Free Republic

It's time to come to the defense of Judith Miller. Yes, the former New York Times reporter served as a mouthpiece for the Bush administration during the buildup to the Iraq War. And she certainly had a dubious role in the Plamegate scandal. But the way her colleagues have been going after her, you'd think Miller was the only journalist who abetted the Bush administration's rush to war. Or that she was the only reporter who got too cozy with officials when they maliciously leaked a CIA agent's identity. There are lots of them. Just last week, another war accomplice,...

don't know if the war in Iraq is ultimately unwinnable, but what I do know makes me skeptical of those who say so. I do know that since Vietnam, liberals have viewed every exercise of American military power (with the exception of those undertaken by President Bill Clinton) as preludes to disaster. The very first question President Ronald Reagan was asked at his first presidential press conference concerned El Salvador. The question: Did he think it was going to turn into another Vietnam? Democrats invoked Vietnam with every other sentence during the long and nasty controversy about aiding the resistance...

BERLIN -- A multimillion-dollar campaign to boost Germans' low self-confidence has backfired after it emerged that its slogan was coined by the Nazis. The $34 million "Du Bist Deutschland -- You Are Germany" -- campaign was devised to inspire Germans to stop moaning and do something good for their country. Beethoven, Einstein and the sports stars Franz Beckenbauer and Michael Schumacher have been cited in advertisements encouraging Germans to take more pride in their homeland. But a historian from Ludwigshafen has provoked an uproar with his discovery that the same "Du Bist Deutschland" cry was used at Nazi rallies in...

"Let's do it." With those last words, convicted killer Gary Gilmore ushered in the modern era of capital punishment in the United States, an age of busy death chambers that will likely see its 1,000th execution in the coming days. After a 10-year moratorium, Gilmore in 1977 became the first person to be executed following a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision that validated state laws to reform the capital punishment system. Since then, 997 prisoners have been executed, and next week, the 998th, 999th and 1,000th are scheduled to die. Robin Lovitt, 41, will likely be the one to earn...

Baghdad - The Iraqi army said on Thursday it had seized a number of booby-trapped children's dolls, accusing insurgents of using the explosive-filled toys to target children. The dolls were found in a car, each one containing a grenade or other explosive, said an army statement. The government said that two men driving the car had been arrested in the western Baghdad district of Abu Ghraib. "This is the same type of doll as that handed out on several occasions by US soldiers to children," said government spokesperson Leith Kubba. It was not immediately clear when the find was made...

Are journalism-school faculties hotbeds of liberalism, and should colleges take steps to address this? John Tierney, the self-described libertarian/contrarian columnist for The New York Times, certainly thinks so--or so he said in a recent column, which drew a wide response from readers. Tierney is not entirely wrong, of course, but one should keep in mind that this is the man who, this past summer, dubbed the Valerie Plame/CIA leak scandal "Nadagate," saying it featured "a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not...

Pentagon officials say they are increasingly worried that Washington's political fight over the Iraq war will dampen what has been high morale among troops fighting a tenacious and deadly enemy. Commanders are telling Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that ground troops do not understand the generally negative press that their missions receive, despite what they consider significant achievements in rebuilding Iraq and instilling democracy. The commanders also worry about the public's declining support for the mission and what may be a growing movement inside the Democratic Party to advocate troop withdrawal from Iraq. "They say morale is very high," said...

War is hell. But it’s worse when the Marines bring out their new urban combat weapon, the SMAW-NE. Which may be why they’re not talking about it, much. This is a version of the standard USMC Shoulder Mounted Assault Weapon but with a new warhead. Described as NE - "Novel Explosive"- it is a thermobaric mixture which ignites the air, producing a shockwave of unparalleled destructive power, especially against buildings. A post-action report from Iraq describes the effect of the new weapon: "One unit disintegrated a large one-storey masonry type building with one round from 100 meters. They were extremely...

MR. ROCKEFELLER: Mr. President, we are here today to debate one of the most difficult decisions I have had to make in my 18 years in the Senate. There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein is a despicable dictator, a war criminal, a regional menace, and a real and growing threat to the United States. The difficulty of this decision is that while Saddam Hussein represents a threat, each of the options for dealing with him poses serious risks, to America’s servicemembers, to our citizens, and to our role in the world. It is clear that none...

Transmittal Letter Introduction. Iraq has endured decades of collapsing hopes and accumulating tragedy. It is numbing to consider the waste of so much human and resource potential. Saddam’s ambitions conflicted with the region and the international community. True to his name, he too often chose confrontation over cooperation. Ultimately these decisions led to total collapse. Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) were an integral element in the range of tools Saddam drew upon to advance his ambitions. WMD was not an end in itself. Therefore, to examine meaningfully WMD in Iraq means examining the leadership of Iraq concomitantly. The Iraq experience...

It's harder to ignore the elephant in the living room when the elephant is setting fire to it. The elephant in France -- whose name begins with the dreaded M-word journalists dare not mention -- hasn't been allowed in the living room. He's been locked in the shed out back. This gives liberals an excuse to blame the rioting in France -- which has finally died down after two weeks -- on the standard liberal villains, poverty and racism. But if racism is a cause of the rioting, poverty isn't. As Theodore Dalrymple noted in a prescient article in the...

The U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, establishing a woman's right to have an abortion, could be overturned only with the votes of at least five of the nine justices. The chances of that happening are difficult to assess, notably because neither the new chief justice, John Roberts, nor Samuel Alito - the nominee to fill pro-Roe Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's seat - have said how they might vote. However, anti-abortion groups have hailed Alito's nomination, noting that he has favored more restrictions on abortion rights than either the Supreme Court has allowed or O'Connor has supported.

A U.N. auditing board has recommended that the United States reimburse Iraq up to $208.5 million for contracting work carried out by KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, in the last two years. The International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq said in a report that the work, paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, was either overpriced or done poorly by the Virginia-based company. Compiled from an array of Pentagon, United States government and private auditors, the report did not specify how or what work has been done poorly. Halliburton said its subsidiary had cooperated with the...

Kenneth Tomlinson, the former board chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting accused by critics of trying to politicize public television and radio, has resigned from the board, it said on Thursday. Tomlinson, a Republican, quit shortly before CPB Inspector General Kenneth Konz was to publish a report after investigating his activities, including paying outside researchers to check public programming for liberal bias. Critics, including broadcasters and congressional Democrats, accused Tomlinson of trying to advance his own conservative agenda in public broadcasting, which is supposed to be non-partisan.

A Texas county official said Thursday he would not prosecute presidential adviser Karl Rove after investigating whether he voted illegally in the state. Kerr County Attorney Rex Emerson said he made the decision after reviewing a report from the county sheriff, who examined documents from Texas, Washington and Florida and interviewed several witnesses. "The facts indicate that Mr. and Mrs. Rove are Texans living in Washington, D.C., during Mr. Rove's service to the federal government," Emerson said in a statement. Emerson said there was no evidence of dual voting or falsified applications involving Rove, White House deputy chief of staff,...

It started Tuesday with ordering a tuna fish sandwich and ended more than an hour later with the guest/reporter telling the Secretary of Defense, “I'm going to keep kicking your butt.” And in-between? Let Joe Galloway tell you. For at least two years, Knight Ridder military editor and columnist Joe Galloway has been one of the most persistent and harshest critics of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld's handling of the Iraq war, and other military issues, from an informed position. Galloway is one of the celebrated war correspondents of our time, winner of a Bronze Star for valor during the Vietnam...

Pressure mounted on French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's government to move quickly to restore order as violence broke out in the suburbs of Paris for the seventh night running. The French government leader canceled a trip to Canada yesterday to tackle the spreading unrest in areas with large African and Muslim populations, and to quell a damaging dispute among his ministers over how to respond. Last night, youths went on a rampage in nine areas in poor suburbs ringing the French capital to the north and the east, setting on fire about 40 cars, two buses and trash cans,...

Longtime CBS Evening News anchorman Dan Rather on Tuesday called for a return to independent journalism, telling viewers to be critical of the plethora of "new" media outlets that feign objectivity while working to advance their own - or another's - agenda. "You need to ask yourself: Is more better, and is all that calls itself news really news," Rather told the estimated 1,400 people who filled the Maine Center for the Arts near capacity for his morning speech on the University of Maine campus. "News is something people need to know which someone, somewhere, doesn't want them to know....

The indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby yesterday on five charges related to the leak of the name of a CIA agent is the latest stone to fall from the wall the White House built around its Iraqi misadventure. It also shines a light on an administration that prefers to operate in darkness, where it can smear those who dare call attention to its folly and misdeeds. The White House got itself in this mess because once it blunders it tries to punish those who call attention to those blunders. President Bush's claim in a State of the Union speech...

A federal law to protect journalists from having to reveal their confidential sources is necessary no matter what, Tom Curley, president and CEO of The Associated Press said Tuesday. "It's nuts to see reporters going to jail for upholding professional standards," he said at the National Press Club. "We're not asking for an exception just for us. We're asking for an exception that already exists."