Free Republic

Eyes trained to watch the Hindu Kush must now turn askance toward Germany where the 45th Munich Conference on Security Policy is scheduled to take place next weekend. Organizers of the annual event revealed on Thursday that among the 300 prominent figures from the international arena of foreign, security and defense policy will be a "very high-ranking personality" from Tehran. Other VIPs include US Vice President Joseph Biden, who is expected to make a major foreign and security policy speech. The big question is: Will the United States and Iran make contact at Munich?

In his first trip as Vice President, Joe “Stand up Chuck!” Biden is off to embarrass himself in front of the Germans…a challenge, but we know Joe is up to it. After issuing his first Vice Presidential apology for insulting the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (I have a feeling we’re going to be hearing a lot of apologies from this guy), Biden will board the Vice-Presidential short bus to attend a conference of like-minded Euro-trash. I’m sure he will be well received, especially among the “few” Germans who keep shrines to the era of National Socialism in their...

We are in danger of letting the strong strain of appeasement and pacifism now abroad in the land prevent us from taking early steps now that will prevent unspeakable calamities later. The classic case of history is the appeasement of Adolf Hitler leading up to World War II. The West finally woke up to the need to stop Hitler, but by then, instead of a relatively small police operation we had World War II that cost 72 million lives and untold other casualties, property damage, and international disruption. The issue now is whether we are displaying the same moral blindness...

Seventy years ago on September 29, 1938, the leaders of Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain concluded an agreement in Munich that has gone down in history as one of the West's greatest political debacles. According to it, Hitler was allowed to take over a region of the Czechoslovak Republic, known as the Sudetenland, which contained a large ethnic German population. He had been threatening to use force to achieve his ends, and the British and French appeased him hoping to avoid a new and devastating conflict. Of course the agreement did not foster peace: rather it paved the way...

Why Terror Thrives ...It was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, however, that trailblazed attacks on airliners with its September 7, 1970 hijacking of three planes "to call special attention to the Palestinian problem." Sure enough, the Palestinian cause has since became synonymous with anti-civilian warfare, from the Munich Olympics' massacre in September 1972 to the Arab fratricide inside Gaza this weekend. And the slaughter of innocents is now part of the Islamists' struggle against "infidels." What the Palestinians began in the early 1970s is now paying "dividends."http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1215331127098&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

NEW YORK -- Jim McKay, the veteran and eloquent sportscaster thrust into the role of telling Americans about the tragedy at the 1972 Munich Olympics, has died. He was 86. McKay died Saturday of natural causes at his farm in Monkton, Md. The broadcaster who considered horse racing his favorite sport died only hours before Big Brown attempted to win a Triple Crown at the Belmont Stakes. "There are not many men who achieved what Jim McKay achieved both professionally and personally," said Sean McManus, McKay's son and the president of CBS News and Sports. "He had a flawless reputation...

How woefully ignorant is the Democratic front-runner on matters of national security, international relations and the intractable conflicts that have plagued the Middle East for decades? The recent foreign policy statements of the former community organizer have demonstrated such incorrigibly poor judgment and appalling naivete that three prominent Democrats have seen fit to distance themselves from Obama’s ludicrous position, which he somehow views as virtuous, of meeting unconditionally with the nations enemies. Senator Joe Biden tells us that Obama, “gave the wrong answer” in last July’s YouTube debate, but he assures us that Obama has, “learned a hell of a...

The militant is known as Abu Ubaida al Masri, and charting his path reveals his vulnerabilities and those of the terrorist group. COPENHAGEN -- If Al Qaeda strikes the West in the coming months, it's likely the mastermind will be a stocky Egyptian explosives expert with two missing fingers. His alias is Abu Ubaida al Masri. Hardly anyone has heard of him outside a select circle of anti-terrorism officials and Islamic militants. He has overseen the major plots that the network needs to stay viable, investigators say: the London transportation bombings in 2005, a foiled transatlantic "spectacular" aimed at U.S.-bound...

He asked them to stop smoking in Munich's subway station. They brutally beat up the 76- year-old pensioner. Last Thursday, the 20-year-old Turk Serkan A. and his Greek friend Spiridon L. admitted that they critically wounded the former schoolmaster Bruno N. and offended him by calling him: “Crap German.” When the victim was lying motionless on the floor, the two took the old man's rucksack and quickly fled. The victim suffered a triple fractured skull with dangerous brain bleeding. At first, his life was in jeopardy, but his physical condition is stable now. The motive: “Why was he so stupid...

The latest edition of the Egyptian magazine Al-Ahram Al-Arabi has confirmed what many in the West have suspected for a long time: that Yasser Arafat personally directed the Black September terrorist organization that claimed responsibility for the 1971 murder of Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi at-Tal, the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, and other atrocities. The Cairo newspaper quotes a new book by PLO leader Marwan Kanafani, “Years of Hope,” to be published soon. There have also long been claims that Arafat’s longtime deputy Mahmoud Abbas, who is still widely known in the Middle East by his...

An American Secretary of State should be in Baghdad brokering a reconciliation between Iraqi factions and locking down a victory for which nearly 4,000 Americans gave their lives. Iraq is the central front in the holy war against the West being waged by al-Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and an American defeat in Iraq would lead to an escalation of that war to proportions that would make the current conflict in Iraq seem tame by comparison. Instead, Condoleeza Rice has been shuttling between capitals in the Middle East in an attempt to feed a piece of Jewish meat...

Germany has come up with the funds to launch its first magnetic levitation - or maglev - rail service. The state of Bavaria is to build the high-speed railway line from Munich city centre to its airport, making it Europe's first commercial track.

MUNICH, Germany - Munich's mayor joyously hammered a tap into Oktoberfest's first barrel of beer, opening the annual drinking spree Saturday with the traditional cry of "It's tapped!" Thousands of visitors crowded into the sprawling Theresienwiese festival grounds as Mayor Christian Ude launched the 174th Oktoberfest and passed the first beer to Bavarian Governor Edmund Stoiber. A 12-gun salute signaled that it was time to start serving the public. The festival's tents offer seating for some 100,000 people. The Oktoberfest runs through Oct. 7. Last year, the festival attracted more than 6 million visitors, who downed about 12.9 million pints...

February 16, 2007, 0:00 a.m. Munich MemoriesHas anything been learned over the past 69 years? By Clifford D. May “Our enemies are little worms. I saw them at Munich.” That was Hitler’s appraisal of the leaders of Britain and France he hosted in the Bavarian capital in 1938. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had requested the meeting “to find a peaceful solution” to growing tension over Nazi Germany’s grievances and demands. The outcome: an attempt to appease Hitler through the betrayal of Czechoslovakia. “Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor,” Winston Churchill remarked at the time....

How did we go from winning the war in Iraq to losing overnight? Was this decided by the same committee that changed "Peking" to "Beijing"? These word changes are a fortiori evidence that liberals are part of a conspiracy. On what date did "horrible" and "actress" vanish from the English language to be replaced with "horrific" and "actor"? Who decided that? (Meanwhile, I'm still writing "Puff Daddy" in my nightly dream journal when everybody else has started calling him "Diddy.") When did "B.C." (before Christ) and "A.D." (anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") get replaced with "BCE" (before...

Our source must remain covert, but we have gained access to a series of e-mails between James A. Baker III and Lee A. Hamilton, co-chairmen of the Iraq Study Group. (Actually, the ISG designates them as "co-chairs," but even a cursory look shows neither of them to be furniture.) The messages' content sheds an interesting light on the ISG's 79 recommendations. We submit these messages below, without comment: Dear Jim: I've looked at the draft of the ISG recommendations. Do you think anybody will notice there aren't really 79, and that a bunch of them repeat or extend other recommendations?...

How did we go from winning the war in Iraq to losing overnight? Was this decided by the same committee that changed "Peking" to "Beijing"? These word changes are a fortiori evidence that liberals are part of a conspiracy. On what date did "horrible" and "actress" vanish from the English language to be replaced with "horrific" and "actor"? Who decided that? (Meanwhile, I'm still writing "Puff Daddy" in my nightly dream journal when everybody else has started calling him "Diddy.") When did "B.C." (before Christ) and "A.D." (anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") get replaced with "BCE" (before...

President Bush says the Iraq Study Group report “did a good job of showing what is possible.” Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said, “It offers a strong way forward.” The New York Post called it the work of “surrender monkeys.” There is no shortage of opinions. Here are a dozen worth considering.

Steady condemnation from conservatives for the Iraq Study Group report may be providing some cover to the Bush administration as it completes its own review of strategy in Iraq, apparently with little enthusiasm for the panel's prescription of U.S. troop withdrawal and dialogue with Syria and Iran. The criticism of the panel, co-chaired by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), has burst forth from the leading institutions of the right: the National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard; conservative talk radio; and scholars at some of...

Top Democrats in Congress left a White House meeting with President Bush on Friday frustrated over what they perceived as his reluctance to embrace major recommendations from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. "I just didn't feel there today, the president in his words or his demeanor, that he is going to do anything right away to change things drastically," Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid, D-Nev., said following the Oval Office meeting. "He is tepid in what he talks about doing. Someone has to get the message to this man that there have to be significant changes." Bush has been cool...