Free Republic

HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Wolf sternly rebuked Pennsylvania counties and businesses that plan to reopen without state approval, calling it a “cowardly act” that could cost those areas not only lives but federal stimulus money, too.

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...

Some good may yet come from the successful putsch by the staff of the World Bank against Paul Wolfowitz. A great deal of good, in fact. Not that we should cheer the ability of an overpaid staff, besotted with anti-war fervour, to zap its president, first by urging him to resolve personally the conflict created by his girlfriend’s employment at the bank, and then by attacking him for doing just that. But this cloud has more than one silver lining. The first is that it finally made President Bush realise that he has been too attentive to those who advise...

By JAMES RISEN WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 — As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal. Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct an independent search. They also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered. The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went...

NBC news is reporting: But Pentagon officials told NBC News that they were acting at the behest of Iraqi authorities investigating the disappearance of millions of dollars in cash and other assets following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Arrest warrants issued for 16 people An Iraqi judge issued arrest warrants for 16 people affliliated with the INC, and an unknown number were arrested, the officials said. Chalabi, himself a member of the Governing Council, was not arrested, and scheduled a news conference later in the day to discuss the raids. As NBC News reported earlier this week, Chalabi and his...

The Bush administration has been carrying out secret reconnaissance missions to learn about nuclear, chemical and missile sites in Iran in preparation for possible airstrikes there, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday. The effort has been under way at least since last summer, Hersh said on CNN's "Late Edition." In an interview on the same program, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett said the story was "riddled with inaccuracies." "I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on fact," Bartlett said. He said his information on Iran came from "inside" sources who divulged it in the hope...

French connection armed Saddam By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES The United States stood by for years as supposed allies helped its enemies obtain the world's most dangerous weapons, reveals Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, in the new book "Treachery" (Crown Forum). In this excerpt, he details France's persistence in arming Saddam Hussein. First of three excerpts New intelligence revealing how long France continued to supply and arm Saddam Hussein's regime infuriated U.S. officials as the nation prepared for military action against Iraq. The intelligence reports showing French assistance to Saddam ongoing in the...

This is not the first time Dan Rather has found himself in a serious dispute with a U.S. president. There was this exchange in 1974 during the height of the Watergate scandal with then-President Richard Nixon: Nixon: Are you running for something? Rather: No sir, are you? And there was this exchange with then-Vice President George Bush in 1988 over the Iran-Contra scandal. Rather: I don't want to be argumentative, Mr. vice president. Bush: You do, Dan. Rather: No -- no, sir, I don't. Bush: This is not a great night, because I want to talk about why I want...

Thu Jun 24, 6:07 PM ET Pamela McClintock, STAFFIn a sweeping apology to TV and print journalists covering Iraq ( - ), a contrite Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Thursday he was wrong in accusing them of sitting in their Baghdad hotels and publishing rumors.   "Just let me say to each of you who have worked so hard and taken such risks to cover this story, I extend a heartfelt apology and hope you will accept it," Wolfowitz wrote in the letter, dispatched via email. "I understand well the enormous dangers that you face, and want to...

Pentagon-AP -- The Pentagon's number-two man says he misspoke when he claimed a "great number" of al-Qaida operatives are trying to link up with remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz had said key lieutenants of Osama bin Laden are plotting with Saddam loyalists to kill Americans in Iraq. The deputy defense secretary made the claim in T-V and newspaper interviews on the anniversary of the September eleventh attacks. Wolfowitz now tells the A-P he misspoke because he didn't anticipate questions about Iraq in interviews about the September eleventh anniversary. He says the U-S military is still trying...

Pentagon chief charged with the rebuilding of Iraq tells Toby Harnden he wants to hand over to the people even if Saddam is still there What happens after Saddam Hussein is toppled? Critics of the man overseeing post-war plans have already accused him of trying to turn Iraq into an American fiefdom - complete with colonial-style viceroy - and mocked him for imagining that he can transplant "Jeffersonian democracy". Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy head of the Pentagon, shrugs off these contradictory charges. As the first senior government official to advise that "regime change" in Iraq had to be a primary...

Cannabis poses a greater threat to health than tobacco, lung experts have warned. The warning comes on the day that Home Secretary David Blunkett is due to make a Commons statement about the future of government drug policy. Many young people are simply not aware that smoking cannabis may put them at increased risk of respiratory cancers and infections . Dame Helena Shovelton: The Home Affairs Select Committee has recommended that cannabis is downgraded from a class B drug to class C. This would mean that possession would lead to a caution, rather than arrest. The British Lung Foundation is...