Free Republic

Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi called for allowing Christians and Jews to perform pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam's holiest place. Speaking following prayers with the presidents of Mali, Sierra Leone, Niger, Mauritania and Senegal on the occasion of the Prophet Mohammed's birthday in Timbuktu, Mali, late on Monday, Qadhafi said "Mecca should be a meeting point to all people except heretics and impure". He said that Christians and Jews are not heretics or impure and "believe in God" and should be allowed to go to pilgrimage in Mecca. Qadhafi challenged Muslim religious leaders to allow US President George W. Bush to enter...

Sen. John McCain on Monday strongly disputed a U.S. diplomatic cable that said he pushed to help Muammar Qadhafi’s regime obtain military hardware two years ago, calling the notion “outrageous.” The 2009 cable, released by the open information group WikiLeaks and written by staff at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, said in particular that McCain, at a meeting with Qadhafi and one of his sons, promised to help Libya obtain C-130 Hercules military cargo aircraft. (snip) On Monday, McCain told Foreign Policy magazine that the diplomatic cable was incorrect, and that he had never pledged any help to Libya in...

Does America need a terrorist financier to secure its “freedom”? Sami al-Arian thinks so. His National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom poses as a watchdog for the Constitution, but he has focused his lobbying efforts on repealing anti-terrorist legislation. While Sami al-Arian himself has been arrested for being a prime financier for Palestinian Islamic Jihad (and likely one of its three founders), his political movement continues to threaten homeland security. Al-Arian founded the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF) in 1997 as a reaction to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996. The coalition’s stated goal “is to help change the...

On January 20, 2005, George W. Bush outlined the goal of his second term. "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," he said. "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you." Less than a year later, the Bush doctrine is dead, the victim not of outside circumstances, but rather...