Free Republic

The conflict that raged throughout the former Yugoslavia was met by a wall of silence when it came to important issues. These important issues apply to America and the United Kingdom supporting Islamists in a brutal civil war in Bosnia and then installing a new nation by ignoring international law in Kosovo. Also, is it credible to believe that the vast majority of major news agencies and national governments did not know about thousands of Islamists in Europe who were sent to slit the throats and behead Orthodox Christians? Shoeless Holbrooke sits with Muslim Albanian gunmen that ran the organ...

A few hours before Richard Holbrooke’s death last Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a group of America’s top diplomats gathered at the State Department for a Christmas party that he was “practically synonymous with American foreign policy.” Her assessment is correct: Richard Holbrooke’s career embodies some of the least attractive traits of contemporary American diplomacy. As assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs under Jimmy Carter, Holbrooke was instrumental in securing continued U.S. support for Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor. In 1997 he authorized arms deliveries to Indonesia in violation of the supposed U.S. arms...

Richard C. Holbrooke, 69, passed away Monday after doctors conducted the surgery to repair a tear in an artery in his heart. Most recently he served as the President’s point man in the highly volatile Afghan-Pakistani war zone. World leaders today mourn the death of a diplomat who led the end of the Bosnian war on the 15th anniversary of the peace deal he helped design. Deal Maker Of Respect In 1995 Mr Holbrooke seized the opportunity presented by the Bosnian/Croatian military prowess against the Serbs and the Nato decision after the Srebrenica massacre to finally intervene with air attacks....

War On Terror: The death of skilled diplomat Richard Holbrooke is said to be a devastating blow to our Afghan war effort. But diplomats don't win wars; they do, unfortunately, often lose them. 'A huge vacuum." "A major void." "A towering, one-of-a-kind presence." These are some of the extravagant descriptions bandied about after the unexpected death Monday of the 69-year-old Obama administration envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, "AfPak czar" Richard Holbrooke. The media love personalities, so it's no surprise to see this foreign policy adviser to four Democratic presidents rendered larger than life, especially since he'd been expected to become...

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Former Credit Suisse First Boston star banker Frank Quattrone surrendered to federal authorities Wednesday morning and will face criminal charges, prosecutors said. James Comey, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, will unveil the charges at a 1 p.m. ET press conference. Quattrone, a former star banker for CSFB, allegedly advised his colleagues in late 2000 to destroy documents while regulators were investigating the ways Wall Street investment banks were doling out shares of lucrative initial public offerings. The former banker is charged in a three-count criminal complaint with obstruction of justice, document destruction...

NEW YORK – With all the anti-establishment, power-to-the-people refrains sounded in its IPO manifesto, it's curious that Google Inc. chose to reward the most notorious investment bank of the IPO boom to spearhead the initial public offering. Although Credit Suisse First Boston presumably cleansed its reputation two years ago with a $100 million settlement of federal charges, Monday's conviction of the firm's former star banker was a perfectly timed reminder of the greedy past that shadows one of Google's new Wall Street pals. It's not that the search engine company was obligated to jeopardize its chances of a big IPO...

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Credit Suisse Group helped clients in Iran and elsewhere conduct financial transactions in secret, saying Wednesday the Swiss bank "established a business model to allow these rogue players access to U.S. dollars." Mr. Holder and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau detailed a decade-long effort by the bank to carry out transactions from Iran, Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba. The men announced a $536 million settlement by Credit Suisse, one of several banks accused in a long-running case that has netted roughly $1 billion in fines. The bank, which paid the biggest of the fines,...

The US government already had to crack down on one Swiss bank, UBS, fining it $780 million earlier this year for illegally aiding American citizens in evading their taxes. Now, it’s Credit Suisse in the crosshairs for helping clients in Iran, Libya, Sudan, and other countries perform illegal transactions. The bank has since “accepted and acknowledged responsibility for its criminal conduct” and is now settling with New York City, New York State, and the federal government on fines totaling nearly $1 billion. According to the Wall Street Journal: “The men announced a $536 million settlement by Credit Suisse, one of...

Reporting from Sacramento — The name of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, a billionaire who has been defending her ties to embattled investment banking giant Goldman Sachs throughout her campaign, appears in the federal investigation of another Wall Street firm tarnished by scandal. Court documents filed by prosecutors in the aftermath of the dot-com bust show Whitman, then chief executive of EBay, listed among about 200 executives who were to receive gifts of deeply discounted stock from Frank Quattrone, then a banker at Credit Suisse First Boston. A star dealmaker during the late 1990s, Quattrone was twice indicted on obstruction-of-justice...

NEW YORK -- The Federal Reserve on Wednesday reluctantly opened the books on its monumental campaign to save the financial system in the midst of the recent crisis, revealing how it distributed some $3.3 trillion in relief. The data revealed that the Fed's aid was scattered much more widely than previously understood. Two European megabanks -- Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse -- were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities. The Fed's dollars also flowed to major American companies that are not financial players, including McDonald's and Harley-Davidson, through unsecured short-term loans. The measure, initiated in Jan....

ABC News has learned that Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has died. On Friday, Holbrooke was rushed to the hospital with a torn aorta. He went through more than 20 hours of surgery. Earlier this evening, speaking at the US State Department, President Obama sang Holbrooke's praises and called him "a tough son of a gun." Holbrooke, 69, was a former ambassador to the United Nations and served as chief negotiator at the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. The New Yorker's George Packer wrote a nice story about Holbrooke last year,...

(Reuters) - Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was in critical condition after doctors completed surgery to repair a tear in his aorta on Saturday, the State Department said. The 69-year-old veteran U.S. diplomat was a key figure in forging the 1995 accord that ended the Balkans war. Holbrooke fell ill at the State Department on Friday. The department issued a statement saying Holbrooke was admitted to nearby George Washington University hospital on Friday. "This morning, doctors completed surgery to repair a tear in his aorta," the statement said. "He is in critical condition and...

Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke collapsed today during a meeting in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's office, officials said. According to Democratic sources, Ambassador Holbrooke, Secretary Clinton's top aide for the region, gasped and was clearly undergoing a medical situation when he collapsed. He is said to have walked out of her office on his own power and was tended to by medical personnel at the State Department before being transported to George Washington University Hospital where to be treated for a blood clot. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley refused to confirm Ambassador Holbrooke's condition, but confirmed...

Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, downplayed news reports of American “peace talks” with Taliban leaders, but he acknowledged that a “pure military victory” in Afghanistan “is not possible.”

Barack Obama's firing of Stanley McChrystal showed weakness and will backfire He may have been hailed for his decisiveness, but Barack Obama sacked the wrong man and has yet to sort out his Afghanistan policy, writes Toby Harnden in Washington Published: 4:37PM BST 26 Jun 2010 For the Washington cognoscenti, the appointment of General David Petraeus marked the crescendo of President Barack Obama's Wonderful Week. In firing General Stanley McChrystal, Obama, the ultimate cool cat, was transformed into Mr Angry. The law professor finally became commander-in-chief. Obama, so the Beltway groupthink goes, turned a lose-lose situation into a political victory...

President Obama yesterday fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the top US commander in Afghanistan, replac ing him with Gen. David Petraeus. Obama, as commander-in-chief, had the right both in law and in custom to do so -- and, given McChrystal's injudicious remarks to a Rolling Stone reporter, it's no surprise that he did just that. We wish the president had retained McChrystal -- a brilliant field commander who is highly regarded by many political leaders in the region. At the same time, Obama did well in selecting Petraeus to assume battlefield leadership in Afghanistan. Time and again, Petraeus has proved...

ISLAMABAD (June 20 2010): The United States has no concern on Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline as Pakistan is an independent country and the project is its own decision, US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said here on Saturday. Holbrooke told a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi that work is going on regarding Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZs). He said efforts are being made for more market access for Pakistan. He especially motioned the possibility of opening up market for Pakistani mangoes to America and said these mangoes were of very high quality and taste....

KABUL, Afghanistan - When Afghan President Hamid Karzai was meeting with provincial governors recently, he looked at his dinner and remarked, "Maybe the foreigners put some poison in my food." This story was told to me by someone who attended the event and said he thought Karzai was joking. But the Afghan leader's remark shows how low U.S.-Afghan diplomatic relations have sunk in a week when Karzai has repeatedly railed against foreigners and declared he won't be anyone's puppet. In recent weeks, Karzai has rushed to Iran and China to prove he doesn't depend solely on Washington and rebuffed U.S....

WASHINGTON: A top American official on Thursday reeled back his remarks about a terrorist attack on Indians in Kabul that New Delhi found callous and offensive, providing a brief respite from growing US support for Pakistani interests in the region. Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, had caused dismay and anger in India earlier this week by suggesting that Indians were not the target of the terrorist attack in Kabul and there were ''other foreigners, non-Indian foreigners,'' who were also victims. ''Let's not jump to conclusions,'' Holbrooke advised about an attack that Indian and Afghan...

Holbrooke meets Kosovo Albanian terrorists and does not wear shoes during the meeting, an Islamic symbol that says he supports their cause.Holbrooke supported Balkan Muslim sepratists in Bosnia and Kosovo and delivered victory to al-Qaeda in Europe. Then from Bosnia they turned on the US on 9/11. Holbrooke now heads Afghan policy for Obama. Obama’s WarEight-year old Bush’s Afghanistan war has become Obama’s war. Obama has declared that war was both necessary and winnable. He committed 21,000 additional troops this year, bringing the U.S. force to 68,000 and more are likely to be sent. The current expenditures amount to $2.6...