Free Republic

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) will visit the Free Library of Philadelphia's Central Library Tuesday evening to discuss her new book, Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters. Pelosi is the highest-ranking woman in an elected position in U.S. history. She will speak in Montgomery Auditorium at 7; a book-signing will follow at 8. Tamala Edwards, a 6ABC news anchor, will interview Pelosi onstage. General admission to the event is $12. The library is on Logan Square. For information, go to http://www.library.phila.gov/. - Ashwin Verghese

Isaac Ben-Israel, a former Israeli Air Force general and now member of the ruling Kadima party, spoke with SPIEGEL about the limits of sanctions in dealing with Iran's nuclear program. He says Israel is prepared to mount a military strike against the mullah regime if diplomacy fails. SPIEGEL: The Israeli Air Force recently simulated an attack on an Iranian nuclear facility in a top secret maneuver over the Mediterranean. Do you have such a low opinion of Western sanctions? Isaac Ben-Israel: Neither the sanctions nor diplomacy have had much of an effect. Today, the Iranians are one to two years...

1945 : Japanese sink the USS Indianapolis On this day in 1945, Japanese warships sink the American cruiser Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen in the worst loss in the history of the U.S. navy. As a prelude to a proposed invasion of the Japanese mainland, scheduled for November 1, U.S. forces bombed the Japanese home islands from sea and air, as well as blowing Japanese warships out of the water. The end was near for Imperial Japan, but it was determined to go down fighting. Just before midnight of the 29th, the Indianapolis, an American cruiser that was the flagship of...

A military confrontation with Iran over its nuclear weapons program appears increasingly inevitable, a senior American evangelical leader said on Tuesday. "The horrible terror of the almost wild-eyed behavior of [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is enough to cause any thinking person to ask: Is there another way than some military intervention?" Pastor Jack W. Hayford, president of the International Church of Foursquare Gospel, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview. "Confrontation seems inevitable," he said. The 73-year-old Los Angeles-based Hayford is heading a four-day conference of more than 3,000 church leaders and laymen from around the world in Jerusalem, in...

1945 : United States conducts first test of the atomic bomb The United States conducts the first test of the atomic bomb at its research facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The terrifying new weapon would quickly become a focal point in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The official U.S. development of the atomic bomb began with the establishment of the Manhattan Project in August 1942. The project brought together scientists from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada to study the feasibility of building an atomic bomb capable of unimaginable destructive power. The...

Would Iran’s Mullahs Use the Bomb? By Amil Imani There is so much smoke around the Iranian Mullahs’ bomb that it makes Tehran’s smog feel like a fresh ocean breeze. Here is a partial list of views about the Mullahs, their capabilities and intentions about the bomb affair. The Mullahs: * Will never dare to use the bomb, even if they had it. To do so would be suicidal. * Are years away from anything resembling a credible bomb, in any quantities. * Lack the technological skills needed to make a workable bomb. * Don’t have the means of hitting...

I. For nearly 50 years, worries about a nuclear Middle East centered on Israel. Arab leaders resented the fact that Israel was the only atomic power in the region, a resentment heightened by America’s tacit approval of the situation. But they were also pretty certain that Israel (which has never explicitly acknowledged having nuclear weapons) would not drop the bomb except as a very last resort. That is why Egypt and Syria were unafraid to attack Israel during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. “Israel will not be the first country in the region to use nuclear weapons,” went the...

SEOUL, South Korea — A U.S. military plane capable of detecting radiation has taken off from southern Japan amid concerns over a threatened nuclear test by North Korea, a news report said Thursday. The plane, which can collect and analyze radioactive substances in the air, took off from the U.S. air base at Kadena on the southern island of Okinawa, Kyodo News agency reported

SEOUL, South Korea — China on Thursday warned its ally North Korea of unspecified "serious consequences" if it carries out its first nuclear weapons test — Beijing's sharpest rebuke yet in response to Pyongyang's stated intentions.

What makes today special? It's the last business day in September. Which means it's been a month since the expiration of the United Nations Security Council deadline for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment. Needless to say, Iran did not stop preparing its nuclear weapons production. So how do we handle such important matters in the world of international diplomacy? Why, we set a new deadline, of course. That's what we did last week when the five permanent members of the Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the U.S. – plus Italy and Germany agreed to give European...

1. Khamenei: Iran Will Have Bomb in April April 8, 2006 could turn out to be an ominous date in history - that's the day Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei says that Iran will have a nuclear weapon. Late last year Khamenei gathered his top advisers for a strategy meeting and told them "it has been promised that by April 8, we will be in a position to show the entire world that we are members of the club." This presumably refers to nuclear weapons, according to National Review Online Contributing Editor Michael Ledeen, who offered an inside look at...

************* Iran and the Long War Against the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam It is not possible to adequately understand the threat posed by Iran unless the current Iranian regime and its ideological underpinnings are understood within the larger struggle in which the civilized nations of the world are--in varying degrees--unavoidably engaged. In the United States we currently refer to this struggle as the “Global War on Terror”. Yet, this label fails to capture the nature of the threat faced by civilization... ...Because this war is at its core an ideological war, it is more accurate to think of and identify...

RUSH: I want to now go to these Dan Rather sound bites. Dan Rather was interviewed last night at the National Press Club in Washington by former CBS News employee-reporter Marvin Kalb. Marvin Kalb now runs the John F. Kennedy School of Government's Shorenstein Center at Harvard, and you know something? When you hear these bites you're going to understand what I'm saying here. This is one of the problems of the mainstream media today. When these reporters that get long in the tooth get laid off or retired, they farm them out to these think tanks and these journalism...

QUESTION: What's your reaction to the protests in Iran around the British Embassy? This is a reaction to the IAEA vote, I presume, were there to be a U.S. embassy, they would be protesting there. MR. MCCORMACK: Right. Well, I'll leave it to those on the ground to describe the protests there and who might be organizing those protests. The position where Iran finds itself right now, I think, is one that is probably a surprise to them after the IAEA Board of Governors vote. And where they find themselves is more isolated from the international community than when they...

Nuclear weapons remain the most powerful force ever invented by humankind. They can be constructed with either highly enriched uranium (over 20% 235U) or plutonium. Most modern nuclear weapons rely on a combination of fission and fusion, using the initial nuclear release from a core of uranium or plutonium to ignite a secondary fusion of lighter elements. The first nuclear weapons developed by the US had explosive yields equivalent to 10-20 kt of TNT, while most of today's deployed weapons range from 100-500 kt in yield. In all, there are approximately 27,600 nuclear weapons in existence. Read More…About the author:...

IDAHO FALLS -A former Iraqi nuclear scientist told a crowd here that Iraq was on the brink of having a nuclear bomb just before the 1991 invasion of the country by U.S. and allied forces. Mahdi Obeidi, who worked under Saddam Hussein, spoke to a full house gathered at the World Nuclear University Summer Institute Monday. "Iraq was on the verge of having a nuclear bomb," he said. "The world will never know what Saddam would have done." A centrifuge is a machine that spins at extremely high speed to enrich uranium, needed to build an atomic bomb. Obeidi spent...

The sixtieth anniversary of Hiroshima seems to be shaping up as a subdued affair--though not for any lack of significance. A survey of news editors in 1999 ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, first among the top one hundred stories of the twentieth century. And any thoughtful list of controversies in American history would place it near the top again. It was not always so. In 1945, an overwhelming majority of Americans regarded as a matter of course that the United States had used atomic bombs to end the Pacific war. They further believed that...

This is from the archives of 1999. I just saw the first revisionist article of the season. It happens every year. We are the bad guys for dropping the bomb and blah blah blah blah blah blah. That is major league B.S. They started the war; we ended it and saved American lives. MIDI - BEAVER On August 6 we will not forget…Japan got a big surprise We said the war must come to an end…they were not believing their eyes Yes, Truman said we would drop The Bomb and we would save our own men I guess that they...

I asked this question on an earlier thread. I was Freepmailed and told it was classified by a naval officer. In light of some of the presidential candidates before us, I would like to know, who decides to push the N button if needed. In contrast, if the N button needs to be pushed and the president refuses, who or what over rules.

"The Manchurian Candidate" or "Being There" BROADside his new nasty should come as no surprise to William J. Broad (Spying Isn't the Only Way to Learn About Nukes, The New York Times, May 30, 1999), who must surely give the megaton-ic bulk of the credit for this proliferation to the clintons.... December 22, 2003 Inquiry Suggests Pakistanis Sold Nuclear Secrets By THE NEW YORK TIMES his article is by William J. Broad, David Rohde and David E. Sanger. WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 -- A lengthy investigation of the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, by American and European intelligence...

<p>ERIE, Pa. — A pizza deliveryman told police he had been forced to rob a bank and asked authorities to help him minutes before a bomb strapped to his chest exploded and killed him.</p> <p>On Saturday, federal agents and police in northwestern Pennsylvania were trying to solve the bizarre case of 46-year-old Brian Douglas Wells, who left to deliver a pizza to a mysterious address in a remote area about an hour before he turned up at the bank with a bomb strapped to his body.</p>

Fox subtite just announces that the "Shock and Awe" has begun!

Caption this pic of french, female, anti-War protesters

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelans seeking an extra bang for their New Year's parties or political protests have found a noisy new ally -- the Bin Laden. The name of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), leader of the militant Islamist al Qaeda network and suspected mastermind of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, has been borrowed by Venezuelans to describe a particularly loud, powerful -- and dangerous -- type of firecracker. As in many countries in South America and Asia, Venezuelans use fireworks and firecrackers to add zest to feast days, Christmas and New Year...

- Barely a week after Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, North Korea has stunned American diplomats by disclosing that it has a secret nuclear weapons program, in violation of its 1994 treaty with America. Mr. Carter’s role in this matter is more than incidental; a report in Saturday’s New York Times, enumerating the accomplishments for which Mr. Carter earned the prize, cited the ex-president’s trip to Pyongyang “in 1994 to ease tensions between North Korea, South Korea and the United States over North Korea’s alleged nuclear weapons program.” Alleged, indeed. Mr. Carter will now join 1994 winner...

<p>NEW DELHI, India -- Fearing that a war between India and Pakistan could prompt both nations to fire nuclear missiles, the British government is drawing up contingency plans to evacuate tens of thousands of its citizens by ship. The Pentagon is making preparations for an emergency airlift of Americans from the region, and the State Department has advised Americans to leave India now.</p>