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Today is the 146th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Gettysburg. A few months later, as the National Cemetery there was being organized, an invitation was extended to President Lincoln to give "a few appropriate remarks" for the dedication in November, 1863. Lincoln would not be the main speaker, that honor would go to Edward Everett, one of the foremost orators of the day. Everett spoke for almost two hours and, for the most part, his remarks are lost to the ages. Lincoln's "few appropriate remarks" however, are some of the most familiar wods in American History. To...

One of the greatest misconceptions of American history is that the Civil War was fought over slavery. Those who subscribe to this belief see President Abraham Lincoln as the benevolent leader who made unimaginable sacrifices in human blood to wipe out America’s greatest sin. While the human sacrifice is indisputable and the sin was monumental, the war’s purpose was not to free blacks from the shackles of bondage. Rather, the Civil War was fought with one purpose in mind: To preserve the Union at all costs. And, to put it in Lincoln’s terms, with no ifs, ands, or buts. You’d...

A US federal court has denied former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk's latest attempt to block extradition to Germany to face charges of aiding in the wartime murder of thousands of Jews. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment on when Mr Demjanjuk would be deported but said the government would continue to seek his removal to Germany. His son said the family is considering an appeal to the US Supreme Court and has also filed a lawsuit in Germany seeking an emergency stay. The decision is the latest development in a decades-long saga over the elder...

For nearly 150 years, Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch has been rumored to carry a secret message, supposedly written by an Irish immigrant and watchmaker named Jonathan Dillon. Dillon, working in a D.C. watch repair shop in 1861, told family members that he -- by incredible happenstance -- had been repairing Lincoln's watch when news came that Fort Sumter had been attacked in South Carolina. It was the opening salvo of what became the Civil War. Dillon told his children (and, half a century later, a reporter for the New York Times) that he opened the watch's inner workings and scrawled...

Though Lincoln has already been canonized by those who settle for partial histories, in the words of John Adams, "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." In our steadfast adherence to The Patriot Post's motto, Veritas Vos Liberabit ("the truth shall set you free"), and our mission to advocate for the restoration of constitutional limits on government, I am compelled to challenge our 16th president's iconic standing. Lincoln is credited with being the greatest constitutional leader in history, having "preserved...

I don't know what they teach in U.S. history classes today. But back in the middle of the last century, when I was in elementary school, there was absolutely no question about how we were to regard Abraham Lincoln. We were taught to feel a reverence bordering on awe for Honest Abe, the Great Emancipator, the eloquent martyr who saved the Republic. We were required to memorize the Gettysburg Address. And if we were lucky enough to join a field trip to our nation's capitol, one of the most significant events was our visit to the Lincoln Memorial. (A few...

When the American Civil War began, president Abraham Lincoln was far less prepared for the task of commander in chief than his Southern adversary. Jefferson Davis had graduated from West Point (in the lowest third of his class, to be sure), commanded a regiment that fought intrepidly at Buena Vista in the Mexican War and served as secretary of war in the Franklin Pierce administration from 1853 to 1857.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan urged President Barack Obama to halt U.S. missile strikes on Al Qaeda strongholds near the Afghan border, saying Saturday that civilians were killed the previous day in the first attacks since Obama's inauguration. Pakistani security officials said eight suspected foreign militants, including an Egyptian Al Qaeda operative, were among 22 people killed in Friday's twin strikes in the Waziristan region. But the Foreign Ministry said the attacks by unmanned aircraft also killed an unspecified number of civilians and it had informed U.S. officials of its "great concern."

Because the Obama camp has announced the theme for Wednesday night will be "securing America's future," and that the VP nominee will speak on that night, many have openly pondered about the VP being General Wesley Clark. How would Clark rate as the VP nominee? A few days ago, I posted a column on the Obama campaign's choice to thematically tie the Vice Presidential nominee to their Wednesday night agenda on national security and foreign affairs. Obama's people have titled Wednesday night as "Securing America's Future." Coincidentally, or perhaps not, this slogan also happens to be the mantra of WesPac,...

BOSTIC - For a man with "Honest Abe" as his nickname, there are plenty of Abraham Lincoln stories that may be anything but. Lincoln did not compose the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope. No one really knows whether the store clerk Lincoln walked six miles to return 3 cents he overcharged. And his wife wasn't a Confederate spy. Now this small town in Western North Carolina is pressing its own claim: Lincoln was a Tar Heel. According to a tale that locals swear is true: The 16th president of the United States wasn't born in Kentucky, as...

WASHINGTON - Heading toward the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, President Bush on Sunday celebrated the nation's 16th president as a man of steadfast convictions and honorable ideals. "It's fitting that we honor Abe Lincoln," Bush said in the ornate East Room of the White House. "Of all the successors to George Washington, none had a bigger impact on the presidency and the country." Bush spoke in early tribute to the 199th anniversary of Lincoln's birthday. Lincoln was born Feb 12, 1809. On Tuesday, first lady Laura Bush will speak at Lincoln's birthplace of Hodgenville, Ky., as part of the...

Sally Field wins an Emmy and suddenly everyone wants to 'really, really like her' again. Fresh off her controversial appearance on the Emmys, when she won for Brothers & Sisters, Sally Field has been cast as Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of Abraham Lincoln, in Steven Spielberg's long-awaited biopic of one of the most important leaders of all time. Liam Neeson has already been cast as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln bases on Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Steven Spielberg's Lincoln will center on the life of the leader in the time leading...

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations by former hostages that Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran a quarter century ago. President Bush told foreign reporters he has "no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions." "As soon as I saw the face, it rang a lot of bells to me," Don Sharer, who served as the embassy's naval attache at the time, told CNN. "...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more...

WASHINGTON—The National Archives on Thursday unveiled a handwritten note by Abraham Lincoln exhorting his generals to pursue Robert E. Lee's army after the battle of Gettysburg, underscoring one of the great missed opportunities for an early end to the Civil War. An archives Civil War specialist discovered the July 7, 1863, note three weeks ago in a batch of military papers stored among the billions of pages of historical documents at the mammoth building on Pennsylvania Avenue. The text of Lincoln's note has been publicly known because the general to whom Lincoln addressed it telegraphed the contents verbatim to the...

Historian James M. McPherson's magnificent collection of essays This Mighty Scourge; Perspectives on the Civil War contains an essay on General William Tecumseh Sherman's famous, or infamous, "march through Georgia " that sheds light on the success of his march in bringing victory, and peace, to the United States. ********************************************* Calling such counterterrorist strikes "war crimes," as many who are critical of both America (and Israel) do, is extremely unfair. In fighting an enemy who kills soldiers and civilians without distinction, it is not possible to fight a completely "clean" war, without losing it to the terrorist enemies. No country...

IN SEPTEMBER 1862, Union troops were soundly defeated by Confederate forces led by Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee at Manassas Junction, Virginia. The North called it the Second Battle of Bull Run. President Abraham Lincoln's somber mood afterward was recorded in a diary entry by Attorney General Edward Bates, who wrote that Lincoln "seemed wrung by the bitterest anguish--said he felt almost ready to hang himself." Soon afterward Lincoln wrote out a private musing on a small piece of lined paper. He sought to discern the will of God among the cacophony of voices all around him after news...

In the early years of the Civil War, prisoners from the North and South were rarely held in prison camps. In many cases, they were often exchanged with POWS from the opposing side. As the war dragged on, the North started holding Confederate prisoners in permanent prisons. The South started to do this too. A Confederate general recommended building a prison is rural Georgia in a location far from the front lines. A prison was established near the small village of Andersonville. It was called Camp Sumter. At its height, as many as 33000 Union prisoners were held on the...

Saddam Hussein may be hanged within hours, senior Iraqi officials and the ousted president's defence team said on Friday. One senior Iraqi source told Reuters key legal issues had been resolved and he could go to the gallows shortly. Another official said Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was meeting key figures, including the Justice Minister, to agree the details.

The Iraqi government has told U.S. officials that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein could be executed within the next few days, a senior Bush administration official said on Thursday. "I've heard that it's going to be a couple more days, probably," the official said while Bush took a holiday break at his Texas ranch. He said he had heard from U.S. officials in Baghdad that the execution would not be Thursday U.S. time or Friday Baghdad time. "It's going to be maybe another day or so," the official said. He said the government of Iraq would most likely inform U.S....

Ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) leader and reluctant war crimes indictee Vojislav Seselj, "holds the key to his life and health," said a spokesman for the United Nations' Yugoslav war crimes tribunal at the Hague, where Seselj is in his fourth week of a hunger strike. Most of Seselj's demands have been met, Refik Hodzic on Wednesday told journalists. Tribunal president Fausto Pocar has called on Seselj to end his fast and to take an active part in the legal process which has been interrupted due to his health.

The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission was created by Congress to inform the public about the impact Abraham Lincoln had on the development of our nation, and to find the best possible ways to honor his accomplishments. The President, the Senate and the House of Representatives appointed a fifteen-member commission to commemorate the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln and to emphasize the contribution of his thoughts and ideals to America and the world. The official public Bicentennial Commemoration launches February 2008 and closes February 2010, with the climax of the Commemoration taking place on February 12, 2009, the 200th anniversary of...

A defiant Saddam Hussein shrugged off a possible death sentence, saying he would die without fear and the US occupiers of his country would leave humiliated like they did in Vietnam, his lawyers said on Saturday. They said a jovial and highly spirited Saddam chatted with them for more than three hours about the violence in Iraq and mounting US losses just hours before an expected death sentence on Sunday in his trial for crimes against humanity.

Saddam Hussein is to be denied his final wish of an "honourable" death by military firing squad after court officials ruled he should face the gallows as a common criminal if found guilty. The former Iraqi dictator, who is expected to be given the death sentence today when a verdict is delivered in his first war crimes trial, has been demanding execution by the gun rather than the rope, on the basis that he was head of the country's armed forces. But the Iraqi war crimes court in Baghdad has dismissed his request, noting that Saddam failed the entry exam...

A man convicted of atrocities in the Balkans has been living peacefully in Carshalton for years ::nobreak::TO HIS neighbours, Milan Spanovic was an unassuming father of three. Though he had lived among them for 15 years, the best description they could come up with was that he was “remarkably quiet”. Equally, the officers who arrested him for shoplifting found nothing untoward about him. After he protested his innocence, they set about completing the paperwork and prepared to release him with no more than a formal caution. So when a desk officer typed his name into a database as a matter...

SARAJEVO, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Bosnian state prosecutors have launched an investigation of Bosnian Muslim wartime general Atif Dudakovic for suspected war crimes against Bosnian Serbs in 1995, Chief Prosecutor Marinko Jurcevic said on Friday. Serb Republic Prime Minister Milorad Dodik and President Dragan Cavic requested an investigation after local broadcasters aired footage apparently showing Dudakovic, a wartime hero for Muslims, giving orders to burn Serb villages. "We have officially opened the investigation against Atif Dudakovic and other persons based on the grounds of suspicion they committed some criminal acts regarded as war crimes," Jurcevic told reporters. "The investigation is...

The American Council for Kosovo Protests Washington Visit of Terrorist and War Criminal Agim Ceku –Kosovo Serb spokesman: Ceku should be standing trial, “not being received with honors in the capital of any civilized democracy.” The American Council for Kosovo protests the official visit to Washington, DC, of Agim Ceku, an indicted war criminal and former commander of the jihad terrorist organization, the so-called “Kosovo Liberation Army.” According to the Associated Press, Mr. Ceku is scheduled to meet today with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and with officials at the White House, before proceeding to New York for a...

The chief judge presiding over Saddam Hussein's war crimes trial shouted down the former Iraqi leader Monday, reminding Saddam he no longer had supreme power. "You are a defendant now, not a president," Judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman told Saddam as the defence stage of the trial began. The altercation came after Abdel-Rahman threw a defence lawyer out of the heavily guarded Baghdad courtroom. Bushra Khalil had just returned to the proceedings after being ejected in early April. The judge ejected her again Monday for disregarding his orders by trying to make a statement. As guards took hold of the Lebanese-born lawyer...

U.S. Lawmaker Blasts Yasukuni Visits MAY 15, 2006 03:10 by Young-A Soh (sya@donga.com) U.S. political leaders voiced strong concerns over the Japanese prime minister�fs paying respects at the Yasukuni Shrine. Thus, it is expected that the controversies over the Yasukuni Shrine will heat up in Japan with its election of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) president slated for this September. Stop Paying Visits to the Shrine If to Give an Address at the U.S. Congress – The Asahi Shimbun reported on May 13 that the U.S. House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (Republican, picture) demanded that Japanese Prime...

UN urges West to ignore Serbia's arrest warrant for Kosovo PM PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-Kosovo's top U.N. official has urged Western powers to ignore an international arrest warrant issued by Serbia against the province's prime minister, in a letter obtained Wednesday. Soren Jessen-Petersen, the chief U.N. official in charge of running the province, said that his mission did not recognize the validity of the warrant issued in Serbia against Agim Ceku, a former rebel commander who became Kosovo's prime minister earlier this month. In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Jessen-Petersen cited the U.N.'s sole legal jurisdiction over Kosovo and said...

"No one now disputes that stopping Slobodan Milosevic was the right thing to do,” wrote the Wall Street Journal this week, several days after the deposed Serbian strongman expired in his cell in The Hague. It’s an appealing sentiment, suggesting as it does that the man who presided over the deaths of 250,000 people in Yugoslavia in the 1990s died unsung and unmourned. In reality, however, even Slobodan Milosevic had his defenders. What is more, they are the same voices--largely on the far Left but also on the isolationist Right--who have now taken up the cause of Saddam Hussein. Many...

I was one of the last western journalists to meet Slobodan Milosevic. Having been called to The Hague as a potential witness, I spent an hour in his cell in January last year. Like most who met him, I found him polite and intelligent. "We will win," he told me. "Freedom is a universal value. They have no evidence against me." If the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia were a proper court of law, the charges against him would have been dismissed long ago. Unfortunately, it is a highly politicised organ, created on the initiative of the very...

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro - A Socialist Party aide of Slobodan Milosevic said Saturday that the ex-president was defiant just before his death. "He told me, 'Don't you worry: They will not destroy me or break me; I shall defeat them all,'" said Milorad Vucelic of the Socialist Party, recounting a phone conversation with Milosevic late Friday. "But it was obvious he was very ill." Milosevic, who was found dead Saturday in his cell at the Netherlands-based war crimes court near The Hague, was daily in contact with Socialist party officials in Belgrade as he carried out his own defense before the...

The U.N. war crimes tribunal hopes an autopsy on Slobodan Milosevic on Sunday will clear up the cause of his death in his cell only months before a verdict was due in his four-year-old trial. Milosevic, branded the "Butcher of the Balkans" for conflicts that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s, was found dead on Saturday, prompting some world figures and relatives of war victims to say they had been robbed of justice. As questions were raised as to why the trial had dragged on for so long, a tribunal spokeswoman said there was no indication the 64-year-old former Yugoslav...

UN war crimes tribunal denies request for Milosevic autopsy in Moscow www.chinaview.cn 2006-03-12 05:50:15 BRUSSELS, March 11 (Xinhuanet) -- The U.N. war crimes tribunal said on Saturday it had denied a request by Slobodan Milosevic's lawyer to have the autopsy of the former Yugoslavia president conducted in Moscow instead of The Hague.A tribunal official also declined to comment on a claim by Milosevic's lawyer that he had been poisoned while in jail. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague on Saturday announced that Milosevic had been found dead on his bed in his cell at...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, the so-called "butcher of the Balkans" being tried for war crimes after orchestrating a decade of bloodshed during his country's breakup, was found dead Saturday in his prison cell. He was 64. Milosevic, who suffered chronic heart ailments and high blood pressure, apparently died of natural causes and was found in his bed, the U.N. tribunal said, without giving an exact time of death. He had been examined following frequent complaints of fatigue or ill health that delayed his trial, but the tribunal could not immediately say when his last medical checkup...

<p>Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader who orchestrated the Balkan wars of the 1990s and was on trial for war crimes, was found dead in his prison cell at the U.N. detention center near The Hague, the U.N. tribunal said Saturday. He was 65.</p>

WASHINGTON — Most people in the United States want Saddam Hussein to hang if he's convicted at his trial, a view not shared by some longtime American allies. AP-Ipsos polling in eight other countries, where the death penalty mostly has been abolished, found that people there prefer that the former Iraqi leader spend the rest of his life in prison. The countries are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea and Spain. Similar, but less dramatic, disparities were found when U.S. attitudes were compared with the eight countries on whether Saddam is getting a fair trial and whether Iraqis...

The American Spectator March 2006 SECTION: The railroading of a former U.S. ally. LENGTH: 1511 words HEADLINE: America, The Hague, and Ante Gotovina BYLINE: Robin Harris BODY: GREAT POWERS LIKE AMERICA CANNOT AFFORD to be too sentimental about foreign friends whose purpose has been served. But sometimes it pays to keep faith with individuals who collaborate successfully in one's policy goals. This is particularly so when those concerned know the inside story of U.S. covert activity and when their fate sets a precedent that jeopardizes U.S. personnel. Such is the case of the former Croatian General Ante Gotovina, arrested in...

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Lawyers representing Slobodan Milosevic have asked the U.N. war crimes tribunal to issue a subpoena to force former U.S. President Bill Clinton to testify at his trial, documents showed on Tuesday. "In his position as former president of the United States, Mr Clinton had a continuous role and unique knowledge of events relevant to the indictment," the lawyers said in a written request filed last week but only made public on Tuesday. Lawyers Steven Kay and Gillian Higgins said his evidence was needed to make sure the trial was "informed and fair". They said Milosevic had...

Gen. Ratko Mladic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb commander accused of orchestrating Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II, has been located in Serbia and authorities are negotiating his surrender, security officials said Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT Mladic, considered the most ruthless commander of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, "has not yet been arrested," one official who is close to the operation to find Mladic told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not entitled to speak to the media. Another security official, also demanding anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information and fears...

War Crimes Fugitive Believed Cornered By DUSAN STOJANOVIC, Associated Press Writer War crimes fugitive Gen. Ratko Mladic, accused of genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from the Bosnian war, has been located and authorities are negotiating his surrender, a top state security official said Tuesday. Mladic was located but "he has yet not been arrested," the official, who is close to the operation to locate Mladic, told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The state news agency Tanjug reported that Mladic was arrested in Belgrade and being...

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Top Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive General Ratko Mladic has been arrested, the official Serbian news agency Tanjug on Tuesday quoted a local television station in Bosnia's Serb Republic as saying. No immediate confirmation of the report was available. Tanjug said TV BN reported the wartime Bosnian Serb Army commander had been taken into custody in the Serbian capital Belgrade and was being transferred via the northeast Bosnian city of Tuzla to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. An earlier report by Belgrade's "Studio B" television said Mladic had been located "in the area of...

MOSCOW, January 18 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia has given guarantees to the Hague International Tribunal for War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia that its ex-leader Slobodan Milosevic would return to The Hague after medical treatment in Moscow. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said on Wednesday that Russia had submitted “the necessary package of documents” to the International Tribunal. Based on these documents, the Tribunal will be able to make a decision on “a temporary release of Milosevic for a trip to Russia for medical treatment”, the spokesman said. However he noted that the submission of the documents “does not mean...

Saddam Hussein has told his lawyers that he wants to be shot by firing squad, not hanged, if sentenced to death during his murder trial, which resumes later this month in Baghdad. Saddam maintains that he is still commander in chief of Iraq's armed forces -- and that a firing squad is "the right way" to execute a military leader. "I'm not afraid of death," he told two of his lawyers in an astonishingly candid five-hour meeting, as he sat in a comfortable chair at the head of the table. "Of course I'm not guilty, but I know they want...

The Atlanta History Center has obtained Civil War field orders handwritten by Union General William T. Sherman. The history center got the field orders in a deal that was clinched with the offer of a bundle of Confederate currency that was donated to the center. Of the documents, 50 are field orders written by Sherman and two are orders written by his aides. They join another 12 orders the Atlanta History Center already had. "Sherman surrendered," said history center president Jim Bruns, who likes the idea of Sherman's orders returning to the city the general ordered burned down. The orders...

Former US president George Bush said in Kuwait that he would like to see ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein "shut up" during his trial and stop acting like he is the president of Iraq. "Well, frankly, I'd like to see Saddam Hussein shut up when he sits in that dock there," in reference to Saddam's combative posture during his trial, Bush said after delivering a keynote address at an economic conference. His remarks were received with a loud applause from the Kuwaiti audience who still remember when Saddam ordered his troops to invade and occupy the emirate in 1990 before...

A Croatian general charged with war crimes has been held in Spain, the UN's chief war crimes prosecutor has said. Ante Gotovina - the third most-wanted suspect from the 1990s Balkan wars - was arrested on Wednesday night in the Canary Islands, said Carla Del Ponte. Gen Gotovina, 50, is accused over the death of about 150 Serb civilians during a Croatian offensive in 1995. The Croatian government's failure to arrest him had hampered the country's entry talks with the European Union. Ms Del Ponte said she hoped efforts would now be stepped up to arrest the top two men...

Among the world's democracies, the French offers the world's best model of freedom. That's what the polling group, Zogby International found in its survey of the Arab population of the Middle East. Working with Zogby on the poll was the University of Maryland's 'Sadat Chair for Peace and Development's' Department. The questions were put to a cross-section of Arabs in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Given the choices between Germany, Great Britain, France, the United States and Sweden, a plurality of 45% picked France. The poll reveals how effectively the liberal mainstream has poisoned...

Senior Bush administration officials have considered the unthinkable: What if Saddam Hussein is found not guilty in his trial? "There will be more charges filed against him, and more charges after that, if needed... he has committed tremendous crimes," a top Bush source explained last week from Washington. Saddam and seven of his former henchmen currently face charges of crimes against humanity over a 1982 massacre of Shiite villagers. A defiant Saddam has refused to recognize the court and has declared himself president of Iraq. Prosecutors hope to win a conviction by using videotape of Saddam issuing assignation orders. Meanwhile,...

Dateline Dresden, November 17, 1945, AP/UPI: In a speech at the newly re-opened University of Dresden, former President Bill Clinton yesterday criticized the US invasion of Europe, stating that while he agreed that the removal of Adolf Hitler had been a good thing, he did not agree with how it was done. He added that most of Hitler's aides were "good, decent Germans, who were just trying to make the best of a bad situation". Following the news of President Clinton's speech, the defense attorney for accused war criminal Hermann Goering, on trial for his life in Nuremberg, stated that...