the...

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. (AP) -- Gina was a playful 2-year-old German shepherd when she went to Iraq as a highly trained bomb-sniffing dog with the military, conducting door-to-door searches and witnessing all sorts of noisy explosions. She returned home to Colorado cowering and fearful. When her handlers tried to take her into a building, she would stiffen her legs and resist. Once inside, she would tuck her tail beneath her body and slink along the floor.

On July 4th in the Bay Area of California, a group of young people who claimed to be veterans of the war in Iraq took it upon themselves to show their “love” for America in a way few do; by burning an upside-down American flag in celebration of the birthday of America’s independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. "The flag is a symbol of our unity and the blood sweat tears of those that came before us. The flag also has a purpose, some times it is a beacon or a message a warning that something is wrong. We...

BIDEN: "I think Americans will recognize that there aren’t body counts . . .that they got 95,000 people home." Vice President Joe, Joey Buttafuoco, "Bite-me", Biden says there are no body counts from the Iraq war! We all know he's an idiot, but this one perhaps takes the cake. WTH is he talking about? Remember all the Bush Death Counts the left kept when it was Bush's war?... Hey Joey, there are indeed body counts. There are thousands of lives that have been lost, and many more that have been changed forever due to the sacrifices those in our military...

Leadership: Our commander in chief was to miss the wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery to go on vacation. Other presidents have missed it, but never at wartime. All presidents deserve a vacation, and no president is ever off the clock. But we are at war, and Memorial Day at Arlington has special significance even in peacetime. Those who defend President Obama's decision to take time off were not so understanding whenever President George W. Bush spent time at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. Obama was to be in his old Chicago-area stomping grounds, and those who attacked Bush for taking...

Big loss for CNN: Foreign correspondent Michael Ware, famous for his coverage of the Iraq war, has left the network. All Things CNN, an independent blog covering the network, writes that Ware has been on leave working on a book and struggling with PTSD from his years of war reporting. He needed more time off, but his request was denied, and now he's not coming back, the blog reports. A CNN spokesperson confirmed to The Huffington Post that Ware has been on leave but declined to comment further than that. Ware discussed his PTSD in a disturbing December 2008 Men's...

A Tale of Two Ramadans Bethany Stotts, April 19, 2010 This month academics Tariq Ramadan and Adam Habib, previously banned from the country, returned to visit U.S. soil after the U.S. government waived the original justifications for their exclusion. They had been cast by ivory tower academics, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), among others, as victims of “ideological exclusion” under the Bush Administration. “…I know why I was banned from this country. [It] has nothing to do with my ‘terrorist views’ or my view about violence,” argued Ramadan at an April 8...

Iraq & Hard Place Malcolm A. Kline, April 6, 2010 One of the crowning ironies of the age, to use a really pretentious phrase, is that the main site of anti-war rallies staged over the past decade—academia—is also the source of American foreign policy in Iraq. Witness, the CIA director who told President George W. Bush that the evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a “slam dunk” became a professor at Georgetown where he could look out the window and see his old boss hung in effigy for following the former top spy’s advice. “This is because...

Iraq & Hard Place Malcolm A. Kline, April 6, 2010 One of the crowning ironies of the age, to use a really pretentious phrase, is that the main site of anti-war rallies staged over the past decade—academia—is also the source of American foreign policy in Iraq. Witness, the CIA director who told President George W. Bush that the evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a “slam dunk” became a professor at Georgetown where he could look out the window and see his old boss hung in effigy for following the former top spy’s advice. “This is because...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's second choice for transportation security chief has withdrawn from consideration because of questions over his background as a defense contractor. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Harding took himself out of the running Friday night as head of the Transportation Security Administration, another setback for Obama after his first choice withdrew in January. Harding said the distractions caused by his work as a defense contractor would not be good for the administration or the Homeland Security Department. The TSA is part of that department. Harding has extensive intelligence experience that Obama hoped to tap in shoring...

Better late than never — a bang-bang pulse-pounder predicated on the Bush administration's deliberate fabrication of WMDs in Iraq. Paul Greengrass's expertly assembled Green Zone has evidently been parked for some time on Universal's shelf. Had the movie been released during the 2008 election season, it might have been something more than entertainment. Still, Green Zone, which could have more accurately been titled Told You So, Jerk-Off!, does gain some coincidental topicality for opening just days after the Iraqi elections and the release of Karl Rove's new book, Courage and Consequence, even if the zeitgeist has moved on, with the...

The late Howard Zinn would be very proud of his protégé, Matt Damon. The actor has long admired the lefty historian, a man whose anti-American impulses were so profound he could cast the United States’ participation in World War II and its aftermath in an unflattering light. Damon’s latest film, Green Zone, rewrites history regarding the Iraq War in a way Zinn’s acolytes will cheer. Never mind the facts. Green Zone keeps the “Bush lied, people died” narrative front and center while creating an alternative reality as warped as that of Inglourious Basterds. But at least Quentin Tarantino fashioned his...

Turkey has long been considered an ally in the Islamic world, a so-called secular state with modern leaning tendencies. But beneath the surface lies an uneasy truth. Turkey is closer to the terror supporting states of Islam than to the west.

Hurt Locker which was a sort of, kind of pro Iraq War movie beat Avatar, a conspicuously anti American, anti soldier cartoon designed by the virulently liberal, self-admitted anti war guy, James Cameron. Hurt Locker did have to portray a heroic soldier in the mandatory Hollywood style - as a crazy cowboy. But then again, as a Vietnam veteran who returned from that infamous "police action" as a certified psychotic, I can identify with the Hurt Locker director's intentions. Conservatives are varied in their opinions of the patriocity of the movie. George Clooney, it is reported, looked devastated as he...

The new Newsweek cover: Bush in front of the Mission Accomplished banner, Newsweek's Jon Meecham explains the cover on Morning Joe...And it looks like George W. Bush was right and every single one of these clowns were wrong...

I am not naive. I understand that there are individuals who opposed the war in Iraq from the very beginning and I believe their passion, although misguided at times, is rooted in a deep desire for peace. What always baffled me was the reaction they had to pro-victory veterans when we came home. As if we were some robotic arm of the Bush White House. It was foreign for them to understand why winning in Iraq was so important. Our friends died in this cause. There is no honor in their death unless we complete the mission they died fighting.

According to the report, Secretary Gates sent a memo to General David Patraeus on February 17 informing the commander of the name change. In reporting this news, however, the Washington Examiner wondered if there would be some sort of official proclamation by the Obama Administration that we had won.

Politics: A battle ensues between one vice president who defended freedom well and another who sorely needs his boss's teleprompter. Biden accuses Cheney of rewriting history while claiming that Iraq is this administration's victory. Maybe Vice President Joe Biden should think about writing talking points on his hand as his rhetoric reaches levels of absurdity where no politician has gone before. After last weekend's round of competitive gabfests, one would expect to see a billboard of former Vice President Dick Cheney with a caption, "Miss me yet?" We do, sir, we do. After yeoman service helping President Bush fight the...

They have been searching in Iraq for the past nine years, 10 months and 15 days. Today, the hard work finally paid off as soldiers found one of those elusive ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that Saddam Hussein was supposed to have been hiding. So is it all round to Tony Blair's house for celebratory drinks? Unfortunately the discovery came just a few days late for the former prime minister, who could have used the extraordinary find as proof he was right about Iraq all along during the Chilcot Inquiry. But from the looks of the rocket, it would appear unlikely...