Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Rudy Giuliani and John McCain are the top-polling Republican rivals for the White House in 2008, but the two dinner buddies avoid talking about that topic when sharing tortellini and bresaola at Giuliani's favorite Manhattan bistros. Their latest get-together took place on Nov. 1 at Elio's, an Upper East Side eatery known for its $30 veal chops. They shared a table with McCain confidante Mark Salter, Giuliani's wife Judith and his aide-de-camp Tony Carbonetti. McCain and Giuliani reportedly chatted about the food, sports and Iraq -- everything but 2008. The same can't be said for the Arizona senator's...

Tomorrow night, I depart for a few days in Iraq. If all goes as planned I will visit with U.S. and Iraqi troops, interview some of the government leaders, and come home with a better understanding of what we're up against. I go with a pretty clear perspective on Iraq. It has evolved from studying the country and the events affecting it since Saddam invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990. My perspective, inevitably, will be changed by what I see and hear first-hand. But what if I went to Iraq armed with preconceptions based only on what we "know" from the mainstream media and the Democrats?...

 THE GOOD NEWS for the Democrats is that their leadership has settled on an electoral strategy for 2006. The bad news is that they have cribbed their game plan from one of the most disastrous campaigns in their history. The Democratic leadership has decided to elevate surrender to a party platform for the upcoming elections, with their national chairman, House leader, and last presidential nominee all running up the white flag as the Democratic war banner.When was the last time that an entire political party stood for backpedaling the way the Democrats have in the past two weeks? Since Rep....

Contact: Tracey Schmitt 202-863-8614Chairman Responds To Yesterday’s Iraq Comments By Howard Dean Washington, DC – The following are excerpts from a radio interview by RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman on WOAI-AM, San Antonio.  Chairman Mehlman responded to yesterday’s comments on the same station by DNC Chairman Howard Dean. Host:  “Now I’m sure that you’re aware by now because it’s been everywhere, that we had an interview yesterday with Howard Dean, the, your counterpart over there at the Democratic National Committee, and he said some things that are lightning rod stuff.  Some would call them even more than that.  Without getting too graphic...

Contact: Tracey Schmitt 202-863-8614 “In predicting that America will lose the war in Iraq, Howard Dean is the latest national Democrat leader to embrace retreat and defeat in the central front in the War on Terror.  His outrageous prediction sends the wrong message to our troops, the enemy, and the Iraqi people just 10 days before historic elections.  Democrats across the nation should stand up and reject the pessimism of their chairman and strategy of defeat by their Congressional leaders.” -Ken Mehlman, RNC Chairman DNC Chair Howard Dean Said We Can’t Win In Iraq:Dean: “[The] Idea That We’re Going To Win...

Walter Duranty Lives On At The New York Times! Also see the general Google search: "Duranty" + "New York Times" America's "paper of record" turns a hero into a victim. Friday, October 28, 2005 EDITOR ASKED TO EXPLAIN EDITING Lisa Huang Fleischman writes to New York Times public editor Byron Calame: Mr. Calame—I’ve never bothered to write the NY Times before, because your paper seems to make a practice of sinking to new lows every time I look, although I admit I, like many others, hardly ever look anymore. But this last was really contemptible. Your paper profiled Cpl....

Washington -- When retired Gen. William Westmoreland (Ret.) died this week in Charleston, S.C., the press erupted with reminiscences, mostly about him and the Vietnam War, mostly permeated with the myths of the Kultursmog , the politically-polluted culture of our elites, our liberal elites. After Vietnam the general spent the rest of his life refighting the war. He never learned that it was a war we could not win. He was a failure. These are three of the foul thoughts that pollute the liberals' culture and were repeated in many of his obituaries. I knew Westmoreland later in life, not...

A Familiar Place It got ugly in postwar Germany, too. With all the nay saying about our presence in Iraq, it's worth noting that none of these difficulties are particularly new. No postwar occupation has been without serious challenges, including the occupation of Germany after World War II. The New York Times ran a series of news stories in late 1945 reporting, in part, the following: "Germans Reveal Hate of Americans," October 31, 1945 The German attitude toward the American occupation forces has swung from apathy and surface friendliness to active dislike. According to a military government official, this is...

"Party Of No" Offers Nothing But Pessimism And Retreat As President Bush Works To Spread Freedom In Iraq "The lesson of this experience is clear: The terrorists can kill the innocent - but they cannot stop the advance of freedom. The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11 ... if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi ... and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like Bin Laden. For the sake of our Nation's security, this will not happen on my watch." "We have more...

“The Democrats in Congress and in the blogosphere can be counted on to accentuate the negative. But when your friends get the anxious look that Chairman John Warner wore throughout the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, it's time to worry.”Just a few months ago, Iraq was a half-forgotten war, almost impolite to mention in the daily chatter of policy and politics in Washington. Now, in the week before the 4th of July, Iraq has become the city's central topic of conversation, not just in official forums but in the private rooms where people say what they think.In the...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. It is difficult to decide whether the trade figures for 2004 or the Bush Administration's reaction to them indicate the greater danger to the American economy and nation. Last year's trade deficit hit $617.7 billion -- surpassing the record 2003 deficit by 24 percent. The deficit in goods was even higher, at $666.2 billion. The imbalance increased as a share of the economy to 5.3 percent of gross domestic product, up from 4.5 percent in 2003. This is a situation usually associated with underdeveloped countries on the brink of financial collapse....

As in the days of yellow journalism, the Times can now be counted on to deliver the paper's biases on any page and in any article....

Iraq will surrender its soul to America only when the US army has left There is growing dissension and dismay in the US armed forces about their prospects of victory in Iraq. The yellow ribbons, lapel pins and yard signs expressing solidarity with the nation's soldiers are still conspicuous around army bases across America. But commanders and soldiers alike are conducting an increasingly anguished debate. There are four reasons for this. First, many service people are shocked by the incontrovertible evidence that the justifications offered by the Bush administration for invading Iraq — WMD and a link with international terrorism...

(Any given day) X U.S. (Marines/Soldiers) were killed today in (Mosul/Falluja/Anbar/Baghdad) and the (Green Zone/Police Headquarters/Children's Zoo) was attacked by a car bomb killing X Iraqis and wounding X. In the face of the mounting violence, U.S. officials (enter some irrelevent criticism or slant highlighting perceived lack of planning or administration incompetence).

Al Qaeda To America: You Can Run But You Cannot Hide By: Christopher G. Adamo Who can ever forget the stirring warning issued by President Bush, on his September 20, 2001 speech to a joint session of Congress, addressing the 9-11 attacks? Clearly, he had the resolve as president, and he knew that this nation’s military fully possessed the ability to act on that resolve, in a manner that would put the terrorists to flight, and ultimately see their destruction. What the President didn’t realize at that time was the presence of an army of cultural "insurgents" already residing within...

Bush's ratings still in low range of presidencyPRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup survey finds Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry enjoying a slight lead over President George W. Bush, while Bush's approval ratings remain relatively unchanged, but for the most part in negative territory. The president's continuing strength is in the public's perception of how well he is fighting the war on terrorism, while his performance ratings in other areas -- the economy, foreign affairs, the situation in Iraq, energy policy, and prescription drugs for older Americans -- all elicit higher disapproval than approval.The poll, conducted June 3-6, overlapped news of...

Nothing has been quite as depressing as watching Washington and New York melt down during these past two months. History in D.C. is apparently measured by hours, not decades — and its lessons are gleaned from last night's reruns. Liberal pundits went ballistic over Abu Ghraib and Fallujah. Worse still, many conservatives bailed or triangulated. Meanwhile, bin Laden's clique talks endlessly of payback for Jerusalem, Afghanistan, and Iraq — jettisoning the casus belli of his 1998 fatwa about U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and the U.N. blockade — even as our elites, aping the Spanish, claim that only Iraq stirred...

What is the greatest dynamic in American Conservatism today? It drives the decision of third party voters and major party primary voters, as well as those who don’t vote. It is the idea that fundamental change is impossible. The idea of winning key battles such as school prayer and abortion has long been thought impossible, now you’ll hear some talk about the idea of arresting the growth of government or even eliminating the income tax and beyond the realm of the possible. Dennis Kucinich holds more hope for the Department of Peace than most Conservatives hold for even cutting the...

The Culture War is Over. Is It Still Worth Fighting? -------------------------------------------------------- By E. Andrew Eccleston The culture war is over. Those who are among the cultural conservatives have lost. The evidence is everywhere not only has traditional morality been defeated it has been driven out of the public square. Bush nominee William Pryor Jr. and Alabama Attorney General faces opposition and most probably a filibuster in the Senate for his Orthodox Catholic beliefs. The Supreme Court in the recent Lawrence vs Texas has swept away state sodomy laws. Emboldened by this victory cultural liberals have set their eyes on gay...

Time to face facts: Gays gain victory The gays have won. The problem is no one will admit it. The biggest and latest news is that Canada is poised to legalize same-sex marriage. But the signs of the gay victory have been all around for us for years. The sitcom "Will and Grace" features openly gay characters who joke about their sex lives in ways that little more than a decade ago would have sparked complaints if uttered by heterosexuals, let alone homosexuals. Showtime's "Queer as Folk" depicts random gay sex in precisely the same trivial terms that HBO's "Sex...

ICONOCLAST DAILY NOTEBOOK.... Misunderstanding Evil .... May 11 2003: Today's recommended reading is brief essay on the City Journal Web site by Theodore Dalrymple. The piece is entitled The Morality of Terror. Basically, Dalrymple sums up his thesis in two cogent opening paragraphs: At the recent meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference in Malaysia, the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr. Mohammed Mahathir, said 'the causes of bitterness and anger . . . of terrorists should be identified and removed.' He added that people would not be willing to blow themselves up and kill others if they did not have a...

Having been forced to recognize that our soldiers won a brilliant military victory in Iraq, media commentators are trying to minimize that achievement by loudly proclaiming how much more difficult it will be to "win the peace" by establishing a stable and benevolent new government in Iraq. What Iraq needs is a much more radical reform: not the sharing of political power but the limiting of political power--a focus, not on the prerogatives of ethnic groups, but on the rights of the individual.

The French government's opposition to a war on Iraq is strongly supported by most people living in France. That includes some five million Muslims, many of them ethnic Arabs, who comprise almost 10 percent of the country's population. These Muslims, along with France's long-standing interests in the Middle East, may help explain President Jacques Chirac's call for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Hamid Kaci, 31, who owns a dry-cleaning shop in northern Paris. is a strong supporter these days of France's conservative president, Jacques Chirac. Mr. Kaci, who was born in the region of Kabylia in northern Algeria, does...

The US warned on Sunday night that a bioterrorist attack that could kill thousands was inevitable and urged industrial and developing nations to spend tens of billions of dollars more to gear up medical systems to cope with the threat. "There is going to be an attack. Whether it is in western Europe, the US, Africa, Asia or wherever, you have got to anticipate that there is going to be a bioterrorism attack and the only way to defend yourself is by getting prepared," said Tommy Thompson, health secretary. In an interview with the Financial Times, he said the wave...

A generation ago, some school districts fought backwater parents to establish smoking areas in high schools. Smoking was illegal, tobacco was unhealthy and all that. But kids were going to smoke anyway. Administrators had to lure smokers out of bathrooms and back into class. Suggesting school smoking areas was hip.It didn't matter that teens puffed away on display as role models, that administrators were ushering students toward emphysema and lung cancer. What mattered was not to be "square." It would be like wearing a narrow tie or a crew cut!Today, smoking is out. But the same adult attitudes thrive.The...