Free Republic

When the compact figure of Vladimir Putin strode onto the world stage after his success in the 2000 presidential elections, a tremor of anxiety passed through the collective body of Western leaders. Gone was the boozy, bumbling, free-wheeling Boris Yeltsin, clown-prince of post-Soviet Russia who had unaccountably found himself in the box seat at the historic moment when his country was rolling up the Communist empire. The new leader of the new Russia was his polar opposite. A former KGB colonel, Putin was the identikit Soviet-style apparatchik: hard-eyed, unsmiling, tightly disciplined. And he had a black-belt in judo to prove...

Tehran, Dec 28 (ANI): al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri were spotted in Iran's Najamabad city two months ago, The News reported on Sunday while quoting a British daily. The daily attributed the story to a source having links with the Revolutionary Guards. The report said: "A man with links to Iran's intelligence services and hard-line Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC) has told the daily that he saw the al-Qaeda leader in Iran two months ago. He saw him arrive at an RGC guesthouse close to the small town of Najmabad on 23 October." The Al-Qaeda leader,...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is demanding Congress investigate US Airway's removal last week of six imams from one of its flights. The Muslim-rights group claims the imams, who were behaving suspiciously, posed no threat. It's "very, very inappropriate to treat religious leaders that way," a spokesman fumed. According to CAIR, imams are as harmless as Buddhist monks and deserve no less respect. Tell that to flight attendant Kimberly Banducci. According to police reports I've obtained, the Delta Air Lines veteran was assaulted by a Muslim cleric in a bizarre attack aboard a flight from Miami International Airport three years...