Free Republic

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: William Kristol & Gary SchmittSUBJECT: Bring The Troops Home?Yesterday’s front page of the Washington Post carried a story about a classified memo from Britain’s defense minister to Prime Minister Tony Blair detailing “emerging U.S. plans” to reduce by half the number of soldiers in Iraq by next summer. This would leave American troop levels at around 66,000. The Pentagon has denied there are any fixed plans as yet and reductions will depend on conditions in Iraq.Although the Pentagon is surely accurate in saying that no final determination to reduce troop levels has been made, it is...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: Gary SchmittSUBJECT: Secretary Rice in EgyptSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s speech yesterday at the American University in Cairo was a remarkably impressive speech. Indeed, diplomatic historians may some day put it in the league with Secretary George Marshall’s speech at Harvard announcing the Truman administration’s Marshall Plan. Calling on Egypt and its president, Hosni Mubarak, to lead the way in moving his country and, indeed, the region toward the establishment of constitutional and liberal democracy, Secretary Rice laid down a series of markers for Egypt’s president and his government to fulfill their promise of democratic change....

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Half Measures in Egypt According to press reports, Egypt’s parliament is likely to pass a constitutional amendment today that would allow opposition figures to run for president. This apparent democratic breakthrough, however, is undermined by the amendment’s stipulation that to be placed on a presidential ballot a candidate would need the approval of 300 members from various “elected” Egyptian government bodies – bodies now under the control of the sitting president, Hosni Mubarak.The decision by Egypt to take this half measure is the result of pressure put on President Mubarak by President Bush and Secretary...

The Ronald Reagan years saw the introduction of the US space program. Temporarily halted under Bill Clinton, it was reinstated when Donald Rumsfeld became the American Secretary of Defense. The zeal with which he relaunched the US space programs - acquiescing to the military and industial military lobbies' requests for rapidly developing space weapons - is evidence of a throwing down of the gauntlet to potential "peer competitors" of the United States. Furthermore, this decision conforms to the will expressed by the Bush administration to definitively reaffirm and consolidate the unipolar role of the United States in the twenty-first century...

Iraq:Setting the Record Straight ContentsPreface.................................................................................................................................i I. Iraq: The Clinton Administration’s Case.……………………………...................1II. Iraq: The Perspective from Washington on March 18, 2003.................................13III. Iraq: A History of Deception, Obstruction & Failure to MeetInternational Obligations.......................................................................................17IV. Questions & Answers: Iraq’s Nuclear Weapons Program...................................32V. Questions & Answers: Iraq’s Missile and UAV Programs..................................43VI. Questions & Answers: Iraq’s Chemical/Biological Weapons Programs.............54VII. Questions and Answers: Iraq’s Ties to Terrorism and al Qaeda..........................70Appendix: “The Right War for the Right Reasons”.........................................................78  PrefaceTwo years after the invasion of Iraq, we still do not know with complete confidence what happened to all of the stockpiles of weapons and weapons precursors that Saddam’s government admitted to...

FULL DISCLOSURE (okay, partial disclosure--let's not get carried away with media ethics breast-beating): John Bolton has been an occasional contributor to this magazine. He served in the late 1990s as a director of the Project for the New American Century, which I chair. And he is a friend. More than all that, though, he is an exceptional choice to serve as our next U.N. ambassador. He should be confirmed quickly and easily by the Senate. He has, after all, been confirmed for high government positions four times before. He has served in those posts with distinction during three administrations, untainted...

DUmmies feel that they have special knowledge about some inside secret about the EVIL Bush Regime and that if the American People somehow find out what that secret is, they would overthrow “BFEE.” You can read all about this DUmmie fantasy in this THREAD titled, “What would happen if Americans really KNEW?” The secretive DUmmie fantasies are in Bolshevik Red while the commentary of your humble correspondent, playing “I’ve Got A Secret,” is in the [brackets]: What would happen if Americans really KNEW? [If Americans really KNEW how truly vile the DUmmiecrats are, you would be losing elections by...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Iran's "Right" to a Nuclear Program According to a front-page story in the New York Times yesterday ("Reshaping Nuclear Rules," by David Sanger), the Bush administration is seeking to close loopholes in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The administration's concern is that the treaty allows states to become virtual or actual nuclear weapons states under the guise of acquiring technology, infrastructure, and know-how for "peaceful" nuclear energy programs.The core problem with the NPT is that it appears to give non-nuclear weapon states a "right" to nuclear technology and assistance in exchange for foreswearing weapons...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: ELLEN BORK, Deputy DirectorSUBJECT: Human Rights and the EU Arms EmbargoFrom numerous accounts, it appears that the European Union will postpone plans to lift the arms embargo it imposed on Beijing in response to the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. According to the same accounts, Beijing’s enactment last week of a “law” authorizing the use of force against Taiwan tipped the scale against lifting the embargo before summer. Actions taken to exert even greater control over the Beijing-appointed leadership in Hong Kong reportedly also played a role, especially in London.Neither China’s intentions toward Taiwan, nor its...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Democracy and the Black Sea RegionI would like to draw your attention to the testimony of Bruce P. Jackson, President of the Project on Transitional Democracies and a director of the Project for the New American Century, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on European Affairs. Mr. Jackson's statement - "The Future of Democracy in the Black Sea Region" - makes a compelling case for why the region should matter to U.S. policymakers; details the gains and obstacles related to the development of democratic governance in the region; and offers a series of...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS FROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Robin Wright is WrongYesterday, Washington Post senior foreign policy reporter Robin Wright’s analysis of the recent elections in Iraq (“Iraq Winners Allied with Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision”) ran on the Post’s front page. As the title to the piece suggests, Wright’s claim is that Iraqis “went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base – and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door.” But about the only thing right in that sentence is that the Iraqis “went to the polls.”First, the United Iraqi Alliance,...

Dear Senator Frist, Senator Reid, Speaker Hastert, and Representative Pelosi: The United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume. Those responsibilities are real and important. They are not going away. The United States will not and should not become less engaged in the world in the years to come. But our national security, global peace and stability, and the defense and promotion of freedom in the post-9/11 world require a larger military force than we have today. The administration has unfortunately resisted increasing our ground forces to the size needed to meet today's...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: DANIEL MCKIVERGAN, Deputy DirectorSUBJECT: Duelfer, the UN, and the New York Times Yesterday, the Washington Post reported ("Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month") that the conclusions reached in Charles Duelfer's September 2004 report on Iraq's weapons programs will be the "final word" on the subject. The New York Times editorial board weighed in today. The Times notes that what the "Iraqi invasion has actually proved is that the weapons inspection worked, that international sanctions - deeply, deeply messy as they turned out to be - worked, and that in the case of Saddam...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS FROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Schroeder in ChinaThere has recently been much talk on both sides of the Atlantic about the need to repair alliance relations. And it appears that President Bush has made this a priority in his second term. But "it takes two to tango," and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's call Monday - while on a state visit to Beijing - to end the European Union arms embargo on China suggests he has other priorities. George Bush's reelection is hardly a month old and the German leader is already dismissing what he knows to be a...

We've got to repudiate, you know, the most strident and insulting anti-American voices out there sometimes on our party's left... We can't have our party identified by Michael Moore and Hollywood as our cultural values.—Al From,CEO, Democratic Leadership Council You know, let's let Hollywood and the Cannes Film Festival fawn all over Michael Moore. We ought to make it pretty clear that he sure doesn't speak for us when it comes to standing up for our country. —Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute, the think-tank of the DLC THE FIRST THING I thought when reading these passages—both taken...

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: WILLIAM KRISTOLSUBJECT: Toward Regime Change in North KoreaRecent reports suggest the presence of emerging cracks in the Stalinist power structure of North Korea, and even the emergence of serious dissident activity there. These should remind us that one of President Bush's top priorities in his second term will have to be dealing with this wretched regime. Nicholas Eberstadt provides useful guidance for an improved North Korean policy in the current issue of the Weekly Standard, ("Tear Down This Tyranny: A Korea strategy for Bush's second term," November 29).To move beyond a policy that is "long on...

RARELY HAVE THE HOLDERS of any set of political views and policy preferences been so thoroughly caricatured as the "neoconservatives" of the Bush years. To critics, this group of policymakers (preeminently, in the Defense Department and the Office of the Vice President), along with their allies on the outside (preeminently, in the pages of THE WEEKLY STANDARD), is responsible for a kind of hijacking of U.S. foreign policy in the wake of 9/11. Intoxicated by American power and blinded by a utopian vision, the neoconservatives (in the critics' telling) set the country on a disastrous and unnecessary attempt to remake...

As citizens of the Euro-Atlantic community of democracies, we wish to express our sympathy and solidarity with the people of the Russian Federation in their struggle against terrorism. The mass murderers who seized School No. 1 in Beslan committed a heinous act of terrorism for which there can be no rationale or excuse. While other mass murderers have killed children and unarmed civilians, the calculated targeting of so many innocent children at school is an unprecedented act of barbarism that violates the values and norms of our community and which all civilized nations must condemn.At the same time, we are...

In today’s morning edition of the DUmmie FUnnies, the DUmmies proudly wear their tinfoil hats and come up with a conspiracy about how “peak oil” is tied into a Bush World Reich. The conspiracies here fly faster than a Michael Rivero wet dream. So put on your own tinfoil hats so you can tune in to the DUmmie conspiracy frequency presented here in this edition of the DUmmie Funnies. As usual, the comments of your humble correspondent (wearing his own tinfoil hat), are in the [brackets]: It's all beginning to make perfect sense. [Uh-Oh! When you hear a DUmmie say...

Seldom has the gulf between diplomatic talk and effective action been as stark as it was this week at the United Nations. Yesterday President Bush, speaking before the U.N. General Assembly, called on the Sudanese government to stop the killing in Darfur, reiterating Secretary of State Colin Powell's declaration that the atrocities there constitute genocide. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan also condemned Khartoum for its campaign of violence. And three days earlier, the Security Council passed Resolution 1564, a toothless and watered-down warning to Sudan that sanctions might be considered should the carnage continue.Unfortunately, Sudan's barbarity almost certainly will continue...