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A Republican Party activist and former top GOP congressional aide who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is harshly criticizing the U.S. diplomatic effort in Iraq, accusing American diplomats of gross and potentially criminal negligence and incompetence.

The U.S. State Department of North Korea In the Six-Party Talks with North Korea, it gets ever more difficult to tell which side of this erstwhile hexagon Condi Rice’s State Department is negotiating for. On Feb. 6, the U.S. special envoy to these talks, Chris Hill, gave the Senate Foreign Relations Committee an update on the North Korea denuclearization agreement reached almost a year ago, which keeps running into snags such as North Korea’s insistence on first receiving a refund of some $25 million in allegedly crime-tainted funds frozen in Macau (which Hill arranged for Kim Jong Il to receive...

    Shadow Warriors   By David ForsmarkFrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, February 04, 2008 Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of SurrenderBy Kenneth TimmermanCrown Forum, $25.95, 404 pp. At long last, the CIA and the State Department have targeted a government they have identified as an aggressive threat to world peace and largely countered its foreign policy through psy-ops, propaganda, selective leaks of intelligence and covert operations.And who was the target of this covert campaign? Are these operations aimed at the Islamofascists in Iran? How about Vladimir Putin and his increasingly fascist government in Russia?...

Foggy Bottom Apostate January 25, 2008 Jay Lefkowitz, President Bush's special envoy for human rights in North Korea, has recently pointed out that our current approach to Pyongyang is failing. Lord help a diplomat who tells the truth. Mr. Lefkowitz, growled Condoleezza Rice at a Tuesday press conference in Europe, "doesn't work on the six-party talks [on North Korea], he doesn't know what's going on in the six-party talks and he certainly has no say in what American policy will be in the six-party talks." For good measure, the Secretary added that she "would doubt very seriously that [the Chinese...

(Adds North Korean media report) SEOUL, Jan 4 (Reuters) - North Korea said on Friday it would boost its war deterrent, a day after the United States said it was sending its nuclear envoy back to Asia to discuss an atomic disarmament deal on which Pyongyang has missed a deadline.North Korea failed to fully account for its nuclear weapons programme or answer U.S. suspicions that it has secretly tried to enrich uranium for weapons. It was supposed to have made the declaration by the end of 2007. "(We) will further strengthen our war deterrent capabilities in response to U.S....

Optimism about North Korea is sadly misguidedBy Richard Halloran Sunday, Dec 16, 2007, Page 9 Once again, rosy optimism is billowing out of the Korean Peninsula. And once again, the rest of the world might remember that atop the regime in Pyongyang sit world-class thugs who have repeatedly refused to abide by their agreements. US President George W. Bush started off the latest surge of hope two weeks ago with a personal letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, urging him in polite but firm terms to keep his pledge to abandon his nuclear weapons. Six years ago, Bush made...

Sri Lanka Sank 6 N. Korean Ships Carrying Weapons between this Feb. and Oct. 12/14/2007 Sohn Ji-heun /begin my summary Six N. Korean ships were sunk by Sri Lankan Navy between Feb. 28 and late October of this year. They were shipping weapons for Tamil Tigers, which were designated as a terrorist organization by U.S. State Dept. Both N. Korean crews and Tamil terrorists were aboard the ships. They were all presumed to be killed. Sri Lankan Navy was able to sink them with the help of U.S., which passed on intelligence on the location of (N. Korean) ships in...

British spy chiefs have grave doubts that Iran has mothballed its nuclear weapons programme, as a US intelligence report claimed last week, and believe the CIA has been hoodwinked by Teheran. Iran 'hoodwinked' CIA over nuclear plans Analysts believe that Iranian staff, knowing their phones were tapped, deliberately gave misinformation The timing of the CIA report has also provoked fury in the British Government, where officials believe it has undermined efforts to impose tough new sanctions on Iran and made an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities more likely.

Top US State Department negotiator Christopher Hill was spotted yesterday at Washington's Dulles International Airport by Japanese TV reporters and crews.When pressed, he indicated that he would be going to "one additional stop" on the way to China from Japan.Later it was confirmed he is going to Pyongyang, North Korea. He will meet his counterpart, Kim Gye Gwan, Kim Jong il's chief negotiator.He will apparantly be in the "Peoples Paradise" between 3-5 December, to work out details facilitating the removal of North Korea from the US Government's list of "Terrorist Countries", which is expected within the next few weeks...

Remember Nancy Pelosi's spring break in Damascus? Condoleezza Rice apparently does not. When the House Speaker paid Syrian strongman Bashar Assad a call back in April, President Bush denounced her for sending "mixed signals" that "lead the Assad government to believe they are part of the mainstream of the international community, when in fact they are a state sponsor of terror." Today, said sponsor of terror will take its place at the table Ms. Rice has set for the Middle Eastern conference at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Only at Foggy Bottom would Syria's last-minute decision to go to...

BY CLIFFORD MAY As America's ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton was the White House's most effective defender. Now, as an ex-diplomat, he has become among the administration's toughest critics. But he critiques from the right, not the left, which probably explains why the elite media are not eager to focus on what he has to say. The son of a Baltimore firefighter who attended Yale Law School on scholarship, Bolton combines a combative nature with a keen intellect. He is a conservative without the prefix - neither neo-con (he's skeptical about nation-building and democracy promotion) nor paleo-con...

A bitter dispute over forced assignments to Iraq has erupted inside the State Department with diplomats taking decidedly undiplomatic potshots at one another. The latest public salvo came Tuesday with a harshly critical post on the department's official blog in which a foreign service officer in Iraq skewered those who spoke out against the prospect of ordered tours of duty at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and outlying provinces. The message, titled "A Letter From Iraq to My Overwrought Colleagues," accused opponents of being spoiled elitists whose revolt against so-called "directed assignments" is embarrassing. "To my vexed and overwrought colleagues,...

JACK CRODDY, FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICER: It's one thing if someone believes in what is going on over there and volunteers. I am sorry, but, basically, that is a potential death sentence, and you know it. And then another thought—who will take care of our children? Who will raise our children if we are dead or seriously wounded? REP. DUNCAN HUNTER, R-CALIF.: I think we should fire those folks that don't want to go. You can't have people on the payroll who refuse to be deployed to the tough places. (END VIDEO CLIP) BRET BAIER, CO-HOST: There you see some of...

Listen to this audio file at LiveLeak. This guy is emblematic of the US Department of State. I've lurked at FreeRepublic for years, but when I heard this, I blew a gasket and registered. I looked at the Dept of State website for his email address, but could not find it. However, his phone is: 202-647-1318.

Fearing Iraq Pullout, State Boosting Private Chopper Force August 01, 2007 4:59 PM Kirit Radia Reports: Fearing an imminent drawdown of U.S. troops and equipment from Iraq amid escalating violence, the State Department is hiring its own private helicopter squad to ferry its personnel around the country. Government military contractors Blackwater, DynCorp and Triple Canopy are the only three companies competing for the contract, possibly valued at more than $100 million a year for up to the next five years, sources tell ABC News. The requirements call for approximately 20 helicopters with maintenance, storage and crew to ensure 24-hour availability....

The List: The World's Top Immigrant Smuggling Routes Posted June 2007 Wars, famine, and poverty drive hundreds of thousands of people each year to pull up stakes and head for greener pastures. But those seeking a better life don’t always find themselves welcome in their prospective homes. For this week’s List, FP takes a look at the dangerous routes migrants are using in order to stay one step ahead of the authorities. The Long Road from Guatemala to the United States Trends: Mexicans are still by far the largest group of illegal immigrants to the United States: In 2005, 86...

Gaza sources say Hamas ambushed US convoy, seized stockpile of weapons aimed for Fatah militias Hamas ambushed a convoy in the Gaza Strip on Sunday and seized a stockpile of US weapons transferred in recent months to militias associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, according to Hamas and Fatah sources. Gaza Violence "We obtained the US weapons and will keep hijacking any assistance the Americans provide to Fatah. Our fighters are aware of the American and Israeli conspiracies to topple our government. We're trained and well prepared to defeat the American-backed (Palestinian) agents," said a top member...

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's most senior adviser on Iraq is leaving the State Department to return to his teaching job. Philip D. Zelikow is the best-known member of Rice's academic brain trust at the State Department, and the author of sometimes contrarian appraisals of the Iraq conflict and reconstruction effort. He holds the title counselor, a sort of adviser without portfolio. In a resignation letter dated Monday, Zelikow said he will return to teaching at the University of Virginia in January. He cited a "long-standing debt to my family" and "truly riveting obligation to college bursars," for...

U.S. policymakers need to avoid two mistakes, while seizing two opportunities. The first mistake would be an overreliance on military force. As the United States has learned to its great cost in Iraq -- and Israel has in Lebanon -- military force is no panacea.... The second mistake would be to count on the emergence of democracy to pacify the region. It is true that mature democracies tend not to wage war on one another. Unfortunately, creating mature democracies is no easy task, and even if the effort ultimately succeeds, it takes decades. In the interim, the U.S. government must...

Shift in Harvard Curriculum Reflects Larger Trend Toward Global Law Leigh Jones The National Law Journal 10-24-2006 Harvard Law School's recent announcement that it is making the most sweeping changes to its first-year curriculum in 100 years heralded a major shift in legal education, including a new emphasis on global law. But some of its competitors say that they already have revamped their programs in similar ways. Harvard will begin requiring first-year students to take three new courses, including a class on legislation and regulation, another covering global legal systems and a third focusing on problems and theories. The school's...