Free Republic

The soldiers think they can win. Some Senators lose their nerve. Richard Lugar of Indiana, George Voinovich of Ohio, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, and John Warner of Virginia have together served more than a century in the world's greatest deliberative body. Historians will remember their time in public office for Reagan's challenge to the Soviet Union, for the success of pro-growth economic policies, for welfare reform, for the reinvigoration of a constitutionalist approach to the courts, for the framing of a foreign policy for the post-9/11 world. None of these men played a leading role in any of these...

That's the assessment of Jim Gilchrist on why his controversial Minuteman Project continues to make headlines across the country. Gilchrist was in town today to speak to the Sacramento Press Club, and partly to hawk his new book on the volunteer citizens border patrol group launched almost two years ago. He announced a new effort to draw attention to the issue of illegal immigration, and he didn't pull any punches about his feelings on just about every elected official. On September 11, the 5th anniversary of the NYC and DC terrorist attacks, Gilchrist plans to travel to Laredo, TX to...

A beachgoer in Rehoboth Beach walked up to a lifeguard in July with two strange objects in his hand and a stranger request on his lips.He was carrying rusty old artillery shells he found in the sand. "Can I keep them?" They were live. The Delaware beach was evacuated. A bomb squad blew them up. The country's coastlines are littered with unexploded bombs, rockets and shells that regularly wash up on shore, according to military officials. While the Army dumped chemical weapons mostly in deep water - as detailed in a Daily Press investigation published Sunday and Monday - the...

    Nerve agent destruction wraped up at incinerator       Written by by Mark Watson    Tuesday, 02 August 2005 The U.S. Army wants Tooele County residents to know there is no longer a threat for a chemical nerve agent leak at Deseret Chemical Depot south of Tooele. Weapons containing those agents no longer exist. The U.S. Army wants Tooele County residents to know there is no longer a threat for a chemical nerve agent leak at Deseret Chemical Depot south of Tooele. Weapons containing those agents no longer exist. After nine years of hard work from 1,500 employees,...

Brazil. The haughty touchy nation that lectures all other nations about the importance of not interfering in other nations' "internal affairs." Brazil sets the pace by ignoring and abetting the depredations of the Hugo Chavez regime of Venezuela right on their border and the savagery of The Monster At Their Door, none other than fidel castro a short yacht ride away. These two evil dictatorial scumbags have gotten a free pass from Brazil to violate as many human rights as they can manage, in castro's case, for more than 40 years. Not one peep out of Brazil. Total indifference. But...

US in U-turn over Gulf war syndrome 19:00 03 November 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. Terence Walker is one of the lucky ones. On 19 January 1991 he was with 6000 British troops at Al Jubayl in Saudi Arabia, as the first Gulf war was beginning. At around 3am there were loud bangs and flashes, and troops scrambled into gas masks as chemical detector alarms sounded. Some detectors in the area registered the nerve gas sarin, but the UK’s Ministry of Defence later said that these alerts were false alarms. Since Walker...

Heady times. The US election draws ever nearer, and while the rest of the world bangs its head against the floorboards screaming "Please God, not Bush!", the candidates clash head to head in a series of live televised debates. It's a bit like American Idol, but with terrifying global ramifications. You've got to laugh. Or have you? Have you seen the debates? I urge you to do so. The exemplary BBC News website (www.bbc.co.uk/news) hosts unexpurgated streaming footage of all the recent debates, plus clips from previous encounters, through Reagan and Carter, all the way back to Nixon versus JFK....

06/01/04 -- Two years after transforming human fat cells into what appeared to be nerve cells, a group led by Duke University Medical Center researchers has gone one step further by demonstrating that these new cells also appear to act like nerve cells. The team said that the results of its latest experiments provide the most compelling scientific evidence to date that researchers will in the future be able to take cells from a practically limitless source -- fat -- and retrain them to differentiate along new developmental paths. These cells, they said, could then be used to possibly treat...

EPA Fines Army Over Nerve Gas Release 2 hours, 48 minutes ago Add U.S. Government - AP to My Yahoo! SAN FRANCISCO - The U.S. Army and a contractor were fined nearly $52,000 for releasing a deadly chemical weapon on a wildlife sanctuary in the Pacific Ocean, federal environmental officials announced Wednesday. An unknown quantity of VX nerve agent was released in August 2002 at a chemical weapons disposal facility on Johnston Atoll, the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites)'s office in San Francisco said. The release occurred when a tray holding remnants of a VX shell was improperly...

If you were paying attention at all, you knew that something really big happened in the world on Monday. It was an event that could heavily impact the world's opinion of the United States. The potential influence it will have on the 2004 Presidential election is immense. Americans' lives could well be changed forever. We finally have a defining moment in an issue that has divided our country for several months. Did this event answer all the questions Americans have on this issue? No. Are more controversies still to come? Certainly. And yet the New York Times didn't consider it...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The Chinese, who launched their first astronaut into space last year, are "shocked" the United States has not welcomed them into the tight-knit community of space-faring nations, a leading U.S. expert said on Tuesday. Joan Johnson-Freese, who chairs the National Security Decision Making Department at the U.S. Naval War College, said one space official she met on a recent trip to China was in tears as he pleaded for U.S. recognition and cooperation. "They are shocked that the U.S. is not reaching out to them. They want very much to work with the United States,"...

U.S. Said to Find Iraq Nerve Agent Traces By LOUIS MEIXLER, Associated Press Writer BAIJI, Iraq - U.S. troops found about a dozen 55-gallon drums in an open field near this northern Iraqi town, and initial tests indicated one of them contained a mixture of a nerve agent and mustard gas, an American officer said Sunday. Lt. Col. Ted Martin of the 10th Cavalry Regiment said troops went to the site at midnight Friday after having been alerted by U.S. Special Forces teams, which were suspicious because of the presence of surface-to-air missiles guarding the area. A chemical team checked...

BAGHDAD, March 8 (Reuters) - President Saddam Hussein called on the U.N. Security Council on Saturday to lift 12 years of sanctions against Iraq, declaring Baghdad had met its disarmament commitments. In a statement after a meeting chaired by Saddam, the Iraqi leadership made a set of demands it said the Security Council should implement after the reports by chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei on Friday. "The embargo against Iraq should be lifted totally and comprehensively after America's motives were revealed to the world and after Iraq abided by Security Council resolutions," the statement said. It...

Iraq gives al Qaida VX Gas efreedomnews.com December 14, 2002 Jonathan Rhodes 14 December 2002     Washington Post writer Barton Gellman reported December 12, 2002 that al Qaida received VX nerve gas from Iraq in October - smuggled through the Turkish border. [Washington Post Article] Gellman is a well-respected reporter, known to confirm his facts and sources.The report came from "Knowledgeable officials, speaking without White House permission," who " said information about the transfer came from a sensitive and credible source whom they declined to discuss." "The way we gleaned the information makes us feel confident it is accurate,"...

Missing: four tons of nerve gas, 8.5 tons of anthrax, and assorted nuclear bomb parts By David Usborne and Rupert Cornwell 20 December 2002 The United States pushed the world closer to armed conflict last night when Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, asserted that Iraq's declaration on its weapons capacities "totally failed" to meet the conditions laid down by the United Nations. The document, he said, was nothing more than "a catalogue of flagrant omissions and recycled information." Speaking after the two senior UN weapons inspectors had told the Security Council there were serious "holes" in the declaration, General...

Gas looks like secret KGB tool Experts say use may have broken international law By FRED WEIR in Moscow and DAVE GOLDINER in New YorkDAILY NEWS WRITERS Woman wipes her eyes in front of Moscow theater, scene of hostage siege. Details of bungled rescue have made Russians increasingly angry and have raised questions as to whether Russia violated international law. An unidentified former theater hostage embraces her father outside a hospital clinic in Moscow yesterday. The powerful gas used to end the Moscow theater siege was probably a top-secret KGB chemical weapon, and some experts hinted yesterday that Russia...

Surgeons Cut Out the Blushes March 15, 2002 8:19 am EST LONDON (Reuters) - Hot under the collar? A London clinic is charging stressed professionals $5,680 to drill a hole in their armpits, snip away their nerve endings and eliminate their blushes for good. Its patients include television presenters and financiers, fearful that any sign of weakness could damage their careers. "We're talking about professional people whose lives have been blighted by blushing," Anthony Mitra, surgical director of the exclusive Highgate Private Hospital in north London, told Reuters. In the 40-minute operation, surgeons drill a hole near the patient's...