Free Republic

Gordon Brown invoked the memory of the death of his daughter in a desperate bid to convince his critics today that he understood the grief of families whose sons have died in action in Afghanistan. Admitting he was shy, Brown gave an extraordinary personal confession at a Downing Street press conference after the Sun published extracts from a phone conversation between him and Jacqui Janes, the mother of a soldier, Jamie, killed in Helmand five weeks ago. She had been enraged by a handwritten letter from Brown which misspelt her name, and appeared to contain numerous other spelling errors. A...

This was sent to me by my sister-in-law. The Flash Movie Presented by Pallet Master's Workshop In Association with Todd Clegg http://www.thepalletmaster.com/flash1.html Our loved one is waiting on Fallujah.

The main-stream media is finally starting to give the elections some coverage. AP has a few articles today. One is a timeline of Afghanistan’s steps towards a democratic government. The second describes a campaign rally held by Hamid Karzai. The stadium where it was held had been used by the Taliban for public execution and is still bullet ridden from the years of war the country has suffered. Abdul Habib a 65 year old mechanic who attended the rally is quoted as saying:

Kerry's claim: Bin Laden escaped into the mountains of Tora Bora because we didn't use American forces to get him. "Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. But we didn't use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords and he outsourced that job too. That's wrong" The Facts:First of all the president did not make the decision to rely on the warlords. Those decisions were made by the military people on the scene and were part of the overall strategic plan put in...

<p>We've reached an intriguing moment in the saga of evil regimes and weapons of mass destruction--their presence or absence, and the uncertainty zone between.</p> <p>In Iraq, the U.S. and the United Nations had reason to believe that Saddam Hussein--having invaded his neighbors, harbored terrorists, tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of his fellow Iraqis, gassed the Kurds, plundered his country, and set a standard in the Middle East of fascist brutality to rival Hitler--was still pursuing weapons of mass destruction. A U.S.-led coalition toppled Saddam's regime. Now the recent U.S. point man for the weapons search in Iraq, David Kay, is saying it looks as if maybe Saddam didn't have any WMDs. At least not significant stocks, at least not that we've found. Mr. Kay's best guess is that Saddam only thought he had a WMD program.</p>

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan - Two U.S. special forces soldiers were killed and another was wounded Saturday when armed motorcyclists swept down on a reconnaissance patrol in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. At least three Afghan soldiers also were wounded, a military spokesman said. Afghan officials said Taliban fighters who still are active in the area were behind the incident. The U.S. soldiers, escorted by Afghan troops, had been at the opening of a new school and hospital, built with American aid, about 200 miles west of Kandahar. The attackers escaped. It was the latest reminder that the war in...