Free Republic

Republicans, I come in peace.Until very recently, Rand Paul’s project of insinuating himself comfortably within the Republican Party, and positioning himself as a plausible presidential nominee, had gone along with remarkable ease. Yes, the author of his campaign book turned out to be an unreconstructed neo-Confederate. That was a speed bump. (Who among us has not entrusted the explication of his worldview to a man who has cheered on the assassination of President Lincoln?) Paul had staged a masterful piece of political theater with his marathon Senate speech denouncing the Obama administration’s drone policy. He has assembled a top-tier campaign...

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"If these negotiations [with Iran] fail, there are two grim alternatives," said Sen. Richard Durbin, "a nuclear Iran, or war, or perhaps both." Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham returned from the Munich security conference saying that even John Kerry agrees that President Obama's Syrian policy has failed. They are urging another look at air strikes. North Korea is warning that should the annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises go forward in March, it could mean war, possibly nuclear war. Philippines President Benigno Aquino III this week compared his country's situation to Czechoslovakia in 1938, and the disputed islets off his...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Thursday that he is contemplating a run for president in 2016 and that he will likely make an announcement on a decision shortly after the 2014 midterm congressional elections.“We’ve been thinking about it,” Paul said in a phone interview. “And we will continue to think about it probably until after the 2014 elections. I haven’t made a decision, it’s a big decision you know with regard to family and the extensive travel that’s involved with it. And then also just seeing where the country is going in the...

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX WED JAN 02 2002 08:42:41 ET XXXXX BUCHANAN DECLARES: DEATH OF THE WESTThe New Year is just minutes old and now comes Pat Buchanan to warn: The Death of the West!In his ultracontroversial book, which will be banned, blocked and burned in many quarters, brave Buchanan contends that the U.S. will be a Third World nation by the year 2050. The BestSellingAuthorTVHostPresidentialCandidateColumnist predicts Europe will be inundated by an Islamic-Arab-African invasion and most First World nations, including Japan, will have begun slowly to vanish from the earth. Buchanan is primed and ready for a media ...

An estimated one-fifth of a subset of all applicants for Central Intelligence Agency positions had significant ties to the terror groups Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda, a newly released document from NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s collection revealed Monday. The document — released by Mr. Snowden as part of his National Security Agency intelligence dump — said the terrorist groups worked hard to infiltrate America’s top security agencies. CIA officials uncovered thousands of applicants, roughly one in five of a subset, with “significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,” the document states, as Ynet News reported. The specifics of those ties were...

Syrians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta say Saudi Arabia provided chemical weapons for an Al-Qaeda linked terrorist group which they blame for the August 21 chemical attack in the region, a Mint Press News report says. The article co-authored by a veteran AP reporter, said interviews with doctors, residents, anti-government forces and their families in Ghouta suggest the terrorists in question received chemical weapons via Saudi spymaster Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud. The report quoted the father of a militant as saying that his son and 12 others were killed inside a tunnel used...

Meanwhile, the media has spread new proofs of the U.S. intelligence involvement to chemical attack near Damascus. Hacker got access to U.S. intelligence correspondence and published U.S. Army Col. ANTHONY J. MACDONALD’s mail. Macdonald is General Staff Director, Operations and Plans Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence the Army Staff. It’s about chemical attack in Syria. In the message August 22 Eugene Furst congratulates Col. on successful operation and refers him to Wasington Post publication about chemical attack in Syria. From the Anthony’s wife dialog with her friend it’s clear the video with the children killed in...

Remember all of the propaganda ahead of the USA’s “democracy unleashing” invasion of Iraq in 2003. It went something like this: “We have evidence that Saddam Hussein has stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and even worse he has a histroy of using them, even against his own people!” Well unsurprisingly, Mr. Hussein had a little help from his friends. The United States of America. Let’s bear this in mind as our Noble Peace Prize winning President attempts to involve us in another unconstitutional war based on the fact that chemical weapons have been used. Let’s be adults here and...

The recent article in the magazine Foreign policy ,Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran, both quotes me and attributes things to me that are inaccurate or taken out of context. While trying to correct already published articles in widely-read publications is akin to unringing a bell, I think it important to respond to correct and clarify words and actions attributed to me. While the article is technically truthful, it is nuanced and written to portray a cavalier attitude among the participants in several foreign policy initiative and intelligence operations during the last full year of...

AFP - The United States provided Iraq with intelligence on preparations for an Iranian offensive during the Iran-Iraq war even though it knew Baghdad would respond with chemical weapons, Foreign Policy magazine reported Monday. Citing declassified CIA documents and interviews with former officials, the magazine reviewed the US record as Washington weighs military action against Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons near Damascus last week. The magazine said the US knew in 1983 that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would not hesitate to resort to shelling Iranian forces with sarin or mustard gas. "As Iraqi attacks continue and intensify...

An estimated one-fifth of a subset of all applicants for Central Intelligence Agency positions had significant ties to the terror groups Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda, a newly released document from the Edward Snowden collection revealed Monday. The document — released by Mr. Snowden as part of his National Security Agency intelligence dump — said the terrorist groups worked hard to infiltrate America’s top security agencies. CIA officials uncovered thousands of applicants, roughly one in five of a subset, with “significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,” the document states, as Ynet News reported. The specifics of those ties were not...

Ibrahim al-Amin, editor-in-chief of the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, said that Russia instructed its military off the coast of Syria "to prepare for a serious confrontation." He noted that Iran, in parallel, was on high alert of its navy, air force and its rocket systems, and that Syrian army forces not involved in the war with the rebels were at the ready. At the same time Hezbollah, according to Al-Amin, established a war room monitoring all its rocket systems, and called for all Hezbollah members to man their stations.

Road To Darkness I really don't understand George Bush. Why can't he say: "I was convinced that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction but apparently our intelligence was faulty. I'm sorry to have misled you, but getting rid of Saddam is still a good idea, etc., and so forth"? No, there is apparently something in the Bush genes that forbids ever admitting to having made a mistake. Such arrogance cost his father a second term, and it could do the same to the son's political ambition. In the father's case, he refused to apologize to the American people for breaking...

JERUSALEM — The threat of US military action against Syria remains "real", Washington's top diplomat said on Sunday a day after striking a deal with Russia to destroy Damascus's chemical weapons stockpile. "The threat of force remains, the threat is real," US Secretary of State John Kerry said at a news conference in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "We cannot have hollow words in the conduct of international affairs." Kerry's remarks were made following a four-hour meeting with Netanyahu at which the two men discussed the US-Russian agreement on eradicating Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons, and also talked...

Vladimir Putin (5'7", allegedly), let’s review: His first term as President of Russia coincided with George W. Bush’s stolen American Presidency. I hate this American President, his stick is much bigger than mine From 2000-2008 Putin tried, more or less, to make nice with America and the West. Accordingly, he confined most of his inner-machismo to his big game hunts; and dealing with internal enemies. Ask Litvinenko: Is polonium a chemical weapon? Then, when GWB’s second term was over, he gave Dmitry Medvedev (5'4") In Russia, the difference between 5'7" and 5'4" is what they say it is. a “short”...

MOSCOW, September 15 (RIA Novosti) – A Russian state TV host has invited US Senator John McCain to take part in his show and discuss his stance on Syria. Popular Russian TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov said Sunday that the Republican senator known for his critical views on Russia’s leadership can appear in his show to respond to President Vladimir Putin’s recent article in the New York Times on Syria. “On our behalf, the broadcaster and myself invite Senator McCain, who wanted to respond to Putin’s letter … to the Sunday Night program,” Solovyov said on Sunday. McCain said earlier that...

Nearly half the rebel fighters in Syria are now aligned to jihadist or hardline Islamist groups according to a new analysis of factions in the country's civil war.Opposition forces battling Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria now number around 100,000 fighters, but after more than two years of fighting they are fragmented into as many as 1,000 bands. The new study by IHS Jane's, a defence consultancy, estimates there are around 10,000 jihadists - who would include foreign fighters - fighting for powerful factions linked to al-Qaeda.. Another 30,000 to 35,000 are hardline Islamists who share much of the outlook of...

Might moral theology, in the form of the venerable just-war tradition of moral reasoning, point a path beyond the fantastic mess that is American policy toward an imploding Syria — a fiasco created by the Obama administration’s dangerous combination of ideological besottedness, fecklessness, and mind-boggling incompetence? The question is not as odd as it may seem at first blush. For the better part of 1,500 years, the just-war tradition — initially developed by such sophisticated thinkers as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas — has provided a framework for collaborative deliberation about ordering various means (armed force and other instruments of political...

CNN´s "State of the Union" host Candy Crowley asked House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers whether it makes any difference that Vladimir Putin and Russia got the upper hand over the U.S. in the deal struck on Syria´s chemical weapons.