Free Republic

Susan Rice is not the best choice to lead State DepartmentAmbassador to the United Nations Susan Rice’s deceptive Benghazi spin ought to be enough to sink her bid for promotion. Mrs. Rice’s infamous talking points insisted that a YouTube video, rather than preplanned terrorism, prompted the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya. Yet there’s plenty more in her past that calls into question her fitness as a potential replacement for Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state. Mrs. Rice made the rounds on Capitol Hill last week in an attempt to round up support. She met...

A U.S. ambassador is dead, and over 30 U.S. embassies across the globe are under violent attack as a direct result of President Obama’s attempted appeasement of radical Islam. How many more Americans will die before that policy can be reversed and Obama removed from office? Keep in mind that by international treaty and tradition, every embassy in a foreign nation is considered the sovereign soil of that nation. Climbing a wall and invading an embassy compound is the same as invading that country. The horrific events of Sept. 11, 2012, in Egypt and Benghazi were a logical and predictable...

Wazzup, President Obama? You've got room on your schedule to schmooze hip-hop radio DJs, debate Nicki Minaj's rap lyrics, hobnob with big donor celebs Jay-Z and Beyonce, and hang with Hollywood gossip TV anchors. _ We see your passion on the golf course, basketball court and beach. We see you late night on Letterman and Leno. We see your boundless energy on the campaign trail. We see your Twitter donation solicitations from dusk till dawn. But when it comes time to play leader of the free world in times of international crisis, it's "see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya." He's...

Leading from behind leads to global chaosThe tragic events that took place in Libya and Egypt this week were the inevitable consequences of weak U.S. leadership. America and the world cannot afford four more such years. In Benghazi, four Americans including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens were murdered in a coordinated attack on the U.S. consulate by Islamic militants. On the same day, al Qaeda released a video in which leader Ayman al-Zawahri eulogized Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan al Qaeda commander believed killed in June by a U.S. drone strike. This was no coincidence. In Cairo, demonstrators — upset over...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's tour of Malawi had an inauspicious finale on Monday as she and her detail were targeted by a swarm of bees at the airport. Clinton and her detail were headed to board her plane at Kamuzu International Airport in the capital, Lilongwe, when a swarm of bees descended on the farewell gathering. According to press reports, Malawi and American officials scampered for cover while Clinton ran onto the jet for cover.

Blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng said a U.S. official told him that Chinese authorities threatened to beat his wife to death had he not left the American Embassy. Speaking by phone from his hospital room in Beijing on Wednesday night, a shaken Chen told The Associated Press that U.S. officials relayed the threat from the Chinese side. After six days in hiding, Chen emerged from the embassy Wednesday after U.S. officials said China had assured his safety. His account contrasts with earlier comments by Chen's supporters saying that he had vowed to stay in China to continue his activism. He...

Barack Obama joins Open Government Partnership for group photo Rich Shulman writes I don't know much about diplomatic protocols, but I would guess that waving during the group photo is something to avoid.

Although Saudi King Abdullah warned Barack Obama not to push Mubarak over the edge, according to reports by the Times of London, CIA director Leon Panetta believed the Egyptian president would step down.Just a few minutes ago, the New York Times reported that Mubarak refused to step down. Not only did the speech prove U.S. estimates wrong, it casts doubt over whether their game plan was ever working at all. Even as Mr. Mubarak spoke, angry chants were shouted from huge crowds in Cairo who had anticipated his resignation but were instead confronted with a plea from the president...

An Obama fundraiser awarded a cushy European ambassadorship after bundling more than half a million dollars for his presidential campaign ran her U.S. embassy like a hostile dictator, spent government funds on booze and bullied staff.Here comes the good part. State Department leadership (that includes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) knew all about it but took no action, presumably because the wealthy donor—a Seattle philanthropist named Cynthia Stroum—is untouchable. At least that’s what an internal State Department investigation seems to indicate. Made public this week, a scathing report of the probe says that during her year-long tenure as U.S....

The second year of President Obama's foreign-policy and national-security management continued the pattern of decline established in his first year. The unbridled and naive optimism that ill-served the country in Mr. Obama's failed freshman outing gave way to a sense of policy drift in 2010. Even the president began to question whether the United States should maintain its primary global leadership role. Mr. Obama's first-week-in-office pledge to close the U.S. detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year remained unfulfilled, the upside of which is that it has reduced the number of terrorists being released to continue their deadly...

It is hardly a typical gift from one world leader to another – a painting by a graffiti artist with three convictions for criminal damage. But that is one of the presents David Cameron chose to give Barack Obama on his first visit to the White House as Prime Minister, apparently to demonstrate they share a common taste in contemporary art. For Mr Cameron picked a work by a little-known British artist who perfected his skill defacing or beautifying – depending on one's point of view – the underpasses, bridges and train carriages of his native south London. Eine's handmade...

In June 2009, the North Korean government congratulated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his re-election. The de facto head of state, Kim Yong-Nam, said that he “sincerely wished [Ahmadinejad] success in his responsible work to frustrate pressure and interference of outsiders and build [an] independent and prosperous Iran." Kim also said that Ahmadinejad's electoral victory demonstrated the people’s support of the Iranian president and expressed his hope that Iran would succeed in countering foreign interference in its domestic affairs.[1] Nuclear: According to Kim Chong Ryong, North Korea’s ambassador to Tehran, Pyongyang supports Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology and recognizes...

Maybe it was something she didn't say. Peruvian President Alan Garcia Perez walked out on Secretary Hillary Clinton on Monday during a joint news conference in Lima, Peru, creating an awkward moment for the secretary of state. Garcia made a statement in Spanish, praising Clinton for being "a woman who represents modernity, a woman who has fought a virtuous struggle for women's rights for a very long time." He then walked out of the room, leaving Clinton alone to wait for the translation of his comments and to make her own remarks to reporters. "Well, first let me thank the...

This is not a presidency known for its reactive speed. After British Petroleum's oil rig sprung a leak in the Gulf of Mexico, it took more than a week for the Obama administration to mobilize; it has been well over a month, and the administration still has no coherent strategy to plug the leak. After Iranian protesters took to the streets in 2009, risking life and limb to defy the terroristic Ahmadinejad regime, President Barack Obama futzed around for days before weakly condemning the regime's crackdown. But this week, when Israel rightly stopped a Turkish ship carrying terrorist supporters from...

Having read Churchill’s The Gathering Storm for the third or fourth time, it strikes me as frighteningly inauspicious, and not only for the United States today. Churchill was a leading proponent of stopping Hitler before stopping him would involve the massive devastation inflicted on much of the world when World War II eventually came. He noted: We must regard as deeply blameworthy before history … [all British parties] during this fatal period. Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the State, genuine love of peace and...

Kosovo Remembered Alma Lama, May 14, 2010 AJC Commentary: Although it made the nightly news so often in the 1990s that many Americans could name it more easily than they could their states’ capitals, to a generation of news junkies in the United States, Kosovo is simply another foreign locale they would be hard-pressed to pinpoint on a map. With the aid of NATO forces, the United Nations (UN) and the United States (U.S.), Kosovo won independence from neighboring Serbia and its autocratic leader Slobodan Milosevic, now deposed and deceased. Now it is an independent country, recognized by most of...

In a new and ridiculous policy, the US is denying Israeli scientists who work at the Dimona reactor site an opportunity to refresh their knowedge, Joshua Pundit reports: Ma'ariv reported today that the Israeli government was stunned when every nuclear technician at Israel's Dimona reactor who had submitted visa requests to visit the United States for ongoing university education in Physics, Chemistry and Nuclear Engineering had their visa applications summarily rejected, specifically because of their association with the Dimona reactor.

White House won't say if Karzai is still an ally By Jordan Fabian - 04/06/10 02:00 PM ET White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs would not say Tuesday if the administration considers Afghan President Hamid Karzai an ally. Gibbs continued his criticism of the Afghan president after he took a shot at Western leaders and the United Nations for election fraud in last year's presidential contest. Asked at the daily press briefing if the U.S. considers Karzai an ally, Gibbs said "Karzai is the democratically elected leader of Afghanistan." Pressed on the issue, Gibbs said that "the remarks he’s made...

The strife between Israel and the United States concerns something far bigger than the proximity talks with the Palestinians. As far as President Barack Obama and his senior advisers are concerned, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to blame for nothing less than damaging the standing of the U.S.in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Just as Netanyahu received his standing ovation at the AIPAC conference, Obama and his advisers were ruminating over an altogether different convention - the Arab League begins a meeting Tripoli on Saturday. For the Americans, Netanyahu's Likudnik speech and the Shpeherd Hotel project matched in...

For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Benjamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation. After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Obama walked out of his meeting with Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with...