Free Republic

Under President Obama, the Peter Principle appears to have been elevated to policy, at least in the case of architects of an American intelligence disaster. The International Atomic Energy Agency will soon release a report on Iran's nuclear program. The findings have been leaking for days now -- and come as no surprise to those who have long-harbored well-grounded suspicions of Iran's intentions. Iran is close to achieving nuclear breakthrough: the ability to begin cranking out nuclear weapons. The Western world (not just Israel, the surrounded outpost of Western civilization in the Middle East) will now face a theocratic regime...

Lt. Col. Gregory Gadson (right) promoted a former battle buddy, Sgt. Eric Brown, to his present rank during the 22nd Chemical Battalion's organizational day activities at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. Gadson credited Brown with saving his life after an improvised explosive device destroyed both of his legs in Iraq in 2007. WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Aug. 11, 2009) – A wounded warrior came to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., Aug. 6, to promote a Soldier who saved his life. Lt. Col. Gregory Gadson, currently an Army War College Fellow at the Institute for World Politics, drove to the 22nd Chemical...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton now argues that the North American Free Trade Agreement needs to be renegotiated, but newly released records showed on Wednesday she promoted its passage. The National Archives and the Clinton presidential library jointly released more than 11,000 pages of Clinton's daily schedule as first lady from 1993 to 2001. The release came in response to charges that she is overly secretive, and also allowed her campaign to promote her argument that she gained valuable White House experience during her years as first lady. Clinton and Obama are battling to win Pennsylvania on...

Identical twins Capt. Jordan Burfield (left), Company C, 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division and Capt. Jonah Burfield, 47th Ordnance Company, 79th Ordnance Battalion, are reunited at the Al Faw Palace on Camp Victory in western Baghdad for their promotions to captain, July 1, 2007. This deployment has been the longest period of time the Lacrosse, Wis., natives have been separated. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Shea Butler U.S. Army Capt. Jordan Burfield U.S. Army Capt. Jonah Burfield Identical Twins Pin on Captain’s Bars Together By Spc. Shea Butler 7th Mobile Public Affairs...

FORT HUACHUCA — It was a father and son affair. On Thursday, Thomas Eisenmann and his son, Justin, were promoted at a simple ceremony on the post. Thomas became a sergeant major. Justin entered the noncommissioned officers rank as a sergeant. As for the new sergeant major, Col. Timothy Quinn said he was one of 34 soldiers holding that rank out of 5,500 in his intelligence field. “That’s less than 1 percent,” said Quinn, the Intelligence Center’s chief of staff. With an occasional comic’s touch, the colonel joked about the 305th Military Intelligence Battalion senior NCO, remarking on his tours...

Keith “Matt” Maupin, the only soldier listed as captured in Iraq, has been promoted to staff sergeant, the Army announced Tuesday. Maupin, of the Army Reserve’s 724th Transportation Company in Bartonville, Ill., went missing April 9, 2004, when insurgents attacked his convoy using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. Two soldiers and six American civilian truck drivers were killed in the attack outside Baghdad. Maupin was a private first class when he was captured. His 23rd birthday was July 13.

PAKTIKA PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN (NNS) -- Life has been full of surprises for Petty Officer Matthew P. Julian of Greece, Rochester, NY. As a culinary specialist assigned to the submarine USS San Francisco, Julian didn’t expect the tour to include a rotation in the mountains of Afghanistan as an Individual Augmentee, pulled from his normal job to directly support Operation Enduring Freedom. But despite being an IA deployed more than eight thousand feet above sea level and half a world away from his boat’s homeport of Bremerton Wash., Julian found that out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind. Julian was...

MARINE CORPS AIR STATION NEW RIVER, N.C. (Dec. 6, 2005) -- One Marine Light/Attack Helicopter Squadron-269 Marine’s Dec. 1 promotion ceremony was made even more special when he was surprised to find he would be pinned with his new chevrons by his father and brother, both active duty Marines. Lance Cpl. Joseph B. Charboneau, HML/A-269 flightline mechanic, learned only moments before the ceremony that his father, Maj. Peter D. Charboneau, Sr., Marine Corps Combat Development Command force protection integration division branch head, and his brother Cpl. Peter D. Charboneau, Jr., Brig Co. corrections officer, Headquarters and Support Bn., Marine Corps...

May 28, 2004 Cardinal Law Given Post at Vatican By AL BAKER ROME, May 27 - Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who was forced to resign as leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston after a long and painful sexual abuse scandal involving clergy members, was chosen by Pope John Paul II on Thursday to head a basilica in Rome. A statement released in the Vatican's daily bulletin announced that Cardinal Law, who resigned in 2002, would become the archpriest of St. Mary Major Basilica, a church in a downtown neighborhood of Rome that is under direct Vatican jurisdiction. The...