Free Republic

Big lies die slowly. After a claim by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that 90% of Mexican drug dealers' military weapons (machine guns, hand grenades and missiles) come from American gun stores was exposed as a lie several months ago, it's back — this time with the imprimatur of the Government Accountability Office.A June 21 CBS "60 Minutes" report by Anderson Cooper was clearly coordinated to coincide with release of the GAO report and a similar one by "activist" Josh Sugarmann. You are likely to soon hear and read that the GAO report commissioned by Rep. Eliot...

Last fall the AT reported on a couple of instances in which members of Congress seemed to be confused as to where they lived, sometimes in order to claim tax benefits for which they were not entitled and sometimes to maintain the facade that they lived within the boundaries of the district they claimed to represent. We now have another case of residential confusion. This time a New York Democrat, Eliot Engel, and his wife claim to live in a large house in Maryland purchased in 1993 for purposes of that state's property tax exemption while Eliot files his income...

Bronx Rep. Eliot Engel may call himself a life-long Bronx resident, but he has also called Maryland his primary residence for years to get a local tax break that state officials have just squashed. Engel, who rents an apartment back in his district, also owns a $1 million house with his wife in the well-off Washington suburb of Potomac, Md. - a property that has been afforded $7,000 in tax breaks since he bought it in 1993, The Associated Press reported. To get the state and county paybacks, he had to list the property as his primary residence on county...

I figured something was up when Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY) kept calling Kosovo "Kosova" (the Albanian pronunciation) at the most recent House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing on the Balkans. Turns out Engel's swapped the last "o" in Kosovo for a central boulevard in the heart of Pec, a majority Albanian city in western Kosovo that was once the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch.........

As reported here, in a story airing on 'Today' of October 28th, NBC reporter Richard Engel delved into the most private concerns of US soldiers serving in Iraq. Engel queried one solider about his fears of dying in combat, or as he put it: "You ever worry one day your number's gonna come up?"Engel also drew soldiers out on their concerns as to the faithfulness of their loved ones back home, inviting them to discuss "the Jody," described by one soldier as "the guy who is back home with your wife or your girlfriend." Added Engel: "They worry and tell...

As Tim Graham reported here earlier this week, NBC reporter Richard Engel, who spends much of his time in Iraq, has declared: "I think war should be illegal...I'm basically a pacifist."This morning's 'Today' ran a feature Engel had put together focusing on depression among American troops serving in Iraq. Engel spoke with men of the 1st Platoon, 562nd Engineer Company. At one point, Engel asked the soldier pictured here: "You ever worry one day your number's gonna come up?'" Replied the soldier, in words echoing those of comrades over the generations: "Yeah, but you try to keep that in the...

While it only lasted about three weeks, the second Gulf War was an unqualified success. Jubilant Iraqis danced in the streets as U.S. military forces rolled into the center of Baghdad, while the dictator Saddam Hussein and his evil cohorts were, as General Tommy Franks put it on April 11, either dead or “running like hell.”      So what about TV coverage of the war? While the media covered many aspects of the war fairly well — reports from embedded journalists were refreshingly factual and were mostly devoid of commentary — television’s war coverage was plagued by the same problems...

The breeding grounds of militant Islamic terrorism span a host of different environments from the Afghan battlefields of the 1980s to places much closer to home. Richard Engel charts the careers of some of Bin Laden's converts and co-conspirators, offering an insight into Al-Qaeda's inner workings. Sitting on a rooftop in a poor Cairo neighbourhood, 38-year-old Ibrahim recalled when he first met Osama bin Laden. It was 1983 and Ibrahim was one of the leaders of the Gamaa Islamiya (Islamic Group), one of Egypt's two main Islamic militant organizations centred largely in southern Egypt around the town of Assiout. ...

Thursday's Howard Kurtz profile of NBC Baghdad correspondent Richard Engel in the Washington Post has a real clash of perspectives. First, NBC anchor Brian Williams claimed Engel "is the most agenda-less person I've met in our business." Then Engel declared "I think war should be illegal...I'm basically a pacifist." The story included no critics of Engel's reporting, but praise from Williams and CBS colleague Lara Logan, and Engel's mother. Williams asserted that Engel's reporting was fearless against annoying media critics: "In an era of instant media criticism, he calls balls and strikes in the middle of a war zone," says...

NEW YORK - NBC News has swooped in and signed Richard Engel, a former freelancer who became one of ABC's most visible war correspondents when he stayed in Baghdad while other reporters left. Engel, 29, will begin reporting for NBC from Baghdad in early May, the network said Wednesday. In the days before the war, ABC, NBC and CBS all pulled reporters from Baghdad, concerned about their safety, and didn't send them back until American troops reached the Iraqi capital. Engel, a freelancer, decided to stay. Despite inexperience that occasionally manifested itself as boyish enthusiasm, Engel was used frequently on...

The future of television, or so we are so often told, is about video on demand, movies on cell phones and full integration with the Internet. Well, it seems to see that future we need to look no further than Baghdad. An Iraqi friend of mine today showed off his new cell phone, with a slick two-inch screen and full video capability. He showed me his home movies. Video one: Severed head of a suicide bomber The head was intact except for a few front teeth that were missing. The head was on the ground, surrounded by a huddle of...

     NBC's Richard Engel conceded on Tuesday's Today that he rarely gets to report on the heroics of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, but he did this one time because those heroics saved him. Recounting how the Army unit with whom he was traveling came under attack, Engel noted how a soldier "actually stepped right in front of me protecting me with his body and started to return fire at the insurgents. And I just remember thinking that this is one of the small acts of heroism, I think you can say, that I so rarely get a chance to see...

My fellow FReepers, A friend of mine (Kevin McAdams)will be running against Eliot Engel for Congressman in New York's District 17. I am looking for any info that might help in this cause. For instance we know that dear old Eliot does not reside in his district, nor the New York City Metro area (and hasn't for over 10 years), but his real residence is the best kept secret since the atom bomb. He gets real mad when asked where he lives. If any of you can lend some pointers as to where or how to look I would be...

WASHINGTON - A high-level British delegation is heading to Damascus to warn Syria that the U.S. is serious about clamping down on suspected help it's giving Saddam Hussein's toppled regime, sources said yesterday. British Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien is expected to be in Damascus as early as tomorrow to warn President Bashar Assad that he shouldn't doubt that, if pushed, President Bush could use force to end Syrian help for the fallen Iraqi regime. O'Brien also will visit Iran during the trip - another Iraqi neighbor that has been warned to butt out of the war. Yesterday, U.S. and...