Free Republic

Somehow NRO is having some trouble posting my full reply to my friend Andy McCarthy. I’m sure it will be fixed soon, but in the meantime, here it is: Nothing is better than getting honest criticism from a serious person. It’s almost impossible to find it nowadays, and I’m very grateful to Brother Andy for his kind words and trenchant comments. Ditto to Mark. How did these lawyers learn to write so well? I thought they beat that out of you in Law School… Bush Doctrine: As I remember it, we declared war on terrorist groups and on the countries...

In the middle of the night, at 1:30 in the morning of Friday, August 14th, there was a large explosion at the monster petrochemical facility of the Iranian Pars Petrochemical Company in Bandar Assaluyeh. It is the biggest such plant in Iran, and the second largest in the whole Middle East (second only to one in Saudi Arabia). The explosion, which took place in pipes carrying Liquid Petroleum Gas (which is mostly propane), caused fires throughout the facility. It took at least three hours before the fires were brought under control. At least two persons died (fortunately, at that hour...

Michael Ledeen on Iranian regime and their belief that he is apparently the main influence behind the Iranian opposition and recent protests. (about 4 mins)

By now, most people know that the Iranian regime treats its dissidents with unrestrained barbarity. Even the leading dead tree media have reported anecdotally on the torture of prisoners and the bashing, beating, axing and stabbing of protestors in the streets of the major cities. But it is not easy to get a clear picture of the dimensions of the savagery. It’s hard to get the real numbers on the bloody repression the mullahs have unleashed on their people, and one reason–perhaps the most important one–is that the regime is doing everything in its power to conceal the facts, typically...

Washington, 21 July (WashingtonTV)—The hardline principle-ist Kayhan daily, published in Tehran today, attacked former president, Mohammad Khatami, saying that when he spoke of “the need for a referendum”, he was “carrying out the instructions” of Michael Ledeen, prominent member of the American Enterprise Institute and special aide to former US defense secretary, Ronald Rumsfeld, and to former deputy president, Dick Cheney. On Sunday 28 Tir [19 July], Khatami said at a meeting held in the office of the Combatant Clerics Society in Tehran with the families of a number of detainees, that the way to overcome the current crisis was...

It’s a bit more complicated than that, but the bottom line is that we are turning loose Iranian terrorists in exchange for the release of Roxana Saberi, plus, probably, three British hostages. The first payment arrived today in Tehran, to a triumphant reception. Ugh. The terrorists in question are officers in the Iranian Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Revolutionary Guards Corps. They were captured in Irbil, Iraq, in January, 2007, as the “surge” was getting under way. A few weeks earlier, other Iranians had been arrested in Baghdad. For our military leaders, it was an open and shut...

For those who wish to think clearly about Iran, there are two fundamental facts: * the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been at war with us ever since the overthrow of the shah in early 1979; * the savagery they have unleashed on the people of Iran is precisely what they want to do to us. The Iranian leaders and their terror instruments, from Hezbollah to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have been killing Americans for 30 years, from the Marine barracks in Beirut in the 1980s to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan at the moment, where...

Let’s review the bidding, shall we? The “election circus” took place a week ago Friday, and demonstrations began that night, June 12th. Ten days have passed. What have we learned? –First, that a significant number of Iranians hate the regime and are prepared to die to bring it down; –Second, that the fanatical religious zealots that hold the guns, chains, knives, tear gas cannisters, high-powered water hoses, sniper rifles and (perhaps) chemical weapons (said by some to have been deployed from helicopters), are prepared to order the killing of any number of Iranians in order to maintain their own power...

I’ve received what purports to be a statement from Mousavi’s Office in Tehran.  Like everyone else covering the revolution, I get a lot of material that can’t be authenticated, and one must always take such material with a healthy dose of skepticism.  That said, the person who sent this to me is undoubtedly in touch with the Mousavi people on the ground, that much is certain.  His information has been proven reliable throughout this period.  So while the following open letter carefully puts distance between the author(s) and Mousavi himself, I am quite sure that at a minimum it accurately...

Mousavi Accuses Obama of 'Misleading the World' Sunday, June 21, 2009 1:38 PM Author and foreign policy expert Michael Ledeen has published a letter reportedly from the office of Mir Hossein Mousavi, in which the Iranian opposition leader criticizes President Barack Obama for saying Mousavi and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad are "two of a kind." The letter, addressed to Obama, takes the president to task for the remark, calling it "a grave and deep insult, not just to Mr. Mousavi but especially against the judgment of the Iranian people, against our moral conviction and intelligence, especially those of the young...

Everything is always about HIM. America before HIM was deeply flawed, requiring worldwide apologies to everyone who will listen. Given the hatred that failure has for success, that is always a way to draw crowds and admiration. With he possibility of a second Iranian revolution, Obama can't help but make it about HIM, HIS speech, HIS Hamlet act with regard to Iranian leadership. Who should HE anoint; who should he hallow with his words? Outside of HIS narcissistic orbit, Michael Ledeen notes ... He probably thinks he’s in a bind (he isn’t, actually). He probably thinks that if he condemns...

Iran doesn’t have elections, it has circuses, and this was proven once again on Friday, when the regime announced that Ahmadinezhad had been retained–call him “landslide Mahmoud” please–as president of the Islamic Republic. So much for the remarks of various pundits claiming that Iran was some sort of “democracy.” There isn’t a single educated Iranian who thinks that the official numbers represent anything more than a brazen insult to the opponents of the regime. Supreme Leader Khamenei rubbed it in when he called the outcome “divine,” but the subtlety was no doubt lost on American commentators, who were mostly concerned...

Just doing what he’s told, I suppose. After all, he came into the Bush Administration expecting to supervise the retreat from Iraq and the Grand Bargain with Iran, only to find that the president wanted to up the ante in Iraq and challenge the mullahs on the ground. So Gates duly supported the surge, and perforce cracked down on Iranian activities in Iraq. Now comes Obama, who is all about smashing al Qaeda, and making the Grand Bargain with Iran. So Gates duly blames the upsurge in violence in Iraq on al Qaeda–thoughtfully leaving Iran out of it, although they...

“A fine mess down there, I must say. Nobody learns, ever, so far as I can tell…” It was hard to disagree, especially with one of the great experts on intelligence, the late James Jesus Angleton, once upon a time the head of CIA Counterintelligence. I wanted his take on the latest Chinese fire drill over the abridged “torture memos” that the Obama people had made public, and all the subsequent smoke and fire about possible prosecutions and/or investigations of the “guilty parties.” I’d had some repairs made to my ouija board, and had tracked him down in the great...

No president in modern times has managed to conceal so much of his biography as this one. The journalists assigned to the Obama beat seem to have lost their traditional avidity for digging out the missing details. We do not have a medical report, or a college transcript from Columbia, or a notion of how well he did in Harvard Law School. These things are not automatically significant, but they can be. Nobody thinks the president has some basic medical problem. He shows every sign of being in excellent physical condition. But so did John F. Kennedy, who turned out...

The president’s response to the sentencing of Roxana Saberi—eight years in prison—is a testament to the power of Iranian blackmail and Obama’s own pigheaded refusal to understand the nature of our enemies. His “disappointment” in the mullahs’ action (echoed almost to the letter by Secretary of State Clinton) suggests that he hoped, maybe even expected, something better from them. And that, in turn, demonstrates a refusal to see Iran for what it is. If I were Saberi’s Iranian-American father, I would be furious, and I would be inclined to call a press conference to say that, while it may be...

When pundits and politicians talk about “negotiating with Iran,” it conjures up an image of well-dressed statesmen sitting in elegant rooms, talking about the niceties of international relations. But this is only a part of the picture; much of the process is conducted in little hotel rooms by secret intermediaries, and they talk about very unpleasant things, such as torture and blackmail. At least one recent “breakthrough” in relations with Iran was extorted from Great Britain and the United States by an Iranian proxy group in Iraq that kidnaped five British civilians two years ago, and, in the secret negotiations...

Sgt Ryan Weemer, accused of killing an unarmed man during the battle of Fallujah. Acquitted by a jury of eight officers who had been in combat. Good thing Jack Murtha wasn't on the jury; he would have likely voted for conviction before the first witness was sworn. Tell me again how he keeps winning elections. And then fix it, please.

Richard Beeston, of the London Times, is old enough to remember what happened back in 1981, when Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor. First, an Israeli went around to all the allied countries, warning that somebody had better do something soon. Nobody did. So the Israelis did it by themselves. Beeston retells that story in the process of warning us that the Israelis have been doing the same thing of late, this time with regard to the Iranian nuclear project. He thinks that the new Israeli government has at least three men who are experienced in dangerous operations. He notes...

March 22nd, 2009 President Obama has devoted a lot of time to foreign policy this past week, focusing like a laser beam on three countries that begin with the letter “I.” He gave star billing in Washington to the prime minister of Ireland (who was treated a lot better than British Prime Minister Gordon Brown), during the course of which each read the other’s prepared text, perhaps a new departure in international diplomacy. He also sent a letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano (a member of the now defunct Communist Party), expressing confidence that the United States and Italy would...