Free Republic

The United States and Britain have been collaborating on a war game meant to be an invasion of Iran for reasons related to the nuclear activities there, a real concern for the international community, the Guardian wrote.The Guardian wrote that the British military officials went over “fictitious scenarios” for an invasion of Iran when they were invited one year after the invasion of Iraq to respond to a plan from the United States Defense Ministry, the Pentagon. The war game came out as codenamed “Hotspur 2004” at the United States base of Fort Belvoir in Virginia in July 2004....

If the Oklahoma City bombers refused to participate in a U.S. election, would the final results be considered “illegitimate?” What if the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, the Communist Party USA, or the Southern Indiana Regional Militia refused to vote in American elections? Would it matter and, really, who gives a damn? The Left-Wing, e.g. the New York Times, has been trying to hold the Iraqi elections to this type of ridiculous standard regarding Sunni participation. Granted: Sunnis make up 32-37% of Iraq’s population. While their representation is important, the majority of terrorist attacks aimed at destabilizing Iraq have...

Thursday, Apr. 24, 2003 Even as the U.S. works to stabilize a postwar Iraq, Turkey is setting out to create a footprint of its own in the Kurdish areas of the country. In the days after U.S. forces captured Saddam's powerbase in Tikrit, a dozen Turkish Special Forces troops were dispatched south from Turkey. Their target: the northern oil city of Kirkuk, now controlled by the U.S. 173rd Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade. Using the pretext of accompanying humanitarian aid the elite soldiers passed through the northern city of Arbil on Tuesday. They wore civilian clothes, their vehicles lagging behind a...

Nothing follows....looking for hard copy.

By BORZOU DARAGAHI, Associated Press Writer IRBIL, Iraq - A long-planned meeting of Iraqi opposition leaders in northern Iraq has been delayed "three or four days" because of complications caused by weather, a Kurdish opposition leader said Wednesday. Hoshyar Zebari, foreign relations chief of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, said many opposition figures based in Washington have been unable to travel because of a snowstorm that shut down the region's airports. Snow in Iran also impeded travelers. "The opposition leadership is determined to make this happen," Zebari told reporters at a news conference. "It looks like now it will happen in...

9 July: US war planners have decided that their most useful strategic asset for the coming offensive against Saddam Hussein is the 2.5 million Turkomans of north and central Iraq - even more than the Kurds. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources explain their reasoning: 1. The Turkomans control a vital strip separating Baghdad and central Iraq from its oil regions in the north. After the war is over, US strategic planners plan the establishment of Turkoman and Kurdish autonomous states in the north and a Shiite territory in the south to keep the federal regime in Baghdad chronically weak and...