Free Republic

Brian Mulroney — who, as Canada's 18th prime minister, steered the country through a tumultuous period in national and world affairs — has died. He was 84. His daughter Caroline Mulroney shared the news Thursday afternoon on social media. "On behalf of my mother and our family, it is with great sadness we announce the passing of my father, The Right Honourable Brian Mulroney, Canada's 18th Prime Minister. He died peacefully, surrounded by family," she said on X, formerly Twitter.

"Gambling on the losers": a storm after the Saudi prince attacked the Palestinians Roy Kaise. Oct.6.2020 Following the agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia was designated as a state that if Israel succeeds in normalizing its relations with it, it will be a breach of equality with the Arab world. Tonight, Israel may have received a positive message in this direction, in an interview with one of the Saudi princes on the Al-Arabiya network: he attacked the Palestinians for their opposition to agreements between Israel and the Gulf states, implicitly mentioned Abba Eben. [From the clip: 'We...

Exactly 30 years ago, Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and created a set of consequences that are with us today, including sectarianism, terrorism, and Iranian militancy. The Bush presidencies made a number of historical mistakes in dealing with Iraq and Iran. Iran, as a result, reaped the rewards of Saddam Hussein’s cruelty and greed, and American errors. The George H. W. Bush administration, for its part, was given a mandate by the United Nations to undo Saddam’s aggression in Kuwait. It should have been used to eliminate Saddam Hussein alone. At the same time, the collapse of the Soviet...

Washington (CNN)Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden dishonestly suggested on Saturday that he had opposed the war in Iraq "from the very moment" it began in 2003 -- even though Biden's campaign said in September that he "misspoke" when he made a similar claim. Biden was responding Saturday to a voter in Des Moines, Iowa, who told him, "I'm with you 90% of the way" but questioned his judgment in part because "you were for the second Gulf War, which was a mess." Biden said that "from the very moment" President George W. Bush launched his "shock and awe" military campaign,...

In Modern Warfare, the latest entry in the Call of Duty first-person shooter series, an infamous U.S. attack is fictionalized as Russian, rather than American, violence. In the Modern Warfare single-player campaign's eleventh mission, players engage Russian snipers along a wartorn highway in the fictional country of Urkistan. Strewn with burnt out vehicles and bomb craters, a rebel leader named Farah leads players in an attempt to capture a terrorist leader known as "The Wolf." While the country and characters are fictionalized, Farah's description of the setting directly references a real-world event.

This continues my attempt to bring noteworthy books to the attention of Freepers. Vanity? Not really, but it is a way for me to organize in a short review the main points of relevant books to our current economic, military, or political issues. "Armies of Sand" is an analysis by former CIA analyst and AEI scholar Kenneth Pollack. Although this was in part his doctoral dissertation, he has gone on to write many books about the military and especially the Middle East. He begins by looking at the Six-Day War and Arab/Egyptian military ineffectiveness, noting the AE military superiority of...

New Book Demolishes Arab Armies of Sand “Arab armed forces consistently underperformed, and underperformed in the same ways time and again, regardless of who they fought or where, the state of their politics, or the relative state of economic development between them and their foe.” So concludes scholar Kenneth M. Pollack in his magisterial book on the cultural roots of disastrous post-1945 Arab military performance, Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness. Pollack presents an encyclopedic, withering critique of Arab militaries across decades in numerous varied conflicts, to substantiate the conclusion that: Arab militaries were...

President Donald Trump’s announcement he will withdraw U.S. forces from Syria because the Islamic State (ISIS) has largely been defeated accomplishes two things — neither of which is positive. First, it undermines the security of two of our most stalwart Middle East allies, Israel and the Kurds. Second, it rewards our enemies, of which there are more than we openly acknowledge. Clearly, enemies list beneficiaries include the Iran/Syria/Russia alliance and ISIS... Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.), is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the U.S. invasion of Panama and the first Gulf war...

Part 1 - 4:30am-6:00am Israel scud attacks. Jordan’s concerns as it’s in the middle; reports from Kurdistan; Peter Arnett from Iraq; missiles on Israel; Bush tells Israel the coalition will attempt to destroy missile launchers; effects of scuds on Pentagon planner; attacks on occupied Kuwait; more pilots MIA. Part 2 - 6:00am-7:30am Saudis worried about scuds; attacks at border with Kuwait; US dependents will be able to leave; International Correspondents with Bob Franken; Israel saying it will react to 2nd scud attack but not when; Scowcroft woke Bush thru the night with reports; everyone nervous about potential Iraq response; 4th...

I'm trying to clean up all the news tapes I've put up, so I've made a new Gulf War 1991 Playlist. This is the first of over 20 hours of tape we recently found and encoded from those early days, added to the ones already up. The tapes were unorganized and unlabeled, so they aren't in a good order, but I'm adding info to the titles and, when they're all up, I'll number the tapes to make it easier. In the meantime, I'm putting up a quick and dirty webpage to help you make your way through the tapes. The...

Moshe Arens, Israel’s defense minister at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, wanted to launch a ground operation against Iraqi missile launchers firing missiles at Tel Aviv, but ran into strong opposition from then-IDF Chief of Staff Dan Shomron, according to recordings from IDF archives released Thursday on the 26th anniversary of the war. After American forces invaded Iraq in January 1991, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein fired a total of 39 modified Soviet ‘Scud’ missiles at Israel in the hope the Jewish State would respond to the provocation by striking back at a Iraq. He reasoned the move would...

The raw CNN footage, minus commercials, when the start of the Gulf War ground war was announced. Part 1 of two parts for first tape of 23 Feb 1991. Part 2 is in the same playlist and shows President G.H.W. Bush announcing the start.

The US military that won Desert Storm or Gulf War I in 1991 was a spectacular military, a gargantuan industrial age military with high tech weaponry and well trained personnel, that when called upon, achieved victory with the speed of Patton and the elan of Teddy Roosevelt. Overlooking the vast eight mile carnage on the Highway of Death in Kuwait, destruction that was caused by a US Air Force and Navy that bore almost no resemblance to the two services now, a sergeant in the 7th US Cavalry remarked, “America sure got its money’s worth from those Joes.” In 44...

History-like hindsight-is supposed to be 20:20, but the deliberate partisan, political divide regarding the invasion of Iraq makes that hard. It's not a new phenomenon. Long ago it was said that the true story of a war can't be told until the last of its veterans has passed away, and only a few months ago did the last World War One veteran go to his great reward. For decades after the Civil War (and some would argue even today) the debate raged on, and the healing of Southern Reconstruction didn't really start culturally until the unity of the Spanish-American War...

WHEN THE IRAQI REGIME collapsed in April 2003, few observers saw reason to mourn the loss of Saddam's brutal dictatorship. While a great deal of information about the former Iraqi regime's assorted atrocities has been uncovered since the invasion, newly-released documents go even further in demonstrating its manifest depravity. One such document is CMPC-2003-012666, a letter from Qusay Hussein that directs as follows: Transfer all Kuwaiti POW's / a total of 448 captured Kuwaitis who are located at the Al-Nida Al-Agher Prison and the Intelligence / General Center and Kazema Prison in Al-Kazema, to make them human shields at all...

Now that Cindy Sheehan turns out to be a disaster for the antiwar movement -- most Americans are not about to follow a left-wing radical who insists that we are in Iraq for reasons of theft, oppression and empire -- a new spokesman is needed. If I were in the opposition camp, I would want a deeply patriotic, highly intelligent, distinguished establishment figure. I would want Brent Scowcroft. Scowcroft has been obliging. In the Oct. 31 New Yorker he came out strongly against the war and the neocon sorcerers who magically foisted it upon what must have been a hypnotized...

Six simple words, “Don’t worry General, we trust you.” During the Gulf War in 1991, General Fred Franks, VII Corps commander spoke with several soldiers in the now deactivated, but once mighty, Third Armored Division. During the conversation, Franks appeared worried and tired. One of the soldiers looked at him and said, “Don’t worry General, we trust you.” Those six words spoke volumes about the state of the military in 1991 and speak volumes about the wretched state of the military in 2016. How many soldiers or Marines today would repeat those words to someone with stars on their shoulders?...

Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker used an Israeli businessman to evade American sanctions in Iraq while collecting a debt from Saddam Hussein. According to a report by WorldNet Daily reporter Aaron Klein, Baker hired Nir Gouaz, president of Caesar Global Securities in Israel, to collect a debt from the Hussein regime in 1998. Baker is a senior partner at the Houston-based law firm, Baker Botts, which made some $30 million in fees from the deal which the Israeli businessman mediated. Gouaz said the Iraqi regime owed some $1.65 billion to the Korean Hyundai Engineering firm for a series...

Since 9-11, and the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been an out-pouring, almost a hemorrhaging of support for the troops. From yellow ribbon and American flag car magnets to endless media coverage of the military; the public it seems, is in love with the troops. There are endless tributes to the military at sporting events and the term, “thank you for your service” has become as common as “Merry Christmas.” But, is the public really in love with the military? Do they really support the troops? Do they even care? Is saying thank you for...

The US Army is sick; sick in body, mind and spirit. No matter how many times Pentagon perfumed princes and feather merchants bedazzle us with light shows, veterans know the truth. We always know. We know that the Army is suffering from a number of ailments, that unless stemmed will destroy the institution that has been around since the Massachusetts boys went live in 1775. The first problem lies with the people at the helm of the US Army Titanic. From Secretary of the Army John McHugh down to the joint chiefs to corps and division and brigade and battalion...