Free Republic

Recently, the final report of the Minister of National Defence's monitoring committee was released with little notice from the public or the press. The report's chief focus was the current status of Land Force Reserve Restructure -- the military's term for the rejuvenation of Canada's army reserves. The Committee's overall findings ought to have been disturbing to any Canadian concerned about the state of the army reserves. Canada and other Western industrialized nations need well-trained and ready-to-go reserves -- part-time citizen-soldiers to augment the regular forces. In the United States, Britain and Australia, the extensive deployment of regular forces in...

WASHINGTON - With a presidential election less than one year away, pollsters and political analysts say the U.S. electorate is more polarized than it has been since the Vietnam War. For millions of Americans, George W. Bush is the wedge. "I never thought I would see this happen, but within the Democratic Party and among many, many, many Democrats in this country, there is the same hatred for President Bush that you saw among conservatives and Republicans toward president Clinton during his administration," says Charlie Cook, editor of the Washington-based Cook Political Report. Time magazine this week declared Bush the...

Garry Breitkreuz, the Saskatchewan MP and Canadian Alliance firearms critic, says the federal gun registry will burst through the $1-billion expenditure barrier by 2004, rather than 2005, as once predicted. We see no reason to doubt him. Mr. Breitkreuz has been riding the gun registry file hard from the outset. And despite Liberal efforts to play shell games with the program's soaring costs, he's almost never been wrong. The polite, balding, 58-year-old former school teacher from Yorkton, Sask., has filed more than 400 Access to Information requests concerning the registry's inner workings. That may seem like obsessive behaviour. But sadly,...

No, this was not the way that Recep Tayyip Erdogan imagined the first anniversary of his party's historic electoral victory. Earlier this year, at a meeting with a group of journalists in Switzerland, the Turkish Prime Minister spoke of his hopes for "a year of positive change" in a country thirsting for reform. The idea, he explained, was to "speed up the process of restoring the armed forces to their proper role" and taking "the last big steps" towards Turkey's membership in the European Union while the economy, in the doldrums for a decade, would start showing signs of a...

Walter Duranty, famous 70 years ago as a distinguished reporter for The New York Times, has slowly turned into a symbol of the wilfully deceptive reporting on the Soviet Union that misled the West about the nature of Stalinism for many years. This week Duranty appeared in the news again when the Pulitzer Prize board announced its decision not to strip him posthumously of the award he won in 1932 for persistently dishonest reporting from Moscow. Duranty served as Moscow correspondent from 1921 to 1934, wrote several books on Soviet politics and won an admiring public in America. Meanwhile, he...

Like bureaucrats everywhere, the people running the UN believe above all in the growth of their power. This winter, undeterred by their failures in peacekeeping, AIDS prevention and women's rights, they are focusing on a new target of opportunity: the Internet. The rest of us may consider the Internet one of the great inventions of modern times, but it affronts the rigid conservatives staffing the UN. They are astonished that no one planned this global enterprise, and they can hardly believe that no one runs it. They yearn to regulate it, and they are working hard, at great expense, to...

TORONTO - These have been 10 glorious days for Canadian socialism. In Ontario, they pulled off the trifecta: endless Liberals in Ottawa; Liberals at Queen's Park; NDP at City Hall. "The socialist Utopia has arrived!" -- as my anarcho party-boy Mr. Toronto ex-boyfriend wrote, or something like that (the message makes me so cross I can't read it again). There is simply going to be no one left to blame, though head offices had better watch out. Anti-corporate sentiment in downtown Toronto is so coruscating one would not wonder if the Royal Bank picked up her gleaming gold skirts, (crinkling...

The best line from the speech George W. Bush delivered in London on Wednesday was just nine words long. Referring to the throngs of British protesters railing against the U.S. President and the war he'd started in Iraq, Mr. Bush noted that Britain's "tradition of free speech, exercised with enthusiasm, is alive and well here in London." After the laughter subsided, he added: "They now have that right in Baghdad as well." It was the perfect segue: at once deflating the political tension surrounding his controversial trip, granting a polite nod to the protesters, and presenting listeners with the irrefutable...

Horrific. Murderous. Repugnant. There are only so many adjectives journalists can invoke to describe terrorist attacks against innocent civilians. We have used them all up several times over. But still, the human bombs keep coming, their brains addled by a militant distortion of Islam. Yesterday's atrocities took place in Istanbul, which had been victimized just days earlier by deadly truck-bomb attacks against a pair of local synagogues. This time, the targets were the U.K. consulate and the British HSBC Bank. At least 27 people died, including British Consul-General Roger Short. The attack coincided with George W. Bush's trip to London,...

Yesterday's multiple bombings in Istanbul -- along with last weekend's two suicide attacks on synagogues in the city -- reflect the reality that Turkey is on the frontline in the war against terror. Though Thursday's attacks were directed against the British Consulate and the London-based HSBC banking group, the real target was Turkey itself -- its fragile democracy and strategic relationships with the West. Presuming the two sets of attacks are linked then the most important issue to address is why Turkey and why now? Here Turkey's close relationship with Israel may very well have played a role. Since the...

There's a tug-of-war going on for the soul of Europe. The opposing teams are France-Germany on one side and most of the European Union on the other. At least, that's the potential line-up: The EU will soon grow from 15 countries to 25, and some haven't quite made up their minds which side to join. Not surprisingly, they would prefer to join the winning side. Russia, for instance, spent the past few years alternately ringing alarm bells about Franco-German ambitions for dominance -- and then supporting the same, especially against the United States. To assure the triumph of their vision,...

On Saturday, suicide bombers detonated pickup trucks full of explosives outside two Istanbul synagogues, killing at least 22 people and wounding more than 300. It was the sort of atrocious, senseless crime that has come to be the calling card of militant Islam. For all the Muslim world's accusations against the United States and Israel, no one has done more to debase and defame the religion of Muhammad than the murderers who blow themselves up in its name. As for the many Jews who died in this attack, their only crime was belonging to the one religion on which the...

WASHINGTON - If there's one thing U.S. Democrats hate more than losing, it's losing big. For every fond recollection of Bill Clinton's winning ways, there is the sour memory of a Walter Mondale. Or a George McGovern. Or a Michael Dukakis. All were men whose presidential candidacy seemed like a good idea at the time, but who were beaten so badly they have become cautionary tales, metaphors for Democratic futility. Enter Howard Dean. According to conventional wisdom in Washington, the former Vermont governor has become the prohibitive favourite to win the Democratic presidential nomination and challenge George W. Bush in...

The security situation in Iraq continues to worsen. At least 26 people were killed in a car bombing outside an Italian military compound in the southern city of Nasiriyah yesterday. Following that, U.S. forces dropped bombs on a base in southern Baghdad where they believe terrorist attacks are being launched from. Various ideas are floating around about how best to turn this grim reality around. A leaked CIA report shows that trust in the U.S. occupation is continually deteriorating and close to reaching a turning point. The forces of freedom must act quickly. Some have speculated that the solution is...

Sunday's decision by the Israeli cabinet to vote in favour of a prisoner trade that will see scores of terrorists released from its jails in exchange for the safe return of an Israeli businessman kidnapped by Hezbollah, and the bodies of three dead Israeli soldiers, must have been an extremely difficult one to take. It may come as a surprise to hear that Israel -- which is famed for its tough stance against terrorists -- is willing to enter into such a deal that is likely to have strong ramifications for the long-term war against terror. On a human level...

It seems improbable that the murder by a car bomber of at least 13 Arab expatriate workers and five children at the predominately Muslim al-Muhaya residential compound in Riyadh over the weekend will be the turning point in the war on terrorism that some intelligence experts claim. Islamic extremists are too entrenched for that. Even though an array of moderate Arab leaders did quickly -- and sincerely -- condemn the attack, the jihadis who carried it out have far too much fanatical support on the so-called Arab street and Arab presidential palaces for this incident to mark the beginning of...

Fewer than two years after its liberation from the Taliban, Afghanistan is debating a new constitution for its future. The draft, prepared by an all-party committee, is expected to come into force next year after being amended and approved through a process of popular consultations. Those who opposed the liberation of Afghanistan (largely because America played the central role in achieving it) have already dismissed the draft constitution as either irrelevant or as bad as what the Taliban had on offer. For their part, those who wished to see the back of the Taliban, virtually at any cost, have rushed...

Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, says Russia will not join in the international effort in Iraq. This is not so much of a surprise as it is a disappointment. Mr. Putin is hiding under the cover of the United Nations to justify his decision, claiming that the UN is not playing a big enough role in the post-war occupation. The UN must be more involved in "directly managing the political situation" in Iraq, he said. It speaks volumes that at the very time that the United States -- a supplier of billions of dollars in foreign aid to Russia --...

Three cheers for the United States Congress, key members of which on Wednesday approved US$18.4-billion in grants to help rebuild Iraq. Previously, the Senate had voted to deliver some of the reconstruction funds in the form of loans, a proposal that would have added to Iraq's already stunning debt load, and turned off the many other nations the United States is looking to for help sharing the financial burden. Of course, ordinary Iraqis have other things on their mind -- like the continuing campaign of terrorism being waged by Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign jihadis. But in the long run,...

There has been much public discussion of late regarding the new conservative party that would result from the coming together of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and the Canadian Alliance. Within the PC party particularly, concerns have been expressed about policy and the direction this new entity will ultimately take, should it be ratified by the membership of both parties. The agreement-in-principle signed by CA leader Stephen Harper and myself was the culmination of several months of discussions involving a number of prominent and respected individuals representing each party. These discussions were the continuation of talks begun a few...