Free Republic

Senator Barack Obama, campaigning in New Hampshire Thursday and Friday, latched onto the recently released National Intelligence Estimate as proof that Afghanistan and Pakistan, rather than Iraq, should be the priority for U.S. forces abroad. "Al-Qaeda has regrouped, we are less safe than we were before," Obama told 600 people who came to a "Meet the Candidate" event at an elementary school in Hampton. "As President I will spend all my time trying to figure out how to keep you safe... And I would fight on the right fronts."

Buoyed by the defections of senior Senate Republicans from the president's war strategy, Majority Leader Harry Reid today reached out to his colleagues across the aisle to put votes behind their rhetoric and change course on Iraq. Reid was referring, of course, to the change of stance of GOP Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, all once supporters of the president's Iraq policy who have recently called for a change of course. "We invite them to come with us. We put our arms around them. We do not push them away. We believe that there's...

Support America Petition 982 Signatures Created by familiesunited on Mar 21, 2007 Category: Military Region: United States of America Target: Proud Americans Web-site: http://www.familiesunitedmission.com Description/History: Families United for Our Troops and Their Mission and like minded organizations believe all Americans should be united in our gratitude and appreciation to our military men and women for the risks and sacrifices they endure in the protection of our liberty and unalienable rights. We stand with our men and women in the military to ensure that they and their families receive the support and respect they deserve here at home, and furthermore we...

Hope Rides Alone By Eddie Jeffers I stare out into the darkness from my post, and I watch the city burn to the ground. I smell the familiar smells, I walk through the familiar rubble, and I look at the frightened faces that watch me pass down the streets of their neighborhoods. My nerves hardly rest; my hands are steady on a device that has been given to me from my government for the purpose of taking the lives of others. I sweat, and I am tired. My back aches from the loads I carry. Young American boys look to...

I have good news for everyone offended by the description of Sen. Barack Obama as "articulate." He has quickly shed any claim to that label. Indeed, Obama's remarks this week about American troops killed in Iraq were a bumbling, incoherent mess. You may now refer to him officially as the Inarticulate Barack Obama. (As for judging his current level of cleanliness and brightness, you know that's Joe Biden's milieu.) At one of his opening presidential campaign events on the Iowa State University campus this weekend, Obama pandered energetically to the anti-war crowd. With his smooth voice rising and thousands of...

Immediately after the president's speech, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, "I heard nothing new." Nothing? When Gen. David Petraeus takes command of U.S. forces in Iraq, it will mark the start of an historic turn in military strategy in Iraq and perhaps in U.S. war-fighting doctrine. The U.S.'s primary problem in Iraq, manifest across 2006, has been an urban insurgency in a 30-mile radius around Baghdad and in Anbar province. The Petraeus command is the overdue beginning of the counterinsurgency. This isn't a one-off effort as at Fallujah, but counterinsurgency as daily U.S. military policy. It is the product...

THE SUPERANNUATED membership of the Iraq Study Group shepherded by former secretary of state James Baker conjures a line from the film The Sixth Sense: "I see dead people." Two centuries ago, Europeans dreaming of reform and freedom must have felt just as crestfallen as they watched their continent's ghoulish elder statesmen gather for the Congress of Vienna. Both assemblies symbolize a victory for the ancien régime, the bloody-minded refusal to accept that the world has changed profoundly and will continue to change.If the Baker commission is the K-Mart version of the Congress of Vienna, its influence may prove no...

Sir Alistair Horne, the great historian of modern war, believes that the war in Iraq most resembles the Algerian war against the French of 1954-62, of which he wrote a celebrated history, just reissued. Certainly there are resemblances. The Algerian war, launched by ferocious nationalists, many of whom had served as soldiers in the French Algerian regiments against Germany in the concluding years of the second world war, was as bitter and cruel as Iraq has become. As the Algerian war did, the Iraq war has spilt over into the homelands of the Western armies fighting it, leading to terrorism...

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I am someone that usually finds himself with the majority. My reactions are generally the response of most people. I have always had a good sense of politics based on this theory, I figured if I thought or felt something it was a good chance most people did. And for a long time I was pretty accurate. Now I am trying to figure out how I got so out of whack? Yes I was one of those not entirely thrilled with spending, immigration and a host of other issues in Washington. In fact in normal times I might have been...

We’ve all waited 4 years to see a good report on what happened to Saddam’s WMD and September 8, 2006 the last investigative report was released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The only problem is…I searched the entire 400 pages of this “Phase II report” (or rather both reports that make up the Phase II report) and I couldn’t find those two words: “Bush lied.” I can’t even find, “Bush mislead” in those 400 pages. What I did find was 400 pages of evidence showing that the intelligence community used small amounts of weak intelligence from a decrepit...

This is my line in the sand. This is where I have decided that I will no longer allow lies about the war in Iraq, the global war on terror, or the decay of America's intelligence services. I will make my stand here, now, on this issue. No more will their lies go unchecked. The Senate Phase II report has been marketed as some sort of evidence that Al Queda and Iraq are not related. They are. I examined the report, stomached it's political lies (lies it admits to having within its own text!), and I have taken my action....

Do you know who John Chapman is? How about Brian Chontosh? Leigh Ann Hester? The answer is almost certainly no. The three are all highly decorated veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the liberation of Afghanistan. In World War II, heroes of their caliber would have been celebrated in the press and their names would have been known to the public. As we enter what some call the Third World War—the war against terrorism—this war’s heroes are obscure figures, largely unknown and uncelebrated. Unlike during World War II, the national media have been reluctant to tell their stories. A Sergeant's...

BAGHDAD--Although there has been much good news to report about security progress in Iraq this summer--the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the handover of security responsibility for Muthanna province, the fifth of 10 Iraqi Army Division Headquarters to assume the lead in its area of responsibility--Iraq faces an urgent crisis in securing its capital, Baghdad. Although Iraqi leaders and the Coalition have a sound strategy to turn the situation around, it is vital that Iraqis control sectarian violence and come together against the terrorists and outside powers that are fomenting the violence. In July, there were 558 violent incidents in...

Every day, the press focuses on the death toll in Iraq. Not only do they point out the total number of deaths, but they draw special attention to the number of Americans killed in Iraq. The liberals in the media want everyone to hear and see the negative side of this war and they will do whatever it takes to make things seem as bad as possible. What they won't do is give you comparisons to other death toll statistics so that you can judge for yourself, just how bad things really are. The anti-war protestors feed on these media...

WASHINGTON -- With the defeat of Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary in Connecticut, anti-war forces are poised for a takeover of the Democratic Party. Tuesday's exhilarating victory, and the elan and electoral legitimacy gained, may carry the newly energized Democratic left to considerable success in November. But for the Democratic Party it will be an expensive and short-lived indulgence. The Iraq War will end, as will the Bush presidency. But the larger conflict that defines our times -- war on Islamic radicalism, more politely known as the war on terror -- will continue, as the just-foiled London airliner plot...

For obvious reasons, the current terrorist threat is like no other the West has ever faced. Yet too often, commentators and politicians propose strategies applicable only to 20th century warfare. The recent conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah and for the US in Iraq have exposed underreported realities of fighting Islamic terrorism that must be fully recognized if the West is to achieve any long-term success in the war on terrorism.

LUBBOCK -- Less than two years ago, Roy Velez got the worst news a father could get: His oldest son was dead, killed during combat in Iraq. This week, his pain only deepened with news that his youngest son had died in Afghanistan. Military officials notified the Velez family Tuesday of the death of Army Pfc. Andrew Velez, 22. His brother, Army Spc. Jose A. Velez, 23, died in November 2004 in Fallujah when his unit came under fire while clearing an enemy stronghold. "I can't be angry. I feel like my heart's been pulled out," Roy Velez said Tuesday....

<p>"As I come closer to the halfway point in my second combat tour, I have been reflecting on the events dating from 9/11 to today. Watching the nation's perspective change from an incredible level of patriotism to the lackluster, complacent attitude I see now, is sickening. I ask myself what has changed since 9/11. Does it take a horrific tragedy to open the eyes of the public and motivate them to stand behind our nation's principles? "For those who have forgotten, we were sent here to defeat tyranny and fight terrorism. Tyranny has been abolished and we are now in the process of ridding this country from terror. Our fight is not over, we still have a mission to accomplish, and we still need the support of our country: not support for the troops but support for the war on terror. "Hearing people say, 'I support the troops, but I don't support the war,' is hypocrisy that astounds and annoys me every time I hear it. Saying you don't support the war is telling me that you don't support my beliefs, my right to fight for freedom, and my choice to be over here away from my family to be a part of something I believe in. I'll tell you what I don't support: I don't support Americans cowering behind the wall of freedom that we provide and then criticize the way we provide it. Stand behind us. Stand behind what we've volunteered to do. "Over the past month we have made incredible progress in our war effort. We are working hand-in-hand with the Iraqi army, and with their help we have successfully broken apart several terrorist cells in our area. We have seen more success at this point in the war than eight months of fighting in OIF I and II. And yet our nation supports us less now than before . . . what is the explanation? "Don't let the events in Abu Ghraib and Haditha alter your perspective of the Marine Corps. A week ago today two Iraqi children were brought to our traffic control point. The children were sheep herders, and as they were walking, one of their sheep stepped on a pressure-plated IED. The IED was not meant for coalition forces. It was placed by an insurgent whose intent was to harm any Iraqi civilian. The IED blew one of the children's lower mandible off and left severe shrapnel wounds in the upper leg of the second child. Both of these children survived the IED because their parents brought them to us. They knew that the Marines would care for them. The Marines would save their children when a terrorist attacked his own people. The Marines and Navy corpsmen of Alpha Company of the 3rd LAR have saved the lives of numerous innocent Iraqi civilians and have developed a relationship with the Iraqi Army to the point that I can call them brothers-in-arms. A language, religion, and culture barrier separates us, and yet one common factor allows us to unite and fight side by side. The fight for freedom—to liberate a country. "I will spend my Independence Day fighting for the freedom of a country that has been oppressed for over 54 years. For those of you who say, "Let them fight their own war," or "Pull the troops out now—it's not our fight," remember how our country came to be and the sacrifices that have been made to build our nation. "For those of you who remain supportive, I thank you with all my heart. I wish I could portray to you the joy and exhilaration I experience every time we help the Iraqi people. Your support keeps us driving, and without it this fight would be unwinnable. To the families of all the military personnel overseas, you are heroes to us . . . your ability to support our being away for months at a time requires more courage than any situation we encounter. The support of my wife, family, and friends has taken me through almost two combat deployments. Realize that our families have it harder than us. Respect and support them as you do the Marines and sailors. Semper Fi"</p>

"There is an awful feeling that everything is lurching downward," the Western diplomat told The Washington Post."Nearly five years on, there is no rule of law. ... The Afghans know it is all a charade, and they see us as not only complicit, but actively involved. You cannot fight a terror war and build a weak state at the same time, and it was a terrible mistake to think we could." What that disconsolate diplomat is saying is that America is losing the Afghan war.According to the Post report, President Hamid Karzai is losing the confidence of his people and...