Free Republic

The Empire Strikes Back--at Schwalier: Defense Chief Robert Gates, top Pentagon lawyer Daniel Dell'Orto, and unnamed Justice Department confreres have struck yet another blow at Terryl J. Schwalier, Washington's designated Khobar Towers scapegoat. They have forced USAF to halt and reverse its efforts to restore Schwalier's second star after a 10-year struggle. The new decision was elaborated in a March 28 letter from Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne to the Air Force Review Boards Agency, ordering it to halt implementation of its recent decision to correct "an injustice" and retroactively promote Schwalier to major general. That corrective...

Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen Are PhDs and Middle East Experts Who Did Some Lobbying. They Thought They Were Doing What Washington Insiders Always Do. Thomas O’Donnell didn’t reveal his job when he phoned Keith Weissman in 2004 and got the policy analyst’s wife. He says he didn’t want to scare her. When Weissman returned the call and found out O’Donnell was an FBI agent, his first reaction was to attempt a joke: “What did I do?” “I’m sure you didn’t do anything,” O’Donnell told him. He wanted to meet that day, for five or ten minutes, and get Weissman’s...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON, Dec 22 (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Friday ordered the Islamic Republic of Iran to pay $254 million to the family of 17 U.S. servicemen killed in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers residence at a U.S. military base in Saudi Arabia. The default judgment was entered against the Iranian government, its security ministry and the Revolutionary Guards after they failed to respond to the lawsuit, which was initiated more than four years ago. In issuing the $254.4 million judgment in the case, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth concluded that the Khobar Towers attack...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Iranian government is partly to blame for a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia, a federal judge ruled Friday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth allows the families of the victims of the Khobar Towers bombing to seek $254 million in compensation from the conservative Islamic regime in Tehran. Though intelligence officials have suspected a link between the Tehran government and the Saudi wing of Hezbollah, which the FBI has accused of carrying out the bombing, Friday's ruling is the first time a branch of the U.S. government has...

<p>FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ON NOT CAPTURING BIN LADEN: 'At least I tried. That's the difference between me and some, including all the right wingers. They ridicule me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed'...</p>

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright criticized President George W. Bush's handling of the war on terror in a speech at Georgetown University Monday night. Albright was the guest of honor at the fourth annual Snowdon Lecture, a speech by a public figure addressing the intersection of faith and social justice in the world. In the speech sponsored by the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, Albright attacked Bush's policies in Iraq and in third world countries. "I hope I'm wrong, but I'm afraid that Iraq is going to go down in history as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy,"...

As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, and also with the approach of the November elections, it is crucial to examine the record of the last Democratic administration in protecting us from the terrorism of Muslim extremists. I mention the November election because leading Democrats have made no secret of their plans to tie the Bush Administration into knots with impeachment hearings, cut off funding of the troops in Iraq, overturn the Patriot Act and drastically curtail foreign terrorist surveillance programs.

Clinton turns 60: Second wind with the Stones By Laszlo Trankovits Aug 18, 2006, 12:20 GMT Washington - Bill Clinton is a master of self invention. Nearly every American knows the photograph of the star-struck 16- year-old youth, worshipfully shaking the hand of President John F Kennedy - symbolic of his teenage dream to live in the White House someday. Nearly six years after the end of his spectacular presidency, Clinton is still mining the suggestive power of photographs. His picture is everywhere - at the AIDS conference in Toronto with Bill Gates, in Southeast Asia with the elder President...

Bush's Anti-Terrorism Record (CBS/AP) SCHENECTADY, N.Y. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a possible contender for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2008, on Monday criticized the Bush administration for failing to do enough to protect the country from terrorists. Clinton's comments came after authorities in the United Kingdom last week said they thwarted a terror plot involving airplanes bound from Britain to the United States. Conspirators allegedly planned to blow up as many as 10 planes flying from Britain to the United States using liquid explosives, which the U.S. Transportation Security Administration's security equipment cannot detect in carry-on luggage. "We've done...

I disagree with the president on immigration, education and McCain-Finegold, but I remain one of his biggest supporters. Having said that, I must say that I worry most of all about the safety and security of my children and my grandchildren if a Democrat succeeds to the presidency in 2008. I have this worry because, although President Bush has been immense in protecting us from Islamic terrorists and in standing up to the vituperation heaped on him for so doing, he has NOT succeeded in convincing enough of the country that a global terrorist war is ongoing against us, and...

Regardless of what the Republican Party does about Katherine Harris in Florida this year, I will support her and give her my vote. If it were not for her courageous and rightful actions in 2000, we would undoubtedly be awash in Islamofascist terrorist acts all across the United States. Thousands more Americans would be dead. 9/11 would have seemed to be a picnic. Why do I say this? Because Al Gore would have been President during 9/11, and the sorry record on terrorism compiled by the Clinton-Gore administration would have been continued.

For parents Richard and Kathy as well as brother Shawn Wood, June 25, 1996, always will be a day of infamy. That's when Airman 1st Class Justin Wood of Modesto was killed. Just a month before his 21st birthday, the Downey High School graduate was one of 19 Americans who died in a terrorist attack on Khobar Towers, a U.S. military housing facility in Saudi Arabia. As his parents relive the worst night and day of their lives, Kathy's eyes fill with tears. Richard's posture stiffens. Justin's older brother, Shawn, watches his parents. Justin wasn't supposed to be at Khobar...

Khobar Towers The Clinton administration left many stones unturnd. BY LOUIS J. FREEH Sunday, June 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. Ten years ago today, acting under direct orders from senior Iranian government leaders, the Saudi Hezbollah detonated a 25,000-pound TNT bomb that killed 19 U.S. airmen in their dormitory at Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The blast wave destroyed Building 131 and grievously wounded hundreds of additional Air Force personnel. It also killed an unknown number of Saudi civilians in a nearby park. The 19 Americans murdered were members of the 4,404th Wing, who were risking their lives to enforce...

WILLIAM Jefferson Blythe III was born on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Ark. After his mother remarried, he took the family surname, Clinton. Clinton was a good student. He enjoyed playing the saxophone and even considered a professional musical career. While in high school, a fortuitous meeting with President John Kennedy led him to choose a life of public service.

Khobar Towers June 23, 2006 The Wall Street Journal Louis J. Freeh Ten years ago this Sunday, acting under direct orders from senior Iranian government leaders, the Saudi Hezbollah detonated a 25,000-pound TNT bomb that killed 19 U.S. airmen in their dormitory at Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The blast wave destroyed Building 131 and grievously wounded hundreds of additional Air Force personnel. It also killed an unknown number of Saudi civilians in a nearby park. The 19 Americans murdered were members of the 4404th Wing, who were risking their lives to enforce the no-fly zone over southern Iraq....

Brig. Gen. Terryl Schwalier was stunned when he read the account of the June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that appeared in my recent book, Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran. I was writing many years after the fact, drawing on sources from inside Iranian intelligence but also on published U.S. government reports. It was those U.S. reports that prompted General Schwalier to contact me a few months ago. “You paint a picture of significant government awareness that “Iran was up to something” in the months prior to the Khobar Towers attack,” he wrote...

WASHINGTON -- A magistrate judge in the District Court of Washington, D.C. has dismissed a lawsuit by the survivors and families of victims of the June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that sought millions of dollars in damages against the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In an opinion handed down June 6, 2006, Judge Deborah A. Robinson asserted that the plaintiffs "offered no evidence regarding the action of any official, employee or agent" or the Iranian regime, its intelligence ministry (MOIS), or the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, IRGC. The opinion comes at a delicate...

April 2006, Vol. 89, No. 4 The Khobar Towers commander thought he had finally received justice, but the story had an unhappy surprise ending. The Second Sacking of Terryl Schwalier By Rebecca Grant Remember Brig. Gen. Terryl J. Schwalier? A decade ago, he was a rising star in the Air Force, wrapping up a successful tour as commander of the 4404th Wing (Provisional) in Saudi Arabia and on the list for promotion. Then, disaster struck his troops. On the night of June 25, 1996, an unprecedentedly large terrorist truck-bomb exploded outside the Khobar Towers military billet in Dhahran, killing 19...

One of the things I like to do occasionally is to visit some political forums on the internet to see what people, other than those who are journalists or bloggers, are saying. Whenever I do, I am often amazed at the number of people who have greatly distorted ideas about the Muslim religion and about Muslim terrorism around the world. In my view, 1. Muslim terrorism is an extremely serious threat to all non-Muslims and to peaceful Muslims alike; 2. it has been happening, in greater or lesser dimensions, since the Middle Ages; 3. it has become much more serious...

Freeh Sounds Like He's Got the Goods October 19, 2005 Download Windows Media PlayerListen To Rush Conduct Broadcast Excellence (Highly recommended by poster) BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay, now on to Louie Freeh, fulfilling a commitment made to you on Monday. There's a review of his book, "(My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror)," in the Washington Times today by Joseph C. Goulden, and the interesting passage from this review... Let me give you the first paragraph then go to the interesting passage. "Oh, let's cut right to the chase. Your primary...