Free Republic

"Iraq cannot be a failure. Our troops deserve a real plan for victory and our total support. We're ready to work with the president, every one of the Democratic senators, but he must acknowledge his mistakes and set forth a realistic course for the future." - Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "Stopping evil will require bringing stability throughout the Middle East. It won't be easy, but it is a fight the United States must continue - and win. It is unfortunate that many Democratic leaders have chosen to politicize the war on terror and ignore the good work...

The New York Times can't decide whether or not there's a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda. Here is the New York Times, editorializing in high dudgeon on June 17: Now President Bush should apologize to the American people. . . . Of all the ways Mr. Bush persuaded Americans to back the invasion of Iraq last year, the most plainly dishonest was his effort to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide. . . . Mr. Bush and his top advisers . . . should have known all along that there was no link between...

In the town of Kalar, about a hundred miles northeast of Baghdad, Kurdish villagers recently reported suspicious activity to the pesh merga. That Kurdish militia has for years been waging a bloody battle with Ansar al-Islam, the terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and supported by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It captured a courier carrying a message that demolishes the repeated claim of Bush critics that there was never a "clear link" between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. The terrorist courier with a CD-ROM containing a 17-page document and other messages was Hassan Ghul, who confessed he was...

WASHINGTON — Two blockbuster magazine articles last week revealed evidence that Saddam's spy agency and top Qaeda operatives certainly were in frequent contact for a decade, and that there is renewed reason to suspect an Iraqi spymaster in Prague may have helped finance the 9/11 attacks. On weeklystandard.com, you can find chunks of a 16-page letter by Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, responding to a Senate Intelligence Committee request for evidence of Saddam-bin Laden collaboration. Fifty specific instances from C.I.A., N.S.A., F.B.I. and Pentagon files are described, many from "sensitive reporting" never made public. The Defense Department acknowledged the...