Free Republic

John Burns, the great New York Times reporter, offers us a brutally blunt assessment of how badly Western correspondents covered Saddam Hussein's regime. His report, excerpted by The Wall Street Journal and Editor & Publisher, is spreading rapidly on the Internet and is bound to have an impact on the public's already low respect for most journalists. The compulsively candid Burns, until recently the New York Times bureau chief in Iraq, wrote his comments for the new book "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq" (The Lyons Press), a collection of first-person accounts by journalists in Iraq. Burns, who has...

Immediately after the President's speech on Iraq, ABC radio went to its damage control and counterattack segment(under the guise of analysis). First up was a foreign policy 'expert', which they loudly trumpeted as working for the Reagan, Bush, and (suddenly mumbled) Clinton administrations, implying that he was oh so impartial. He immediately began to attack Bush's credibility, focusing on how there was no connection between Al Queada and Iraq. Said Bush wants badly to imply such a connection, while being careful not to actual state any proof, since "clearly there is absolutely no connection between Iraq and Al Quaeda." I...

WASHINGTON, June 27 — In one of the first consequences of its landmark ruling on gay rights on Thursday, the Supreme Court today set aside the lengthy prison sentence imposed on a gay Kansas teenager for having had sex with a younger boy. In a brief order with little elaboration, the court vacated the 17-year sentence imposed in 2000 on the defendant, Matthew Limon, and returned the case to the Kansas courts "for further consideration in light of Lawrence v. Texas." The case of Lawrence v. Texas, which was decided on Thursday and overturned an Texas antisodomy law, upheld the...

Ex-President Bill Clinton "sexually molested" a female steward aboard Air Force One and was later forced to apologize to the woman, a bombshell new book by White House whistleblower, Lt. Col. Robert Patterson reveals. The identity of the woman, an enlisted member of the Air Force, is being protected by Lt. Col. Patterson. But the searing new account of a commander-in-chief preying upon a military subordinate could spell trouble for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, who, as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, would have jurisdiction to investigate the incident. In "Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Osama bin Laden succeeded magnificently, it seems, in at least one of his goals: creating a rift between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Odds are that Osama shrewdly sought to create discord by deliberately choosing Saudis to be the grunts of 9/11, picking them to fill 15 of the 19 hijacker positions, even though the teams were led by an Egyptian, Mohamed Atta, and other key players were from Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. Al Qaeda had plenty of Yemenis, Kuwaitis and north Africans whom it could have tapped, but it apparently went out...