Free Republic

N THE AFTERMATH of September 11, more than several former national security and intelligence officials fashioned new careers as critics of the Bush administration's war on terror. Among the more prominent of these former officials is Daniel Benjamin, who worked for the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999. Benjamin's criticism flows from his belief that prior to the war in Iraq, as he wrote in Time magazine earlier this year, "there was no pre-existing relationship between Baghdad and al-Qaeda." Still worse, the invasion of Iraq has made us "less safe" and "above all, the invasion and occupation of Iraq--have...

Paul Pillar Speaks, Again The latest CIA attack on the Bush administration is nothing new. by Stephen F. Hayes 02/10/2006 4:15:00 PM IN A BREATHLESS front-page, above-the-fold article in today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports that a former senior CIA official named Paul Pillar accuses the Bush administration of "misusing" intelligence to take the country to war in Iraq. According to the Post account, Pillar uses a forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs to claim that the Bush administration "politicized" the intelligence on Iraq. Bush administration policymakers did this subtly, Pillar says, by repeatedly asking the CIA questions about Iraq, its...

Saddam, the ATM of Al Qaeda By Christopher S. Carson FrontPageMagazine.com | November 15, 2004 The Report of the 9/11 Commission has been digested, and the news media outlets have seized upon it as confirmation of their view that al Qaeda is a kind of purely stateless entity that never had "operational links" with rogue states like Iraq. Somehow, goes the thrust of the Report, Osama bin Laden was for years able to finance, train and supply an international terrorist corporation that had ongoing jihad operations in fifty countries - by himself, on no more than a $30 million personal...

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A senior U.S. intelligence official told CNN on Monday that a soil sample from the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory destroyed last week by U.S. missiles has tested positive for a chemical that is "one step away" from deadly VX nerve gas.</p>

Prominent Democrats have wasted no time accusing President Bush of using doctored intelligence about Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction to justify the Iraq war, while like-minded pundits have already begun hinting darkly about the possibility of impeaching Bush if the WMDs don't turn up soon. But there was no similar outcry five years ago after the Clinton administration came up empty on evidence that Sudan was producing weapons of mass destruction, a claim the White House used to justify slamming some 20 cruise missiles into Khartoum's Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant - a facility it also claimed had ties to...