Free Republic

"They have a saying in the news business," Geraldo Rivera related this week. "Reporters don't report buildings that don't burn." And with that introduction, he told a TV audience about the story that is being systematically denied to our entire nation: the success story of post-Saddam Iraq. Are we losing some soldiers each week? Yes. Is there some frustration in the public about electricity and water service? Yes. Are some Saddam Hussein loyalists throughout the land, making trouble? Yes. Has this opened a window for some terrorist mischief? Yes. But that's ALL we hear. No wonder the country is in...

Newly uncovered files examined by US military investigators in Baghdad show what is being described as 'a direct link' between Saddam Hussein's elite Fedayeen military unit and the terrorist attacks on America September 11, 2001.Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, who attended a 2000 Al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where the 9/11 attacks were planned, is listed among the officers on three Fedayeen rosters reviewed by US probers, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.'Our government sources, who have seen the translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lt. Colonel,' the paper said.Saddam's Fedayeen has been identified...

Nazaar Joudi raised his new mechanical right hand Tuesday, recounting the moment he and fellow Iraqis had promised President Bush they would put those appendages to good use: Hammering down the walls of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. "With this hand we will begin to destroy that terrible place," Joudi said after a private meeting with Bush in the Oval Office, where the Iraqis described being arrested on Saddam Hussein's orders and having their healthy hands amputated at Abu Ghraib. "That place is a symbol of darkness and death to us; we are happy to know it will be destroyed,"...

The guesswork hasn't been too far off. From the beginning it seemed clear that an Iraqi component was always going to be needed in Fallujah, both to process civilians and restore order. On April 2nd, before Valiant Resolve was formally announced, the Belmont Club guess was that: CPA Administrator Paul Bremer chose a graduation ceremony for Iraqi police cadets to vow that the incident "will not go unpunished", possibly because a large role has been assigned to the Iraqi police in the forthcoming operation. From these elements one can deduce the basic shape of the counterstroke. Since Fallujah and its...

ABC World News Now. April 27, 2004 In an interview broadcast by ABC's World News Now, the leader of the Al Qaeda cell organizing the explosive and chemical attack on the Jordanian security headquarters and the American Embassy in Jordan stated that he received his training from Al-Zawahiri in Iraq, prior to the fall of Afghanistan.

<p>April 27, 2004 -- Diabolical al Qaeda terrorists confessed yesterday to plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy and other targets in Jordan with sophisticated chemical bombs that could have wiped out 80,000 people.</p> <p>Azmi al-Jayousi, leader of the terror cell, said the fiendish plan also targeted the headquarters of Jordanian intelligence and the prime minister's office.</p>

New evidence out of Iraq suggests that the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is having better success than is being reported. Key assertions by the intelligence community that were widely judged in the media and by critics of President George W. Bush as having been false are turning out to have been true after all. But this stunning news has received little attention from the major media, and the president's critics continue to insist that "no weapons" have been found. In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles -...

Borrowing a page from North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, Osama bin Laden is making the US and European "peace" movement an instrument of his strategy. The al Qaeda leader's most recent tape, aired on Al Jazeera April 15, "appeared to mark a new strategy of trying to manipulate antiwar sentiment in Europe to bring pressure on governments that support the United States," according to the Washington Post. Spanish voters' election of an anti-American socialist in the days following the March train bombings in Madrid encouraged al Qaeda. In his tape, the Post reports, "Bin Laden refers to demonstrations in...

WABC's radio's Bachelor & John Loftis (sp) reporting Syria gave Iraq's chemical WMD to AlQaeda. Captured trucks in Jordan with chemicals with Vx attack would have killed 20,000.

The independent 9/11 Commission investigating the intelligence failures that preceded the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States has not done enough to shed light in its hearings during the past month on the most critical problems facing America's system of predicting and protecting against external threats. The commission's blue-ribbon panel seems unable - perhaps even unwilling - to ask tough questions about how good intelligence was politicized, how bad intelligence was used to make worse policy, and how policymakers' egos and personal career agendas interfered with the development of prudent national-security strategies to deal with the growing...

'I met Osama Bin Laden in Kabul. It was at this time we discussed the Heathrow operation' It makes a chilling picture. The mastermind behind the September 11 attacks has told interrogators that he and his terrorist nephew leafed through almanacs of American skyscrapers when planning the operation. Sears Tower in Chicago and Library Tower in Los Angeles — which was “blown up” in the film Independence Day — were both potential targets, according to transcripts of interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al-Qaeda operations chief. “We were looking for symbols of economic might,” he told his captors. He recounted...

<p>March 27, 2004 -- BUSH bashers have deployed former counter- terrorist Richard Clarke as a weapon of mass denunciation. They are using him and his new book, "Against All Enemies," to condemn the Bush administration for allegedly obsessing over Iraq rather than al Qaeda. Clarke made war critics swoon by chanting one of their cherished mantras: "There is absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda ever," he declared on CBS' "60 Minutes." So, the theory goes, President Bush squandered American lives hunting Saddam Hussein rather than Osama bin Laden.</p>

<p>The $100 billion Iraqi Oil for Food program was by far the largest relief operation in the history of the United Nations. By extension, it's rapidly becoming the U.N.'s largest-ever scandal.</p> <p>After months of stonewalling, Secretary General Kofi Annan conceded Tuesday that the program was worthy of an internal investigation. It's a step forward, but it's not nearly enough for an organization that so far has shown it can't be trusted to police itself. That's why the April hearings by Henry Hyde's House Committee on International Relations will be so important. Oil for Food is a legitimate U.S. concern, for reasons that go well beyond the fact that U.S. taxpayers foot about a quarter of the U.N.'s bills.</p>

<p>March 16, 2004 -- MANY Americans are convinced even today that the war in Iraq was all about oil. And they're right - but oil was the key for French President Jacques Chirac, not for the United States.</p> <p>In documents I obtained during an investigation of the French relationship to Saddam Hussein, the French interest in maintaining Saddam Hussein in power was spelled out in excruciating detail. The price tag: close to $100 billion. That was what French oil companies stood to profit in the first seven years of their exclusive oil arrangements - had Saddam remained in power.</p>

President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush attend ceremony and the playing of 'Taps' after laying a wreath for the victims of the railway bombings in Madrid, Spain at the Spanish ambassador's residence Friday. Later the President and Mrs. Bush discussed women's human rights around the globe and programs that are promoting women's economic and political participation................ Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island

<p>"If there is evidence, we would investigate it very seriously," Kofi Annan insisted last month when presented with allegations that U.N. officials knew about and may have benefited from Saddam Hussein's corruption of the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food Program. Fortunately, Saddam appears to have been a stickler for record-keeping.</p>

Libya's leader Colonel Gaddafi has said his country sought to develop weapons of mass destruction capabilities but will dismantle this programme completely, Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced. "This decision is an historic one and a courageous one and I applaud it," Mr Blair said. Colonel Gaddafi had told him the process of dismantling the programme would be "transparent and verifiable", the prime minister said in a statement from Durham Cathedral. The range of all Libya's missiles would be restricted to "no more then 300km, he added. Mr Blair said Britain had been engaged in talks with Libya for nine...

That Was Then: Allen W. Dulles on the Occupation of Germany By Allen W. Dulles From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003 A Note from the Editors: In thinking about the reconstruction of Iraq, many have looked for insight to the American experiences in rebuilding Germany and Japan after World War II. Optimists point to similarities across the cases and argue that they bode well for the Bush administration's efforts today. Pessimists point to differences and draw the opposite conclusion. In truth, some aspects of the occupations look familiar and some do not. As the saying goes, history does not repeat...

We are in a cabin deep down below decks on a Navy ship jam-packed with troops that’s pitching and creaking its way across the Atlantic in a winter gale. There is a man in every bunk. There’s a man wedged into every corner. There’s a man in every chair. The air is dense with cigarette smoke and with the staleness of packed troops and sour wool. “Don’t think I’m sticking up for the Germans,” puts in the lanky young captain in the upper berth, “but…” “To hell with the Germans,” says the broad-shouldered dark lieutenant. “It’s what our boys have...

US Troops Release Another 250 Iraqi POWs In So. Iraq UMM QASR, Iraq (AP)--U.S. forces released another 250 Iraqi war prisoners Tuesday in southern Iraq, as they continued to empty out U.S.-run detention camps which once housed some 7,000 men. In the past two weeks, more than 5,000 prisoners of war as well as civilian detainees have been released from Camp Bucca after a military tribunal determined they posed no threat, said Sgt. Maj. Ambrose Michelino, a U.S. military policeman. About 1,800 to 1,900 prisoners remain in captivity in this southern Iraqi port city, he said. He said most of...