Free Republic

Time to stop dreaming of unicorns and have the nuclear abolitionists join the real world There is no greater threat to the national security of Western nations than the nuclear abolitionist movement. If you want to talk about radical extremists who live among us, the Global Zero crowd are the most radical, the most extreme, and the most dangerous. They pose a far greater civilizational threat to the West than radical Islamists, radical environmentalists, and radical anti-capitalists combined—although many of these other categories also play a role in the anti-nuclear weapons movements. And yes, Ronald Reagan’s crazy talk about seeking...

White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett is quietly working behind the scenes to build a coalition of major U.S. corporations to back President Barack Obama’s goal of hashing out a global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the upcoming United Nations summit in Paris.The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a letter that outlines how, by the end of June, Obama is looking to build a coalition of businesses to show support for UN climate talks. After that, the White House will then try to grow this group of businesses to 250 in the run up to the Paris talks...

Woodrow Wilson. Here's Why. If you wanted to identify, with confidence, the very worst president in American history, how would you go about it? One approach would be to consult the various academic polls on presidential rankings that have been conducted from time to time since Harvard’s Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. pioneered this particular survey scholarship in 1948. Bad idea. Most of those surveys identify Warren G. Harding of Ohio as the worst ever. This is ridiculous. Harding presided over very robust economic times. Not only that, but he inherited a devastating economic recession when he was elected in 1920...

Since the NSA stopped collecting metadata about telephone calls on Sunday, May 31, 2015 (or was ordered to stop, anyway… with this government, you never really know), many have declared that we are a less safe nation today. And this is true; we ARE a less safe nation today. But as usual, both the answer and the foundation for it are largely misunderstood, in a nation in which a biased press refuses to tell the whole story, and a disinterested public refuses to study the issues until the third presidential debate rolls around every four years. To answer the question...

In a time of defense spending cutbacks and an ongoing weak U.S. economy A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) raises concerns over long-term risks to U.S. Navy ships assigned to overseas homeports. The study found that “casualty reports—incidents of degraded or out-of-service equipment—have doubled over the past 5 years and that the material condition of overseas-homeported ships has decreased slightly faster than that of U.S.-homeported ships.” According to the GAO, the Navy has failed to identify or mitigate the risks associated with an increasing reliance on homeporting overseas. Some vessels engaged in overseas homeporting have undergone repeated...

Takes Ukrainian citizenship, appointed Governor of Odessa region While it was pretty painful to watch the US-and-Israeli equipped and trained Georgian Armed Forces get their asses kicked by the Russians in 2008, the truth is that the greatly-outnumbered Georgians never stood a chance once the Kremlin decided to get militarily involved, due to the fact that loyal US ally Tbilisi had all their best troops still in Iraq... The Georgian army was reduced to five brigades, nearly all light infantry, ditching practically all its armor and artillery in favor of a counterterrorism and counterinsurgency approach to warfare, which of course was what...

In the age of derivatives, swaps, and electronic money transfers, a new form of warfare has emerged: financial warfare. Recently, the US has passed sanctions on countries such as Syria, Venezuela, and North Korea , but the majority of energy related sanctions passed have been targeted at Iran and Russia. An estimated 68 percent of Russia’s government revenue is derived from oil and gas exports, while 80 percent of Iran’s revenue comes from oil exports. That presents a very large target for the use of financial weapons.

The latest batch of declassified emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server indicate that weapons used by ISIS to conquer half of Syria and Iraq were covertly supplied by the US. It appears that Ambassador Christopher Stevens was intimately involved in smuggling armaments from captured Libyan stockpiles to anti-Assad forces in Syria. Current Secretary of State John Kerry defended the arms transfers as “based on the best intelligence we had at the time. We knew Assad was a brutal dictator who needed to be deposed. We thought relying on anti-government elements in Syria could do the job...

Obscured by Jon Stewart’s well-publicized mockery of Texans’ reaction to Jade Helm 15—the US Army’s two-month-long exercise across nine states scheduled to begin in July—is the fact that the criticisms may not all be deranged droolings. The Daily Show‘s Stewart made headlines earlier in May when he ridiculed Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s decision ordering the State Guard to “monitor” Jade Helm. The comedian-cum-newsman called Jade Helm critics “Lone Star lunatics.” But are they? Or is there more to the story? As always, WhoWhatWhy has remained agnostic while asking questions. Now, we provide a few initial answers. More will undoubtedly...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) late Sunday suggested that supporters of a National Security Agency (NSA) phone records surveillance program are hoping for a terrorist attack after the program expires so they can blame it on the Kentucky Republican. "People here in town think I'm making a huge mistake. Some of them I think, secretly want there to be an attack on the United States, so they can blame it on me," Paul, who is running for president, said from the Senate floor. Paul added that a reporter recently asked him if he would "'feel guilty'" if there was an attack....

In this image   From the BBC, a militia leader makes sure that the PKM is up front and center.  As in the picture of the Al Shabab marchers, it makes sense to put some of the more powerful weapons up front, to show that you are well armed, perhaps to intimidate enemies, or gain some political clout.  This might be considered a local version of the Soviet May Day military parade. With both side and bottom shots of the soldier/militiaman with the PKM, the use of the feed box/ammunition box is clear.   They are conspicuously lacking in the...

The Ministry of Defence employs staff across the region in a variety of roles from front line troops to support staff and civil servants Thousands of North East jobs could be at risk after military chiefs were reportedly told to find an extra £1bn in savings. The Ministry of Defence employs staff across the region in a variety of roles from front line troops to support staff and civil servants. It is the home of key bases like RAF Boulmer in Northumberland and Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire where MoD employees pour millions each year into the local economy. The...

Reflections on isolationism and foreign policy, on Decoration Day... When the field is crowded, candidates find a way to differentiate themselves. No surprise there. One way that some candidates have chosen in recent years is to set themselves apart from the “war hawks” of the other party, or even of their own party, by preaching isolationism, and by declaring that isolationism is the true heritage of our Founding Fathers. They will quote Presidents Washington and Jefferson, who warned, on occasion, of the need to “avoid entangling alliances” like those of the Old World. And they will imply that isolationism –...

Does Hillary Rodham Clinton have a moral compass? If so, what informs and guides it? If not, why is the Democratic Party behind her candidacy? Why does the media pretend that they can't ask her the hard questions? Why does the media toss her soft ball questions? What are her qualifications? What are her bedrock beliefs? Why is she running? Who would she put on the Supreme Court? How would she treat our military? Does she have Executive Order Syndrome too? Why is she trying so hard to pretend Bill Clinton is just a fancy hood ornament? Why is Bill...

I was at the Phoenix mosque rally briefly last night and caught sight of its organizer, retired Marine Jon Ritzheimer. He was sweating, exhausted and removing his body armor outside of the vehicle he was in a hurry to get into to leave. I introduced myself. As we started talking, we both quickly realied that we had been in Ramadi with the same unit (me as an embedded filmmaker) at about the same time, which is to say, both of us have been in the streets battling Al Qaeda/ISIS jihadis long before doing a civil version of it this night...

Regimes -- especially those guided by apocalyptic, violently intolerant, supremacist, megalomaniacal, non-compliant, deceitful, hate-education vision - intensify chaos, fueling nuclear war Iranian school textbooks, such as The Qur’an and Life (Grade 12, p. 125) prepare Iranian children for the Ayatollahs’ sublime goal: the apocalyptic, horrifying, millenarian, military battle against the USA and other “arrogant oppressors of the world,” which are ostensibly led by “idolatrous devils.” While the “savior”—the infallible, immortal, divinely ordained and eventual global leader, the Mahdi—has not surfaced yet, Iranian children are taught that the battle is already raging throughout the world, awaiting their sacrifice. School textbooks of...

History repeating itself. U.S. military pilots flying combat missions against the Islamic State are frustrated over Obama’s pro-Muslim/terrorist rules of engagement. Team Obama has resurrected President Johnson’s micromanagement war policy that doesn’t allow pilots or front line commanders to make tactical decisions to kill terrorists where they live. The Pentagon bureaucracy, being in lockstep with the White House, are too damn dependent on receiving aged intelligence from drones and ignoring the folks on the front line. Perfumed Princes fighting a war from office chairs is a sure fire way to lose as they are giving the enemy all the time...

The Republican Party doesn’t have a lunatic fringe. It has a lunatic center: a core bloc of white voters and officeholders whose extreme conservatism leads them to indulge again and again in outlandish conspiracy theories and, more seriously, proposed and enacted legislation of disgraceful callousness. The past few weeks have offered two striking examples of how dependent the Party’s base and elected officials have become on spouting and trying to enact as legislation their own worst impulses. One involves the American military’s three-month-long Jade Helm 15 combat-training exercises that will get underway in July and spread over various sparsely populated...

Portrait of General Mihailovich by Wisconsin artist Jim Pollard. Aleksandra's Note: It's now 40 years since a group of American Airmen rescued by General Mihailovich in WWII along with Serbian patriotic organizations in the Diaspora initiated the effort to get a monument to General Draza Mihailovich erected on the grounds of Washington, D.C. at their own personal expense. From the time the effort was initiated in 1975, progress was made, then setbacks had to be dealt with. Now in 2015, many of the American airmen are gone, but their dream does not have to die with them. A lot has...

The Air Force Academy class of 2015 is the first to come through four years at the academy with the open acceptance of gays and lesbians in the ranks. Tricia Heller, a 1987 graduate, and Tara Sweeney, a '95 grad, attended the ceremony to support Lydia Hill of Boston. Heller and Sweeney helped found Spectrum, the Air Force Academy gay and lesbian support group, of which Hill was one of the first members. "We all served under 'don't ask, don't tell,' so it was important for all of us to be able to be open about who we are," said...