Free Republic

Snip In the aftermath of 9/11, when President Bush ordered the U.S. military to remove the Taliban, who had given sanctuary to al-Qaeda and Osama, America was with him. When he identified Saddam as an integral part of an Axis of Evil hell-bent on America’s destruction, the nation supported him. Now America is not so sure. Preventive war as the antidote to terror seems, now that Anbar province has become the world’s newest base camp of terror, to have failed us. Democracy as the surest guarantee of U.S. security, now that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Moqtada al-Sadr are...

Schematic diagram of the test site The upper half of the following image shows where the test was conducted on Oct. 9(on the lower left corner of the map marked with orange flash symbol), and another new site for additional test(on the upper left corner, marked with a small yellow dot) The lower half of the image show the schematic diagram of the test site, with horizontal tunnels looping downward at the end to reach the test chamber. The illustration says that the tunnel is suspected to be from several hundreds meter to one kilometer long.

PARIS (AP) - French customs officers are inspecting a North Korean ship at an Indian Ocean island off the coast of Africa as part of U.N. sanctions prompted by the communist nation's nuclear test, but they found nothing illegal so far, officials said Thursday. It was the first time a country was known to have stopped a North Korean vessel under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718 authorizing searches as part of the sanctions imposed on Pyongyang for its nuclear test. Since the resolution was passed Oct. 14, at least four other North Korean vessels have been stopped, but the countries...

Every weekday at 8 a.m., Kevin Brock hefts a thick white ring binder onto a sleek, oval conference table. Labeled "Read Book," the deceptively plain folder houses the "Threat Matrix," a top-secret compendium of the most troubling reports of possible terrorist activity, drawn from the nation's 16 intelligence agencies. It is thicker than usual on a recent Monday morning, packed with 66 separate items that came in over the weekend. Brock, the principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is about to brief some of the government's most senior officials on the latest threat information. -snip- Facing a wall...

OAXACA, Mexico — Gunmen shot dead a local leader of Mexico's largest leftist party in the southern state of Oaxaca where at least nine people were killed in political violence last year, police said today. Democratic Revolution Party official Fructuoso Pedro Garcia was shot with nine bullets in the main square of Santo Domingo Morelos, a seaside town about 150 miles south of Oaxaca's colonial state capital, said state police commander Alberto Guzman. The killing occurred last Wednesday, three days after Garcia announced he would run for mayor of Santo Domingo Morelos. Guzman said the killing appeared to be for...

Fear of Too Many Babies is Hard to Bear October 22, 2006 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist Last Tuesday morning, in a maternity ward somewhere in the United States, the 300 millionth American arrived. He or she got a marginally warmer welcome than Mark Foley turning up to hand out the prizes at junior high. One could have predicted the appalled editorials from European newspapers aghast at yet another addition to the swollen cohort of excess Americans consuming ever more of the planet's dwindling resources. And, when Canada's National Post announced "'Frightening' Surge Brings US To 300m People," you can...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. intelligence community on Tuesday unveiled its own secretive version of Wikipedia, saying the popular online encyclopedia format known for its openness is key to the future of American espionage. The office of U.S. intelligence czar John Negroponte announced Intellipedia, which allows intelligence analysts and other officials to collaboratively add and edit content on the government's classified Intelink Web much like its more famous namesake on the World Wide Web. A "top secret" Intellipedia system, currently available to the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, has grown to more than 28,000 pages and...

Congressional Democrats anxious to force a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq are frustrated by their inability to muster a veto-proof majority for legislation that would establish a firm date for retreat. But what they cannot do directly they are now working hard to do indirectly. According to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Incirlik Air Base near Adana, Turkey is the transshipment point for about 70% of all air cargo (including 33% of the fuel) going to supply US forces in Iraq. Included are about 95% of the new “MRAP” -- mine-resistant, ambush-protected -- vehicles designed to save the lives of...

Preacher says GOP delaying 2nd coming Monday, October 09, 2006 Becky Gaylord Plain Dealer Reporter Voters should oust congressional Republican leaders because U.S. foreign policy is delaying the second coming of Jesus Christ, according to a evangelical preacher trying to influence closely contested political races. K.A. Paul railed against the war in Iraq on Sunday before a crowd of 1,000 at the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, his first stop on what he hopes is a 30-city campaign. The Houston-based preacher said he believes that the Bush administration has delayed the second coming because U.S. foreign policy has...

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, with his job on the line because of the spiraling Mark Foley cyberspace page sex scandal, was duped Tuesday into letting a stranger into his Plano home -- a serious security breach. Hastert literally let his guard down and allowed in his house a hustling, self-promoting evangelist little known in this country, the Houston-based K.A. Paul, who at 7:30 a.m. arrived at the speaker's home with a camera-wielding associate. How Paul and his aide, Dennis Ryan, got to Hastert's door is a tale of apparent chance. How the publicity-hungry Paul and Ryan walked through it...

BRITAIN'S top soldier spoke out against the government's handling of the campaign in Iraq because he feared Britain was being "held hostage" by US policy in the region, friends claimed last night. General Sir Richard Dannatt sparked a furious row over Tony Blair's foreign policy last week when he warned that British troops should leave Iraq soon because they were "exacerbating the security problems" there. Allies of Sir Richard last night claimed he had been expressing deep concerns shared by colleagues in the highest ranks of the military - and that the real target of his attack was Washington, not...

The head of the Army is calling for British troops to withdraw from Iraq "soon" or risk catastophic consequences for both Iraq and British society. In a devastating broadside at Tony Blair's foreign policy, General Sir Richard Dannatt stated explicitly that the continuing presence of British troops "exacerbates the security problems" in Iraq. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Sir Richard also warns that a "moral and spiritual vacuum" has opened up in British society, which is allowing Muslim extremists to undermine "our accepted way of life." The Chief of the General Staff believes that Christian values are...

Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking By Matt Taibbi | November 6, 2014 "It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'" Fleischmann is the central witness in one of the biggest cases of white-collar crime in American history, possessing secrets that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last year paid $9 billion (not $13 billion as regularly reported – more on that later) to keep the public from hearing. Back in 2006, as a...

Iraq uncovers al-Qaeda 'chemical weapons plot' The authorities in Iraq say they have uncovered an al-Qaeda plot to use chemical weapons, as well as to smuggle them to Europe and North America. Defence ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said five men had been arrested after military intelligence monitored their activities for three months. Three workshops for manufacturing the chemical agents, including sarin and mustard gas, were uncovered, he added. Remote-controlled toy planes were also seized at the workshops. Mr Askari said they were to have been used to release the chemical agents over the target from a "safe" distance of 1.5km...

The emergency room at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood has been reopened after part of the ER was briefly closed this morning, hospital officials said. Earlier today, a man entered the ER with a high fever and a rash -- symptoms that resembled smallpox, a potentially fatal infectious disease. Following standard procedure, hospital officials quarantined one area of the ER. Doctors later said the man did not have smallpox. They have not said what he had.

THE Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has expressed his anger at Britain’s failure to gag Alexander Litvinenko in the final hours of his life, the cabinet has been told.Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, told ministers that the Russian government had “taken exception” to the poisoned former spy’s deathbed letter accusing the Putin regime of murdering him. This weekend a potential suspect — Andrei Lugovoi — admitted he had been contaminated with the radioactive poison polonium-210 but insisted: “I’ve been framed.” Beckett, who spoke to her Russian counterpart before Thursday’s cabinet meeting, said the Russians had “seemingly failed to understand” that Litvinenko...

The Polonium Diversion At least a dozen people have been contaminated by the rare radioactive isotope Polonium 210. The list includes Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB who died from a dose of Polonium 210 in London on November 23rd; Andrei Lugovoi, a former colleague of Litvinenko in the KGB, who met with Litvinenko at the Pine bar of the Millennium Hotel in London the day he became ill, November 1st; Dmitry Lugovoi, Lugovoi’s business associate, who also attended that November 1st meetings; 7 employees of the Millennium Hotel; Mario Scaramella, an Italian security consultant, who dined with...

A onetime Tony Rezko business partner, who once was a Chicago cop and chief executive of a company that won a $50 million security contract in Iraq, has pleaded guilty to federal charges in Chicago after he cooperated with authorities. Daniel T. Frawley pleaded guilty on Feb. 14 to bank fraud and structuring transactions — a plea that came about two weeks after his charges were made public.

Congressman told FBI he asked for -- and got -- free home upgrades ### Convicted political fixer Tony Rezko gave U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez free upgrades on a riverfront town house after the congressman asked for them, Gutierrez told the FBI, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned. Gutierrez's comments to federal agents in a previously undisclosed 2008 interview contradict what the congressman told the Sun-Times in 2006 about the purchase. "I walked in with my wife -- as any other consumer could have -- and purchased the unit at the listed price, with no considerations," the Northwest Side congressman said then,...

NEWARK — Two New Jersey men intent on killing American troops were arrested Saturday as they boarded flights to link up with a virulent jihadist group in Somalia, authorities said. The men, both North Jersey residents, were charged with conspiring to commit an act of international terrorism through a group tied to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, according to officials familiar with the details of the arrests. Mohamed Hamoud Alessa, 20, of North Bergen, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 26, of Elmwood Park were apprehended at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens before they could board separate flights to...