Free Republic

I think General David Petraeus would be a great choice for McCain's VP. It would be the Heroes vs. the Zeroes.

It’s hard to imagine a more warped and callous statement about the Iraq War than this one made by Senator Charles Schumer, when asked whether he would support a troop surge in Afghanistan: Yes. The bottom line is I think Obama’s trip was brilliant. Not in the short term, but in the long term, because it’s changed the whole debate. And the whole debate now is focused on Afghanistan more than on Iraq. So: It’s not the U.S. troops who gave everything so that Iraq has a chance at a stable, viable future.

There was a spring in Barack Obama's step and a sense of heady excitement in the air as he took to the stage beside Berlin's Victory column for his latest Big Speech. Members of his expansive entourage could have been forgiven for dreaming about the West Wing offices they will occupy in January. By any yardstick, the first half of the Illinois senator's foreign tour was everything his campaign staff had wished for and a little bit more. Wherever he went, world leaders wanted to bask in his reflected glory as the presumed next president. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of...

WASHINGTON -- Surprise, surprise. Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, wants to put a halt to any more troop withdrawals for the foreseeable future. The highly politicized Petraeus seemed to be dutifully following his White House marching orders when he testified before congressional committees earlier this week. Under his scenario, there will be no drawdown of U.S. forces in that strife-ridden country until President Bush leaves office. That’s fine with Bush, who obviously has no intention of ending this futile war on his watch. Apparently feeling no responsibility for starting the war, Bush is planning to pass...

David Petraeus was diplomatic in his choice of words, and careful to honor the primacy of civilian authority over the military. But the commanding general of multi-lateral forces in Iraq has left little doubt that if a new president wanted to withdraw from Iraq faster than would reflect Petraeus's considered military opinion, he'd be happy to go home to his family. ABC's Bill Weir interviewed the Gen. Petraeus as part of a Good Morning America special today marking the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq. The opening segment focused almost exclusively on the costs of the war. Some producer...

Here is part of an article written by AP writers Dunbar, Quaid, and Gruver, that talks about the state of the race among Democrats and Republicans. This is the portion focused on the GOP, and in it we learn that sources are saying John McCain will make a trip to Europe and the Middle East "mid-March," and that he may return to Iraq and Afghanistan and hopes to meet with Gen. David Petraeus prior to his tetimony before the Congress in April: On the Republican side, John McCain, a veteran Arizona senator and former Vietnam prisoner of war who wrapped...

The U.S. just dodged a bullet in Iraq. Recently it was reported that Pentagon leaders were considering Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq since February 2007, for a prestigious redeployment to Europe. It is good news for Americans and Iraqis alike that Gen. Petraeus decided to stay in Baghdad through the fall. What's depressing is that top political and military leaders in Washington asked him to consider the move in the first place. The proposal to shift Gen. Petraeus out of Iraq reflects the unwillingness of the military as a whole to make the larger cultural changes...

It seems like only yesterday. In 1990, I first entered politics in Oklahoma. I ran for a seat on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the agency tasked with regulating public utilities and our oil and gas industry. The nine-year incumbent against whom I was running gave me an issue that was like a gift from Santa Claus. One of our major utilities had overcharged ratepayers to the tune of almost $30 million, and he had voted to let the offending public utility keep the windfall to upgrade its infrastructure. I felt the ratepayers deserved their money back, whether it was $50...

A recent study, "Good News = Less News on Iraq War," by Media Research Center, NB's parent organization, revealed that coverage of Iraq by the big three evening newscasts has declined as the news from Iraq has improved. Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace highlighted the MRC study during his interview of General David Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force - Iraq . CHRIS WALLACE: It seemed to us that you hadn't been in the news much recently, which probably is a good thing from your point of view, since you came back from Washington in September. But we decided to...

I remember the excitement. It was the week before Christmas a year ago, and I had lazily picked up my copy of Time magazine. And there it was: Time's Person of the Year for 2006 is "You." Wow! We deserved credit, Time judged, "for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game." Thanks, Time! And thanks for not choosing the obvious alternative--Nancy Pelosi, who had led the Democratic takeover of Congress. That takeover, Time editors and many others hoped, heralded our...

Reports of a steady reduction of violence in Iraq are now so consistent and credible that the effectiveness of the U.S. troop surge can no longer be denied. But if this once controversial strategy is responsible for helping reverse Iraq's slide into chaos, then its momentum must be maintained, at least in the immediate future. It would be foolish to short-circuit its gains by insisting on a drastic reduction in U.S. troop numbers before the burden of security can be shifted to Iraqi forces.

In the last few years, it has become popular to say that history is determined largely by sweeping inanimate forces of technology, the environment, gender, class or race. We play down the role of individuals - as if the notion that one person can shape history is old-fashioned. But that's hardly the case. Take Nicolas Sarkozy, the new president of France. For 60 years, the power of the state in France had steadily increased. Government workers were handed lavish entitlements and retirement packages while French competitiveness diminished in a new globalized world. Abroad, traditional French foreign policy cynically tried to...

In light of Osama bin Ladsen's videotaped message to the West (Or was it a press release from DNC Chairman Howard Dean?), one might be given to muse that liberal abhorrence for the President's surveillance of incoming phone calls from known terrorists might ultimately stem from self-interest. Perhaps they simply do not want to be monitored as they share strategies and talking points with the al-Qaida leader. Furthermore, the DNC may decide to keep a copy of the bin Laden tape, which could come in handy during the 2008 campaign season. Just as aspiring politicians feel compelled to pander in...

President Bush has endorsed General David Petraeus's recommendation to begin withdrawing 30,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by next summer. Yet the drawdown would only restore troop levels to where they were before the surge began in January 2007. In the final months of 2006, debate in Washington centered on how fast a reduction from pre-surge levels could occur. The Iraq Study Group recommended that approximately half of the 130,000 troops then in Iraq be withdrawn by early 2008. In marked contrast to that and similar proposals, President Bush is now endorsing a step that would mean a return to the...

Muslim terrorist leaders are "thankful" for the efforts of activist and congressional candidate Cindy Sheehan, stating in a new book Sheehan's anti-Iraq war activities and her statements against President Bush "give us hope" the U.S. will change its Mideast policies. "You [Sheehan] give us hope and you show us that there are different Americans than those whom we know," stated Ramadan Adassi, chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group in the West Bank's Anskar Refugee Camp. "This sincere woman says what we've been saying all these last years – Saddam never threatened America or its security. Now Iraq...

This is the KOmmie THREAD that Hillary will have trouble living down. This is because of the GRATITUDE expressed by the KOmmies: "Thank you Hillary for calling Petraeus a liar!" Hillary might try to explain it away but the fact remains that the Left is highly appreciative of her smear of General Petraeus. So let us now watch the KOmmies thank Hillary for moving into MoveOn territory in Bolshevik Red while the commentary of your humble correspondent, watching Hillary try to triangulate her way out of this one, is in the [brackets]: "Thank you Hillary for calling Petraeus a...

WASHINGTON - A day before President Bush's war address, Senate Democrats rejected a four-star general's recommendation to keep some 130,000 troops in Iraq through next summer and sought legislation that would limit the mission of U.S. forces. Their proposal was not expected to set a deadline to end the war, as many Democrats want, but restrict troops to narrow objectives: training Iraq's military and police, protecting U.S. assets and fighting terrorists, Democratic party officials told The Associated Press. The goal is to attract enough Republicans to break the 60-vote threshold in the Senate needed to end a filibuster. Democrats have...

This is my first post and just wanted to say HI! I run two websites. One is just for accurate news out of Iraq etc... Iraq's Inconvenient TruthThe other site made just a day ago, But has something very important to say about the Liberal ~ Socialist ~ Commie Oraganization that dis-respected Gen. David H. Petraeus Commanding General ~ Multi-National Force ~ Iraq. General David BetrayusBest To Everyone! Dan

IN THE SPRING of 1954, the US Senate convened hearings at the instigation of Senator Joseph McCarthy to press his anticommunist investigations into the Department of the Army. The hearings were broadcast live on television, and the American public was able to witness firsthand the tactics McCarthy used to intimidate his foes. At a critical moment in the hearings, a key governmental witness, Army lawyer Joseph Welch, rose to defend one of the junior Army lawyers whose career, Welch alleged, McCarthy had destroyed. Welch turned to McCarthy and memorably intoned: "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have...

David Petraeus is a soldier, so he's accustomed to the noise of the guns and the chaos of the battlefield. Snipers don't frighten him. But he had to wonder yesterday whether he had straggled into enemy lines. He was greeted on arrival in Washington by a full-page newspaper advertisement headlined: "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" This was the work of the nefarious MoveOn.org, the money machine on the loudest and leftmost fringe of the Democratic Party. No sooner had he sat down at the witness table in the storied Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office Building, where a...