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Dear Senator Byrd By Lewis F. McIntyre FrontPageMagazine.com | February 13, 2004 Below is USN (Ret) CDR Lewis F. McIntyre's letter to Senator Byrd about President Bush's visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln. Senator Byrd, As a retired Naval Officer, with two Gulf carrier deployments under my belt, I find your criticism of President Bush's visit to the Lincoln offensive in the extreme! This is the first time that the Commander-in-Chief took time out of his schedule to pay a visit to thank those who served in the line of fire, in a way that was both dramatic and meaningful...

Jewish World Review Jan. 20, 2004 / 26 Teves, 5764 Michael Ledeen Our Moment of Vainglory: A p.c. mess http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | We are now making the Afghans and the Iraqis pay a terrible price for American political correctness, and the price is being exacted by our diplomats and misnamed "strategists." The fundamental error — enshrined, as the splendid Diane Ravitch recently explained in her stellar work on American history textbooks — is the belief that American political and civic culture is just one among many, no better and quite likely considerably worse, than most. Hence we have no right to...

Read this and gnash your teeth. State Dept again. The State Dept.'s Saudi-First Policy By Joel Mowbray Townhall.com | December 2, 2003 The date was April 24, 2002. Standing on the runway at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, Texas, the cadre of FBI agents, Secret Service, and Customs agents had just been informed by law enforcement officials that there was a “snag” with Crown Prince Abdullah’s oversized entourage, which was arriving with the prince for a visit to George W. Bush’s Western White House in Crawford, Texas. The flight manifest of the eight-plane delegation accompanying the Saudi would-be...

Do We Need A $15 Million "Illegal Logging Initiative"? By Alan Caruba Toogood Reports [Monday, November 17, 2003; 12:01 a.m. EST] URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/ Did you know that forests cover about one-third of all the land in the United States? I like to collect facts like that. It amounts to some 737 million acres of forests and, of that, 247 million acres (3.5%) are reserved from harvest by law or represent slow-growing woodlands unsuitable for timber production. Some 490 million acres are called timberlands, i.e., forests that can produce more than 20 cubic feet of wood per acre annually. Even so,...

Just giving you Freepers a heads up on an excellent read, Sleeping with the Devil, by Robert Baer, a veteran CIA case officer and middle east expert. The Saudi clown princes have lost control of their "country" - no border control, Wahhabi dominance, young Saudis with no employment, who just spend their time in mosques getting indoctrinated. He claims in his book that they have co-opted with mucho$$ a very large number of influential Beltway honchos, and I believe him. Especially prevalent corruption has for a long time infected the State Dept. The attitude there is "Don't say, don't tell"...

Read it and weep Homegrown Ties to Terror By Mark Steyn Washington Times | October 21, 2003 A year ago, when the self-regarding buffoon Chief Charles Moose was bungling the Washington sniper investigation and the cable-news shows were full of endless psychological profiles of "white male loners," a few of us columnists entertained the notion that the killer was linked to Islamist terrorism. The Chicago Sun-Times' Richard Roeper thought this was so absurd he very kindly apologized to readers on my behalf. "An awful lot of conservatives really, really wanted the snipers to be terrorists," explained Richard. "But they were...

Can someone explain how to access the chat site on FR? I posting something and it got relegated to Chat. But where is Chat? Thanks.

MYTHS TO BEQUEATH On the Inhabitants of the Middle East 100 years from now, I want their children's children's children's children to cower and cringe in fear whenever they hear the sounds of jet engines overhead because their legends tell of fire from the sky. I want them to hide in dark caves and holes in the earth, shivering with terror whenever they hear the roar of diesel engines because the tales of their ancestors talk about metal monsters crawling over the earth, spitting death and destruction. I want their mothers to be able to admonish them with "If you...

Just started reading this book. Definitely shows that Clintonism just won't go away on its own accord. We got to heave these pathogens out. Put them in an autoclave and make them sterile. Just a few quotes from this book: (Note: book was written just prior to Her Heinous' win in NY) "Because this is not a single stray bid for public office. This is an attempt to continue in American history the ethos, style, and character of the Clinton Administration. This is the continuance of Clintonism." My personal opinion: both of these malevolent, amoral, freaks of nature, exhibit a...

Just a little comic relief. Crank up the volume for best effect.

July 2, 2003, 8:45 a.m. 10 Great Things What to love about the United States. By Dinesh D’Souza America is under attack as never before — not only from terrorists, but from people who provide a justification for terrorism. Islamic fundamentalists declare America the Great Satan. Europeans rail against American capitalism and American culture. South American activists denounce the United States for "neo-colonialism" and oppression. Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a problem if Americans were united in standing up for their own country. But in this country itself, there are those who blame America for most of the...

Where Hatred Trumps Bread By Cynthia Ozick Wall Street Journal | June 30, 2003 And what rough beast, its hour come at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born? -- W.B. Yeats When, some years ago, Golda Meir contentiously remarked, "There are no Palestinians," she was historically correct and evolutionally mistaken. She was right because the people who had only recently begun to take on the name "Palestinian" were ethnically and civilizationally Arab, part of what the Arabs themselves were pleased to call, with the poetic resonance of indivisibility, "the Arab Nation." Palestine, moreover, had its origin as a term...

OK, Folks, this is the benchmark analysis of Her Heinous, contrasting the Hildebeast with Condi. Monday » June 30 » 2003 Hillary is no match for Condi Elizabeth Nickson National Post Friday, June 27, 2003 A friend said, after meeting Stephen Harper recently, that she was surprised to find he was "deeply sexy," though not charismatic, then, warming to a favourite theme, that we had to immediately stop this indecent craving for charisma in our leaders. I'd go further. Charisma should mean immediate disqualification. Otherwise, two words: Hillary Clinton. The suspicious amongst us have been ploughing through Living History, her...

Jayson Blair, the reporter recently sacked when The New York Times discovered his penchant for fabricating stories, is not the first reporter to have trouble with the truth. More than half a century ago another New York Times reporter won a Pulitzer Prize for lying. His name was Walter Duranty, his beat was Russia, and shilling for Joseph Stalin was his specialty. On May 1, 2003 a concerted worldwide campaign began to have Duranty (who died in 1957) stripped of his 1932 Pulitzer Prize; thousands of postcards have been mailed to the Pulitzer Committee requesting a posthumous revocation of Duranty's...

<p>Rudyard Kipling called the late 19th-century struggle between Britain and Russia for dominance in the Caucasus and Central Asia with spies, secret plots and lots of assassinations "The Great Game." Updating Kipling, I am adding a new sobriquet for the 15-year-old seduction by Iran of the United States, "The Great Con-Game." It might also be considered a synonym for the "Good Cop-Bad Cop" routine, to describe how the Tehran mullahs bamboozled the State Department experts for 10 years. It's possible that the State Department's eyes, like those of a newborn babe, have at last opened wide. A meeting yesterday of high administration officials reportedly adopted a more realistic policy and a new strategy toward the Tehran terrorist theocrats who have turned the country into a concentration camp. "The Great Con-Game" came into full bloom in May 1997 with the election of Mohammed Khatami as president of Iran. Actually the game had begun earlier during the presidency of Hashemi Rafsanjani from 1989 to 1997, when some American newspaper editors were asked if they would be interested in visiting Iran and meeting its leaders. But the offer was never fully implemented. Mr. Khatami's election really made hope blossom, hope that Iran would stop being a terrorist state and a formidable enemy of the U.S. That hope reached a climax when Iran's new president charmed a New York Times postelection interviewer by quoting Alexis de Tocqueville and thus hatched the myth of Iranian "moderates." An Iranian who quoted the great French intellectual couldn't be all bad, could he? Unfortunately, American policy-makers forgot the lapidary words of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: "An Iranian moderate is somebody who has run out of ammunition." Mr. Khatami's election was enough to send State Department hopes flying higher than they had since 1979 when the successful Khomenei revolutionaries overthrew the shah and then imprisoned the U.S. Embassy staff for 444 days. "The Great Con-Game" has been responsible for one of the most mysterious chapters in the making of American foreign policy over the past two decades. I am referring to the what-the-hell-is-going-on secret diplomacy between the State Department and Iran, a country that President Bush included as part of the "axis of evil." In a message to Congress Jan. 9, 2002, he said Iran "aggressively pursues these weapons [of mass destruction] and exports terror while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom." For several years we were told (but not openly by anybody in authority) that Iran's ayatollahs were showing signs of friendliness to the United States (a k a "the Great Satan") and even softening their anti-American theocratic rhetoric. Even so wily an observer as the venerable William Buckley in a recent column wondered aloud "whether Iran will continue to move toward liberalism," which, of course, raises the question: When did this putative "move toward liberalism" begin? President Bush was a little more realistic. Speaking at the University of South Carolina May 9, Mr. Bush said that in Iran "the desire for freedom is stirring. In the face of harsh repression, Iranians are courageously speaking out for democracy and the rule of law and human rights. And the United States strongly supports their aspirations for freedom." Now you would think that in the face of such a presidential statement the State Department would be happy to find and enlist exiled Iranian groups in the battle against, to use the president's words, "an unelected few [who] repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom." Not so. For the State Department the enemy until now has been the People's Mujaheedin Organization, with a military wing stationed for several years along the Iran-Iraq border. The aim of the PMO was to oust the ayatollah fundamentalist dictatorship and establish a secular democracy. During those years, it exposed Iran's nuclear and biological warfare sites, identified acts of Iranian terrorism and assassinations the world over. PMO actions enlisted the enthusiastic support of a majority of members of Congress and many members of European parliaments. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the State Department put the PMO on a list of terrorist organizations. This designation was a Chamberlainesque act of appeasement, the successful triumph by the ayatollah regime as part of "The Great Con-Game." In outlawing the PMO, the State Department went so far as to authorize the Defense Department, while at war with Saddam Hussein, to bomb the PMO's campsites where some 5,000 Iranian militants, enemies of Tehran, were on station. At some point after the bombing, the U.S. military in Iraq were ordered (the whole story is yet to be told) to sign a cease-fire with the PMO. It was a ridiculous cease-fire agreement since the PMO units hadn't fired at anyone, least of all coalition forces fighting Saddam. On May 9 and 10, the PMO was ordered by the United States Central Command to surrender their arms, which they did. At long last, the State Department, its Iran appeasement policy a heap of ash and rubble, has come, I think, to its senses and decided it would no longer be part of "The Great Con-Game." U.S. Gen. Ray Odierno announced May 10 that the Mujaheedin "shared similar goals to the United States in forming democracy and fighting oppression and that they had been extremely cooperative," according to an AFP dispatch. "The Great Con-Game" appeasement policy began with the Clinton administration which put the PMO on the State Department list of terrorist organizations. An unnamed senior Clinton official told the Los Angeles Times (Oct. 9, 1997): "The inclusion of the People's Mujaheedin was intended as a goodwill gesture to Tehran and its newly elected moderate President Mohammed Khatami." Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk told Newsweek on Sept. 26, 2002, that the terrorist designation of the Mujaheedin was part of the Clinton administration's strategy and was due to "the White House interest in opening up a dialogue with the Iranian government." And, incredibly, the Bush administration was suckered into participating in "The Great Con-Game" including allowing the bombing of potential allies against the Iran theocracy. In the meantime, U.S. intelligence, according to The Washington Post, has found that al Qaeda militants operating in Iran were involved in the May 12 suicide bombings in Riyadh. So at long last "The Great Con-Game" has come to an end. The question remains: What about the 5,000 PMO fighters?</p>

May 27, 2003, 8:45 a.m. The Moment of Truth? U.S. policy could determine Iran’s destiny. After two and a half years of internal bickering and paralyzing turf battles, the national-security apparatus seems to be gearing up to define our Iran policy. The Washington Post, which is usually right about such things, has announced that a high-level meeting was scheduled for Tuesday morning, and my own more modest sources tell me of unfortunate bureaucrats canceling dinner and travel plans in order to work straight through the holiday weekend to respond to more than three dozen pages of queries from the National...

May 23, 2003, 8:50 a.m. Echoes of Lincoln The continuing Lincoln debate. By Gabriel Ledeen Amid the glut of media attention on President Bush's landing on the USS Lincoln — and the subsequent protestations by various Democratic leaders — the event's substantial historical and symbolic significance has been ignored. With questions ranging from cost estimates to docking delays and sex appeal, the most important aspect of the incident is the one that has remained unexamined: What does it mean? The setting of the speech was obviously symbolic, not merely because the president landed on a carrier returning home from battle...

PRINT WINDOW CLOSE WINDOW AT WAR To America's Soldiers An open letter. BY BARBARA J. MAKUCH Wednesday, April 9, 2003 12:01 a.m. I want to thank you for my existence. I want to thank you for your sacrifices, and for your courage, because without your heroism, this world would indeed be a different place. Were it not for the brave soldiers who liberated my father from Dachau, and my mother and her family from the Nazi slaveholders, I would not be here today. Nor would millions of others, all of whom remain indebted to you. My mother and her family...