Free Republic

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday he would raise American concerns about the unintended consequences of any military action against Iran during his upcoming meeting with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Reuters reported. Panetta and Barak are due to meet on Friday in Halifax, Canada. Speaking to reporters traveling with him to Canada, Panetta said the United States believed the most effective way to confront Iran still was to use diplomatic pressure and sanctions. “Obviously to go beyond that raises our concerns about the unintended consequences that could result,” Reuters quoted Panetta as having said. Echoing remarks he made...

NEW YORK - Maybe it's the weird winter weather, or the newly Democratic Congress. Maybe it's the news reports about starving polar bears, or the Oscar nomination for Al Gore's global warming cri de coeur, "An Inconvenient Truth." Whatever the reason, years of resistance to the reality of climate change are suddenly melting away like the soon-to-be-history snows of Kilimanjaro. Now even George W. Bush says it's a problem. For years, the president and his supporters argued that not enough was known about global warming to do anything about it. But during last week's State of the Union address Bush...