Free Republic

When Sidney Powell spoke to conservative radio host Howie Carr on Nov. 20, she included Serbia among four countries she accused of interfering with the Nov. 3 Presidential election. Four days earlier, a former member of Serbia's parliament published stunning evidence to support Powell's assertion. Srjdan Nogo not only showed how Serbia manipulated vote totals. He exposed the connections between the highest officials in the Serbian government, Serbian leaders in technology and telecommunications, George Soros, former Vice President Joe Biden, the CIA and other government agencies in the United States. Among the figures Nogo mentions in his articles for the...

In fact, captured terrorists went out of style a long time ago, so that’s not the actual change. Until recently — like, say, two weeks ago — the Department of Defense used the term unlawful combatant as the label for terrorists captured by American military and intelligence forces as a way to distinguish them from uniformed soldiers of a recognized state authority in a straight-up fight. Their new manual dispenses with that term, the Federation of American Scientists noticed today (via Steven Aftergood and Olivier Knox): When it comes to Department of Defense doctrine on military treatment of detained persons,...

After the ISIS defeated the Raqqa base manned by Division 17 of the Syrian army, the countless POWs were then beheaded and their heads were displayed for public view in the city square. Shoebat.com was the first to obtain this extremely gory footage: Shoebat.com also translated what the ISIS spokesperson said during the filming: In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful He had fulfilled his promise and defeated the enemy by himself. Your brothers here, the soldiers of the Islamic Caliphate, Allah had blessed us a great blessing from him. He had allowed us to defeat Division 17....

At first you may think, “That sounds reasonable. After all, who can really predict the future?” But then read DOJ’s next sentence: “This position is limited to the authority upon which the Government is relying to detain the persons now being held at Guantanamo Bay.” Turns out it’s not about the future at all. It’s about the people about whom we’ve had the better part of eight years to develop a position on what “substantial” assistance is and which “associated forces” are eligible for indefinite detention. Obama doesn’t want to say he is relying on Article II — even though...

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),...

I am a former soldier, not a lawyer. I view the recent majority rulings of our Supreme Court concerning unlawful combatants such as in Hamdi, Rasul, Hamdan, and Boumediene as adding, not detracting, to the bloody chaos of war. In addition, the entire debate about using intelligence as evidence against the unlawful combatants, even that which was derived by coercive techniques, is flawed. Perhaps we should not pull the wings off flies like Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed during this War on Terror but misery should be an unlawful combatants only lot in life. Beyond extending our Constitution...

Nearly seven years after 9/11, the U.S. homeland hasn't been struck again and American civil liberties remain intact. So how does Congress say "thank you"? By trying to ruin the men who in good faith set the legal rules that have kept us safe. That's the political story unfolding in Washington, as Democrats fire up their latest round of "torture" hearings. Prevented from trying to impeach President Bush by cooler heads, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers has resorted to issuing subpoenas to assail current and former officials for allowing aggressive interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other murderers. About 60...

I am not expert on Con law or trying to read SCOTUS decisions. I am wondering if the way the SCOTUS ruled this case was in effect during World War II, or any previous war, would the POWs captured and held in camps have the ability to sue in Federal Courts?

On Monday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that al Qaeda agent Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri can't be detained as an enemy combatant. The press corps is reporting--no, shouting, cheering, doing somersaults--that this is further proof that Bush Administration detainee policies are doomed to legal oblivion. Well, here's a wager: This decision is the outlier and will be overturned on appeal, while most of the Administration's legal antiterror architecture will survive past January 20, 2009. Any takers?

For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary February 14, 2007 Executive Order Trial of Alien Unlawful Enemy Combatants by Military Commission By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (Public Law 109‑366), the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40), and section 948b(b) of title 10, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Establishment of Military Commissions. There are hereby established military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants for offenses triable by...

KERRY TELLS COLLEGE STUDENTS: GET A GOOD EDUCATION OR YOU'LL END UP STUCK IN IRAQ...

You'll hear a lot of mottos in the military. One key phrase is "hurry up and wait," which definitely applied to the friends and families of 29 Marines returning from Iraq Tuesday. They spent a couple extra hours waiting at Fort Snelling because one Marine had to spend a couple extra hours at a Los Angeles airport. "My surprise was when he told me he wasn't making the flight with the rest of his unit," says Terry Brown, mother of Staff Sergeant Dan Brown. Brown, who has now served two tours of duty in Iraq, couldn't get through LAX security....

The troubled Bush administration won a rare victory this week. The Senate voted to close federal courts to Salim Gherebi, an enemy combatant imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. He is suing the president and the secretary of defense for $100 million in compensatory damages and $1 billion in punitive damages for violation of his rights under the U.S. Constitution. His is one of 174 suits filed on behalf of terrorist detainees, none of them U.S. citizens, that have undermined the war against terrorism. That outcome is indeed the purpose of suits instigated by left-wing American lawyers. Court filings demanding high-speed Internet...

Senate Approves Limiting Rights of U.S. Detainees By ERIC SCHMITT Published: November 11, 2005 WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - The Senate voted Thursday to strip captured "enemy combatants" at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of the principal legal tool given to them last year by the Supreme Court when it allowed them to challenge their detentions in United States courts. The vote, 49 to 42, on an amendment to a military budget bill by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, comes at a time of intense debate over the government's treatment of prisoners in American custody worldwide, and just days after the...

The body count has returned. . . . [. . .] . . . Although there is no independent way to gauge the body count, the numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan do not seem to be consciously inflated . . . . . . There may be 47 bodies spread out on the streets of Karabilah, but who are they? . . . it is impossible to know for sure who was an insurgent, who was a member of a local militia, who was a criminal smuggler, and who was an innocent bystander. . . . since the military knows...

As time passes, we hear more and more 'horror stories' about what is going on at the prison for bad guys in Cuba. The problem with the prisoners at Gitmo is not training or lack of leadership, but that the news media has been given access to the prison in the first place. In the past week, I have hear about 'storm troopers' who raided a prisoner's cell, and torture tactics used to get prisoners to speak. Somehow, we have forgotten that we are at war, and this kind of stuff happens in war. I am not in favor of...

Amnesty International's latest report didn't denounce conditions for U.S. troops captured and held in detention facilities in Iraq. That's because, as far as anyone knows, there are no camps for American prisoners of war in Iraq. According to Pentagon sources, there is only one U.S. soldier listed as missing-captured in Iraq. Sgt. Keith Maupin, 21, has been missing since April 2004. Terrorists in Iraq don't take prisoners. They fight to kill. Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon's POW/MIA office, noted that while there is no way of knowing how the terrorists would treat U.S. detainees, it is clear how they...

THE Vietnam War is universally regarded as a disaster for what it did to the American and Vietnamese people. However, 30 years after the war's end, the reasons for its outcome remain a matter of dispute. The most popular explanation among historians and journalists is that the defeat was a result of American policy makers' cold-war-driven misunderstanding of North Vietnam's leaders as dangerous Communists. In truth, they argue, we were fighting a nationalist movement with great popular support. In this view, "our side," South Vietnam, was a creation of foreigners and led by a corrupt urban elite with no popular...

...[T]he ICRC is alleging that the psychological conditions faced by Guantanamo detainees are "tantamount to torture."... Because--we kid you not--prisoners are being held for indefinite periods, and the uncertainty is stressful. And because some prisoners are subjected to psychological pressure techniques during interrogations aimed at thwarting further terrorist attacks. ...The basic idea behind granting POW status is that soldiers who surrender or are captured are not to be punished so long as they have behaved according to certain rules--such as fighting in uniform and doing their best to direct their own attacks at enemy soldiers rather than civilians. Part of...

On November 8, 2004, a U.S. federal judge ruled that the Bush administration had improperly ignored the Geneva Conventions in establishing military commissions to try detainees at the Guantánamo Bay U.S. naval base as war criminals. Ted Lapkin's timely article delves into the complexities of the Geneva Conventions, and how much they should apply to the war on terrorism. —The Editors. From Manhattan to Mindanao, Islamist zealots draw no distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Jihadists target women, children, and the elderly without even the pretence of discrimination. In June 2004, an Al-Qaeda affiliated group distributed a video proudly documenting...