Free Republic

President Obama’s announcement regarding U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan – after three months of indecision – brought partisan hypocrisy into sharp focus. He owed his election to a cult of personality and the promise of change, but his aura lost much of its luster as the country found itself still mired in economic crisis and embroiled in two wars after his first year in office. Polls show that the independent voters who were essential to his victory are not likely to support him again because the reality did not reinforce the promise. The same introspection cannot be found among his...

Hundreds of protesters have gathered near the White House to try and start a new anti-war movement. Saturday's demonstration closely follows President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize speech, in which he said war is sometimes needed to establish lasting peace. Demonstrators in Washington opposed this view, as well as the president's request for 30,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan. "Make it personal, make it personal, because killing is personal. It's immoral. It's personal," chanted protesters. Former Democratic Alaska Senator and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Gravel led protesters in anti-war chants, while calling for a mass movement to help end U.S. wars...

Also statements by Hans Blix and David Kay about Iraq WMD's (Liberals aren't very smart. They need to be reminded again and again and again).....

Decrying Barack Obama as "white power in black face," hundreds of African-Americans marched on the White House Saturday to protest policies of the first black US president, and demand that he bring US troops home. More than 200 people gathered for the first public demonstration by African Americans against the Obama administration since his historic inauguration in January, and slammed the president for continuing what they described as Washington's "imperialist" agenda around the world. "We recognize that Barack Hussein Obama is white power in black face," civil rights activist Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black is Back coalition which arranged...

Islamic jihadists routinely characterize anti-terror efforts as part of a "war on Islam." But of course, there is no war on terror, and there is no war on Islam. There is just the Islamic jihad against the U.S. and the West. "Hasan Called War on Terror 'War Against Islam,' Classmate Says," by Justin Blum for Bloomberg, November 6: Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people and wounding 30 others at the Fort Hood Army Base in Texas, regularly described the war on terror as "a war against Islam," according to a...

Kabul, Afghanistan - When Medea Benjamin stood up in a Kabul meeting hall this weekend to ask Masooda Jalal if she would prefer more international troops or more development funds, the cofounder of US antiwar group Code Pink was hoping her fellow activist would support her call for US troop withdrawal. She was disappointed. Ms. Jalhal, the former Afghan minister of women, bluntly told her both were needed. "It is good for Afghanistan to have more troops – more troops committed with the aim of building peace and against war, terrorism, and security – along with other resources," she answered....

We’ve heard about a few cases – some prominent – of anti-war protesters who claimed to be in the armed services. Today we learn one impostor, Rick Strandlof, may not be charged federally under the Stolen Valor Act.

A former Austin woman convicted of threatening to shoot local officials pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to making bomb threats against eight U.S. post offices in southern Minnesota.

THERE were angry clashes in a city centre today as right-wing protesters fought with anti-fascist campaigners in a busy shopping street. A planned demonstration by The English Defence League in central Birmingham descended into violence as the group charged along New Street, close to the city's main train station. One onlooker said: "There were about 250 people in total, fighting and throwing bottles at each other." The disorder spilled onto the adjoining Bennetts Hill, a street lined with a number of pubs, popular with shoppers. Dozens of riot police worked to contain the disturbance and a police helicopter hovered overhead....

There were angry clashes in a city centre today as right-wing protesters fought with anti-fascist campaigners in a busy shopping street. A planned demonstration by The English Defence League in central Birmingham descended into violence as the group charged along New Street, close to the city's main train station. More than twenty men have been arrested. 'There were about 250 people in total, fighting and Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211414/Anti-fascists-clash-right-wing-protesters-Birmingham.html#ixzz0QFxinqVM

I have a good friend who fought in the 1968 Vietnam Tet Offensive. He talks about how, in the battle’s aftermath, he and his buddies patrolled the streets of Hue City, site of some of the most intensive fighting. He describes walking on the bodies of dead North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers piled several layers high in the strategic provincial capital, and is also quick to remind me that Tet was a stunning military victory for the United States; that in fact, the US did not lose a single military encounter for the rest of the war. Yet, most...

There is rising disillusion among liberals and peace activists that a president who built his campaign on his opposition to the war in Iraq now views America's other conflict as a "war of necessity". Mr Obama has already added 21,000 extra troops to the 38,000 stationed there by George W Bush. In the next few weeks, he is likely to receive requests from the Pentagon for more when Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanisan, submits a report on the progress of the war. It is expected to paint a grim picture and offer the president three options for...

Well, at least Cindy Sheehan doesn't feel the need to hide her affinity for communists anymore."Comrade Carl, aka Carl Dix of the Fort Lewis 6 from the Vietnam War will be appearing with Cindy Sheehan tomorrow at her press conference on Martha's Vineyard.Sheehan long ago became a self-made parody, making it harder for her to top her own buffoonery. But she's trying with her three days of sailing off the Vineyard this week on the "SS Camp Casey".Carl is a graduate of the school of hard rocks, having served two years at Fort Leavenworth for refusing orders for Vietnam. He...

ust a few years back, she was the media’s darling. Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier slain in Iraq, led the anti-war charge against George W. Bush. Egged on by the mainstream media and left-wing activists eager to put a “face” to their cause, she camped out in front of Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. The entire situation became a media circus, with Sheehan at its epicenter. We saw her getting her hair cut at “Camp Casey,” saw her visiting her son’s grave with media flunkies in tow, and watched her get up close and personal with Hugo Chávez. Feted...

Cindy Sheehan says she wants to "revive" the anti-war movement.

French anti-war campaigners have desecrated a statue of Winston Churchill in central Paris on the anniversary of the city's liberation from Nazi rule. The night time attack saw the bronze hands of the £250,000 statue daubed in red paint. The initials RH were also daubed on the statue, perhaps a reference to Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's deputy, who flew to Britain at the height of the Second World War to allegedly try and make peace. Instead, Churchill had him thrown in prison in 1941, and the war continued for a further four years. After the war, Hess was tried at...

This story deserves more attention than it’s gotten, so I’m going to give it some. The eagle-eyed NZ Bear while running the show at the Victory Caucus noticed a strange little blurb on the website of MoveCongress.org. MoveCongress.org, for those of you fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with the group, boasts on its masthead that it wants to “Move Congress to End the War in Iraq.” This morning, the group was scheduled to be blessed with an exclusive briefing from Jack Murtha on how…well, I’ll let you see how MoveCongress.org described Murtha’s agenda: Chairman Murtha will describe his strategy for...

Two groups on campus, Anns Race Alternatives (ARA) and Students Against Militarism (SAM), work within these mental limits to foster awareness and practical action necesary to counter the growing threat of war. Though the emphasis of the two p:roups differ, they share an aversion to current government policy. These groups, visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are throwing their weight into shifting America off the dead-end track. The Reagan administration's stalling at the Geneva talks on nuclear weapons has thus already caused severe tension and could ultimately bring about a dangerous rift between...

My childhood friend of 31 years visited my home on base, in Quantico, a few months after I gave birth to my first baby. As we took a leisurely stroll one evening through the lingering humidity of early September, I explained to her how different military life is from the world in which we grew up in San Francisco. We passed rows of colorful houses on the tree-lined, manicured blocks and gazed at the playgrounds around the neighborhood, ready to welcome the children of the officers who live there. American flags hung from virtually every front door. The occasional "My...

Freepers: After sleeping on it, I have decided to call you to action! A great injustice is being perpetrated by our main stream media (MSM) and our Commander In Chief (CINC), President Barrack Hussein Obama. The time now is 10:04 CST, 02 JUNE 09, exactly 24 hours after Privates William Long, 23 of Conway, AR, and Private Second Class Quinton Ezeagwula, 18, of Jacksonville, AR became the first victims of terrorism on American soil since 11 SEP 01 and we have heard no statement from their Commander in Chief, President Barrack Hussein Obama. Almost as egregious as Obama’s silence, we...

<p>Latest Video:Little Rock - One person is in custody, and two others have been transported to a local hospital in serious condition following a double-shooting in west Little Rock Monday morning.</p> <p>Authorities say the incident occurred around 10:00 a.m. at the U.S. Army Navy Career Center inside the Ashley Square Shopping Center at 9112 North Rodney Parham Road. According to Lt. Terry Hastings with the Little Rock Police Department, two recruiting officers standing outside the office were hit when the unidentified suspect drove up in a black SUV and began shooting.</p>

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) - Bombs destroyed an Internet cafe, wrecked a bus carrying handicapped children and spread panic through Pakistan's main northwestern city on Saturday, killing at least 11 people in a day of carnage across the militancy-plagued region. Digg Up.

Get this! - "Interview: Sgt.Matthis Chiroux -Veteran, war resistor, and outspoken critic of the both the Bush and Obama administrations Mid East and Central Asian Policy faces Military Hearing for "Misconduct" on April 21st. We spoke to Matthis about his upcoming case."

NEW YORK (AFP) – Grandmother may know best, but for a group of feisty grannies leading US protests against the war in Afghanistan, the problem is that no one's listening. The Granny Peace Brigade is not just the most colorful anti-war group in the United States today -- it's one of the only ones. "It's pretty pathetic," said Joan Pleune, 70, one of seven grandmothers aged 65 to 90 who went to court Tuesday in New York to face disorderly conduct charges. "We've done all these symbolic actions. We get arrested here and there, but it's symbolic," grey-haired Pleune said....

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama wants Congress to act quickly on his $83.4 billion request for U.S. military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, an appeal that's disappointing the most liberal, anti-war wing of his party. But with the president promising to remove all combat troops from Iraq by the end of August 2010, his Democratic allies in control of Congress are sure to approve the spending without the type of tortuous battle that characterized their dealings with former President George W. Bush.

Vandals destroy memorial to LCpl Justin Ellsworth for 2nd time (before and after photos)Vandals Destroy Fallen Heroes’ Monument, Son of National Pro-Troop Advocate: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Wednesday, April 8, 2009, Contact: Meghan Tisinger, Meghan@FamiliesUnitedMission.com, (202) 510-5304 Mt. Pleasant, MI – April 8, 2009 – Last week, a monument honoring the life and death of Lance Corporal Justin Ellsworth was vandalized on Island Park near the Michigan Vietnam Memorial. Lance Corporal Ellsworth died on November 13, 2004 which serving in Iraq. His father, John Ellsworth, is the President of Military Families United, an advocacy organization that has recently been vocal in...

A memorial service is planned for May 16 for Steve Hamilton, a prominent Bay Area anti-war activist and member of the Oakland 7 who was acquitted in a notorious conspiracy trial.

Guys, just like most of you I have been interested in the 10th Amendment "State Sovereignty Resolutions"..but I have one criticism of our tactics (while I agree that some of the momementum for this movement has been opposition toward the big-Socialism that Obama, and the Congress is pushing)..Remember Bush, W. PUSHED for big-government too. I seem to recall (not being a Vermontor.sp (Orwhat they call themselves..)? myself) I remember that Because Bush and the Republican Congress voted for the war in Iraq, there was a "strong push" in Vermont (really liberal, anti-war) state to push for "Secession"..well I know the...

As I was snooping around the internet that Gore made, I ran across a web site that was practicing Fear Mongering. As has become common practice, I took a screen shot for future reference. As is the “norm” for the Leftinistra, posts such as this one vanish which then, any criticism of any particular issue can be seen as “hate speech”. Thus the screen shot. This plea for help for a faltering endeavor cannot be denied. Why are they pleading for help? If they have the heartbeat of America, shouldn’t they be rolling in cash? Doesn’t George Soros care about...

George Soros finally gets it February 21, 2009 – 1:56 pm Three weeks ago, the positively schizophrenic Op-Ed page for the WSJ published yet another piece by a big financial brain proposing a “solution” to the financial crisis. While the editorial page itself is so rigidly ideological as to be useless, the op-ed page publishes stuff all over the map. The only common attribute seems to be a big-name byline. Once in a while you’ll get a thoughtful, nuanced and hard-hitting piece by Shelby Steele or Judy Shelton, for instance; occasionally, one of the big names will actually say something...

A Green Bay soldier was supposed to catch a flight Friday morning taking him back to active duty in Iraq, but he intentionally missed it because he says the war is immoral. Specialist Kristoffer Walker and his wife Sierra enjoyed Friday night at home together -- a night they weren't supposed to be together. "Early this morning I made a decision not to go back to Iraq," he told us Friday.

This is great news, but I still wonder what took the FBI so long. "FBI Cuts Off CAIR Over Hamas Questions," by Mary Jacoby for IPT News, January 29 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm): The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has cut off contacts with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) amid mounting concern about the Muslim advocacy group's roots in a Hamas-support network, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned. The decision to end contacts with CAIR was made quietly last summer as federal prosecutors prepared for a second trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF),...

From Il Corriere della Sera: Call for directive to prevent episodes like Duomo demonstration in Milan from happening again ROME – Places of worship, supermarkets and shopping malls will join public institutions, political party headquarters and diplomatic premises as being off-limits for demonstrators. Organisers will also have to pay a deposit as a guarantee against damage.NEW RULES – Interior minister Roberto Maroni has proposed new rules for public demonstrations, revealing that he is working on a directive to be sent to prefects and chiefs of police. A week ago, the minister explained to a hearing of the Senate’s constitutional affairs...

Dateline Sunday 16 November 2008 Sierra Vista, AZ., Fort Huachuca. Today was the day the “Say No to Torture” Protest by the southwest weekend of protest group also sponsored by code pink. The day for my wife and I, started at 9 am as we headed to town to pick up a new Flag, a quick stop at the local “Evil Wal-Mart” and we were on our way to the park to counter protest. The park they chose to begin their protest is named “Veterans Memorial Park” and I am saddened by the fact that they chose this park to...

Ft. Huachuca is the home of USAICS, the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and School, and has a long history of complicity in U.S. crimes of torture. The torture manuals used at the School of the Americas came from Ft. Huachuca.For several years, in solidarity with the SOA Watch annual vigil and action at Fort Benning, Georgia to close the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) there has been a growing grassroots demonstration at the gate of Fort Huachuca to protest our country’s slipping standards on torture, being practiced in our name and...

A federal judge ruled that Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused to deploy to Iraq with his Ft. Lewis combat brigade, couldn't be retried on several of the charges against him. But the ruling still may allow the military to try him on two court-martial counts. Citing the constitutional protections against being tried twice for the same crime, a federal judge on Tuesday ruled that 1st Lt. Ehren Watada cannot face a second court martial on three of five counts resulting from his high-profile 2006 refusal to deploy to Iraq with a Fort Lewis brigade. The ruling by Judge Benjamin Settle,...

Supporting our troops By Steve Almond September 18, 2008 PERHAPS the most insidious byproduct of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been a reflexive sanctification of the military. To put this in bumper stickerese: Support the Troops. Well, I have an ugly confession to make: I don't support the troops - at least not unconditionally. When somebody tells me they serve in the military, my first impulse isn't to say, "Thank you for your service!" like those insufferable chickenhawks on talk radio. My first impulse is to say, "I'm sorry to hear that." Because I am. I'm sorry to...

ITHACA — A Common Council committee voted unanimously Tuesday night to declare Ithaca a “‘Community of Sanctuary' thus respecting the rights of its residents to support lawfully and proactively military personnel and veterans who are organizing to stop the wars in and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.” The sanctuary resolution was written and submitted by Peace Now Ithaca, which staged a march to Fort Drum in May with members of the Fort Drum chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Veterans who participated in the march “lamented about the suppression and intimidation they experienced” in protesting the wars, said Alexis...

University of Minnesota staff were key coordinators of the recent violent protests at the Republican National Convention (RNC). The university employees are also members of the local clerical union of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees. The AFSCME is part of the AFL-CIO union. Protests turned violent at the 2008 RNC located in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Police have arrested hundreds of demonstrators for violent attacks on police officers and bystanders and other more nuisance crimes. The Saint Paul Police have identified an anarchist group called the RNC Welcoming Committee as being at the center of the violence....

BANGOR, Maine — Folk singers Larry and Leslie Latour, along with Judd Esty-Kendall, will open a “Join Hands to End the War. Build the Peace. Rebuild the Economy” rally at 1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13, at Paul Bunyan Park on Main Street. [snip] Among the featured speakers will be Mary Trotochaud who with her husband, Rick McDowell, moved to Baghdad in 2003 to work with emerging Iraqi civil society organizations and coordinate relief and development projects for the American Friends Service Committee. Other speakers include labor activist Katrina Bisheimer; Iranian-American history student Hosain Aghamoosa; social worker Doug Crate; Veterans for...

AN Islamic organisation warning of the return of an empire founded 700 years ago has hacked into the website of a Wollongong church and published disturbing images and messages. For several days, anyone who visited the website of Wollongong's Wesley Church was greeted by anti-war messages flanked by pictures of the Turkish flag, masked soldiers and an image of US President George W Bush with a cross over his face. While the text on the www.wollongongmission.unitingchurch.org.au website was not in English, other websites on the internet hacked by the same group, AdReNaLin, identified those responsible as "sons of the Ottoman...

I made a fun little video of a screaming anti-war protester yesterday. This woman originally says she's there to stop the war. But then continually says she's running out of food. Then she starts screaming.. and her blabbering rivals anything Ted Kennedy's ever said. "We are going hungry!!!!"

S. Korean riot police are firing orange-dyed water to anti-Bush left-wing protesters to tag them for later arrest. The colored water also contains tear gas agent. Bush is visiting S. Korea today.

Peace-Loving Conservatives by Jeffrey Tucker 8/16/08 Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism By Bill Kauffman, Metropolitan Books, $25, 304 pages In my hometown, the peace rallies are always sponsored by the Unitarians. Actually, it is they who are the participants too. This is not a highly heterogeneous group. In fact, you know them already: highly educated, ideologically driven according to conventional left-wing moorings, attracted to fashionable causes like global warming and the mortal threat posed by plastic grocery bags, and hyper-tolerant of all points of view except those with which they disagree.

August 11, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - August 9 was the 63rd anniversary of the 1945 dropping of a plutonium fission weapon on Nagasaki, Japan. A few days later, Japan announced that it was unconditionally surrendering, bringing World War II - the most bloody conflict in modern history - to an end. Gathering to protest that occurrence, about a dozen San Francisco Bay Area groups joined together, staging a small demonstration near the main gate of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, perhaps the free world's preeminent nuclear weapon research facility. The event was attended by less than 100 lefties...

That which is old, is new again… “On January 31, 1971, members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) met in a Detroit hotel to discuss war crimes they claimed to have participated in or witnessed during their combat tours in Vietnam. During the next three days, more than 100 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians gave anguished, emotional testimony describing hundreds of atrocities against innocent civilians in South Vietnam, including rape, arson, torture, murder, and the shelling or napalming of entire villages. The witnesses stated that these acts were being committed casually and routinely, under orders, as a matter of...

A kick butt response to Philadelphia's Northeast Time's love note to IVAW:The July 24 cover story A battle cry to end the war by staff writer Jon Campisi is a flattering account of the anti-war group Iraq Veterans Against the War, which lacked a great deal of critical information needed for the Northeast Times readers to reach an informed opinion of the group, its origin, efforts and goals. Though Campisi noted that the Iraq Veterans Against the War were formed under the patronage of the Veterans For Peace, unexamined is who are the Veterans For Peace (VFP). The leadership of...

Close To You Summers in Tucson, Arizona can be pretty hot, and so can political passions. But sometimes the level of political rhetoric can go beyond passionate, beyond vitriolic and even beyond reason. Yet it was with a cheerful heart that I pulled up to 2302 E. Speedway on a bright Wednesday morning on July 30, 2008 at about 7:00 am. The weekly mission? Support the troops, counter anti-recruitment protesters and stand up for America. The regular weekly troop supporters were mostly set up when I arrived at the Tucson Military Recruiting Center strip mall but I was able...