Free Republic

LONDON — The French government tried to blame the 1985 sinking of Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior on British spy agency MI6, according to official documents released under freedom of information. The campaign of misinformation and smears - suggesting MI6 bombed the ship in New Zealand and framed French secret agents, or that MI6 knew in advance of the French mission — infuriated Margaret Thatcher's government. The documents, released under Britain's Freedom of Information Act to The Guardian newspaper, show how Malcolm Rifkind, then a Foreign Office minister, told British diplomats in Paris to demand an end to the "campaign of misinformation"....

School officials thumb their noses at California parents who object to a highly controversial musical being performed by students. You might expect to find musicals containing depictions of rape, incest and bestiality somewhere off-Broadway—not in a high school production. But at La Canada High School in La Canada Flintridge, Calif., this year's spring musical is the highly controversial "Bat Boy." The main character is a pointy-eared half-human boy with fangs who's discovered living in a cave in Hope Falls, W.V. While exploring the world, Bat Boy and the rest of the cast use drugs, alcohol and sex as tools for...

"It started with (hurricane) Katrina," he said to the early morning NBC anchor. Then, according to Tim, there were the problems with the CIA agent leak. Added to the truthfulness problems about WMD which Bush used to justify our attack on Iraq, it explains why the Bush White House is in trouble, with job disapproval/trust ratings in the negative sixty percent range! Before he left office -- in fact, if memory serves, on the day he was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives -- Bill Clinton sent missles to bomb Baghdad. Of late, those who recall that sort of...

It's hard to imagine that The New York Times' editorial page could misconstrue an issue involving guns, seeing as how the writers of the Gray Lady's editorials are so open-minded about the Second Amendment. (That, dear readers, would be sarcasm.) An offering last week about legislation before the U.S. House that would protect gun manufacturers from nuisance lawsuits posited: "This extraordinary shield, written to the diktat of the National Rifle Association, is so sweeping that it would have barred the D.C. sniper settlement and other valid negligence claims." Hmm. Sounds like an editorial written to the diktat of the Brady...

<p>Much of what was reported as fact by government officials and the media during the chaotic first week afterward turned out to be fiction.</p> <p>Myths and misinformation multiplied, from how many people died to what conditions were really like inside the Louisiana Superdome.</p>

Israel And Freedom For Jonathan Pollard By Caroline Glick The Jerusalem Post - With INA Publisher's Note Below Jerusalem ---- April 28......Jonathan Pollard is one of the most polarizing figures of our times. Pollard, a former intelligence analyst in US naval intelligence, has now served 20 years of a life imprisonment sentence following his conviction for transferring classified US intelligence materials relating to Arab ballistic missile and nonconventional weapons programs to Israel from May 1984 until his arrest in November 1985. For his contribution to Israel's security and for his long suffering in prison, Israel considers Pollard a national hero....

St. Petersburg police officers have added the Colt AR-15 rifle to their inventory to counter the expiration of the assault weapons ban and the appearance of more heavily armed criminals. ST. PETERSBURG - (AP) -- The expiration of the nation's ban on the sale of assault rifles and the appearance of more heavily armed criminals have pushed more than 100 St. Petersburg police officers to order assault rifles of their own for official duty. The first group of officers completed the required 16 hours of instruction for using Colt AR-15s in January. The semiautomatic weapons fire bullets that travel up...

I'm yielding the floor to Dafydd ab Hugh for his dissection of a story by WLS in Chicago about their interview with retiring Congressman Henry Hyde: A transcript of a video report that appeared on an ABC affilliate makes a rather startling claim Upon careful parsing, however, there appears to be an awful lot of gravy for so little pot roast. Here is the screaming headline: Clinton impeachment was retaliation for Nixon, says retiring congressman by Andy Shaw. Rep. Hyde reflects on 30 years of office (New headline) By the time we get all the way to the lede, an...

An outbreak of the killer Marburg virus beyond northern Angola is being successfully controlled thanks to a combination of frontline assistance by international health agencies and "social mobilization," says Angola's top health official. ... ... the disease has been mainly confined to the northern province of Uige, where 277 people have died, ...

When some members of Congress violate the Constitution, how can we have any confidence in their leadership? Yet that is precisely the effect these unlawful filibusters of judicial nominees are having -- undermining confidence in the Senate. Instead of voting yes or no on President Bush's picks for certain federal judgeships, Democrats are refusing to allow a vote to even take place, using a Senate rule that no motion may come to a vote while still under discussion. The filibuster, as it's called, has been used by both sides for over a century and a half to delay votes while...

'Crazy' Iraqi spy was full of misinformation, says report An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq. According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq's alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as 'crazy' by his intelligence handlers and a 'congenital liar' by his friends. The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence...

There's an old saying that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts its boots on. Let it be known that mistakes can travel just as fast and just as far. Take the case of Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-California, who at a hearing on Capitol Hill last week spoke about a 1962 nuclear test in the Nevada desert. The test was code named "Project Sedan." Tauscher's remarks were little noticed, until they were transcribed incorrectly in an unofficial transcript of the hearing. One letter was changed. The "Sedan" nuclear test became the "Sudan" nuclear test. And...

1946 Document on Jewish Children Tells a Different Story Undercuts Tale That Vatican Tried to Keep Them From Their Families ROME, JAN. 12, 2005 (Zenit.org).- The latest in a series of accusations about Pope Pius XII's behavior vis-à-vis the Jews and Nazi persecution seems to have little basis in fact. The latest round began Dec. 28 when an Italian newspaper published passages of an alleged 1946 Vatican document that supposedly aimed to keep baptized Jewish children from being returned to their families. The text, as stated in Il Corriere della Sera by Alberto Melloni, director of the G. Dossetti Library...

A letter that appeared in Tuesday's News Tribune suggested that the Bush administration was behind an attempt to reinstate the draft. As evidence, the writer cited by number two bills in the Senate and House and urged readers to write their representatives opposing them. In fact, there are no Republican-sponsored bills concerning the draft, and the two measures requiring conscription of all young adults, rich and poor, were sponsored by Democrats in early 2003 as a tactic against the then-impending war. Specifically, co-sponsor Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington wrote: "If we need to reinstate the draft in order to make...

The New York Times September 28, 2004 Prewar Assessment on Iraq Saw Chance of Strong Divisions By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 - The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, government officials said Monday. The estimate came in two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the director of central intelligence. The assessments...

When I'm down here in Palm Beach County on Sunday morning, I usually pick up a copy of a local newspaper called the Hometown News. They have a section called Rants & Raves. The following was in yesterdays edition: Medicare prescription drug benefit is a big asset. "I see lots of TV ads about the Medicare prescription drug benefits and how bad it it, but it works for me. My monthly drug bill has dropped from over $450 to less that $20 a month. I am so grateful for this benefit. Of course, I had to apply for it. That's...

Washington, DC, Sep. 19 (UPI) -- CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency war-games have predicted unfavorable consequences of a U.S. pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Newsweek quoted an Air Force source as saying, "The war-games were unsuccessful at preventing the conflict from escalating." Newsweek National Security Correspondent John Barry and Special Correspondent Dan Ephron have said administration officials were instead hoping to cause a regime change in Tehran-by covert means. However, the officials weren't ruling out the possibility of using force if necessary. Sources quoted by Newsweek said circulated memos echo the administration's unsuccessful Iraq strategy: oust the existing regime...

Looks like the New York Times has another ugly Jayson Blair-like scandal on its hands. This time, the young minority reporter is Charlie LeDuff, a part Native-American, part-Cajun writer, known as a rising star and favorite pet of former executive editor Howell Raines. The hotshot LeDuff is now in hot water over his cribbing of anecdotes from someone else's book about kayaking down the Los Angeles River for his own Page One fluff story about — you guessed it! — kayaking down the Los Angeles River. An embarrassing correction published in the New York Times on Dec. 8 explained: An...

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.— Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Interpreting the Second Amendment's statement of a right to bear arms is one of the most controversial of all the questions involving the rights of the people. Unlike the rights of free expression and those protecting persons accused of crimes, the Supreme Court has rarely addressed the issue, and so there is no authoritative judicial interpretation of what those words mean. But the American public, Congress, and...

<p>A letter to the editor of The Washington Times, purported to be from a senior U.S. diplomat with scathing criticism of the Foreign Service for lack of loyalty to the Bush administration, was exposed yesterday as a forgery.</p> <p>Wesley Pruden, the editor in chief of The Times, said the newspaper learned "from the highest level at the State Department" that the letter was a hoax and the newspaper fully accepts "as true that the ambassador was not the author of this letter."</p>