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WASHINGTON -- Now that Cindy Sheehan turns out to be a disaster for the anti-war movement -- most Americans are not about to follow a left-wing radical who insists that we are in Iraq for reasons of theft, oppression and empire -- a new spokesman is needed. If I were in the opposition camp, I would want a deeply patriotic, highly intelligent, distinguished establishment figure. I would want Brent Scowcroft. Scowcroft has been obliging. This week in The New Yorker he came out strongly against the war and the neocon sorcerers who magically foisted it upon what must have been...

Brent Scowcroft, military assistant to President Nixon, and National Security Advisor to Presidents Ford and H.W. Bush, continues his attack on the bush foreign policy and Iraq War in an interview by Jeffrey Goldberg in The New Yorker (not available without subscription). In The Washington Note, Steven C. Clemons provides excerpts (here) from the interview: A principal reason that the Bush Administration gave no thought to unseating Saddam was that Brent Scowcroft gave no thought to it. An American occupation of Iraq would be politically and militarily untenable, Scowcroft told Bush. And though the President had employed the rhetoric of...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Now that Cindy Sheehan turns out to be a disaster for the anti-war movement -- most Americans are not about to follow a left-wing radical who insists that we are in Iraq for reasons of theft, oppression and empire -- a new spokesman is needed. If I were in the opposition camp, I would want a deeply patriotic, highly intelligent, distinguished establishment figure. I would want Brent Scowcroft.</p>

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Sunday, July 31, 2005 9:30 p.m. EDT Sandy Berger Blasts Bush for Security Failure Convicted 9/11 Commission document thief Sandy Berger is blasting the Bush administration for failing to bring security to Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein. As co-chair of a Council on Foreign Relations Iraq war task force, Berger and his colleagues are complaining that the U.S.'s failure to prepare for the period after the war had given "early impetus for the insurgency," according to quotes picked up by Reuters. Despite pleading guilty in April to destroying top secret terrorism documents related to the 9/11 investigation,...

Bush faulted on postwar planning REUTERS WASHINGTON - An independent assessment of the tumult in Iraq led by two top former presidential advisers found that the Bush administration was unprepared for postwar Iraq and underestimated the number of troops needed in a miscalculation that helped fuel the insurgency. The report by a Council on Foreign Relations task force, released Wednesday, concluded that the failure to prepare properly for the period after the war had given "early impetus for the insurgency" now gripping the country. The task force was headed by two former national security advisers, Democrat Samuel "Sandy" Berger and...

Did United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan hightail it to Moscow to check in with his handpicked UN reform man Yevgeny Primakov within weeks of William Safire’s New York Times expose on alleged scandal in the Oil-For-Food Program? The first of Safire’s groundbreaking Oil-For-Food investigative stories ran in mid-March, 2004. Here’s Annan’s Moscow itinerary as documented by The Russian Federation: "Annan arrived in Moscow on Sunday, April 4, 2004 where he had an early working dinner with Evgeni (sic) Primakov, former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation." On the following day, Annan visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where...

Scowcroft Skeptical Vote Will Stabilize Iraq Friend of Bush Family Joins Pessimists By Dana Priest and Robin Wright Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, January 7, 2005; Page A12 Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser for President George H.W. Bush and a leading figure in the U.S. foreign policy establishment, said yesterday that he has grown pessimistic about prospects for stability and democracy in Iraq, a view increasingly expressed by other foreign policy figures in both parties. "The Iraqi elections, rather than turning out to be a promising turning point, have the great potential for deepening the conflict," Scowcroft said. He said...

Kofi's not the problem, the United Nations is Posted: December 8, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc. For our well-mannered and beautifully tailored secretary general, these are not the halcyon days. Kofi Annan is sitting atop the smelliest scandal in U.N. history. Son Kojo appears to be in it up to his eyeballs. A female employee has charged a senior U.N. officer with sexual harassment, and Kofi pardoned the alleged groper. Peacekeepers in the Congo have allegedly assaulted women and girls. GOP Sen. Norm Coleman, no bomb-thrower, has, after seven months of investigating the U.N. oil-for-food scandal,...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - President Bush on Tuesday bestowed the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, on three of the central architects and executors of the war in Iraq, one of the president's strongest efforts yet at putting a formal stamp of success on a war whose outcome is still a question. The recipients were Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the overall commander of the invasion of Iraq; L. Paul Bremer III, the chief civilian administrator of the American occupation of the country; and George J. Tenet, the longtime director of central intelligence who built the case for...

The next feud between America's freedom and democracy hawks and old United Nations diplomats will likely develop this week with the release of a much-anticipated report. Ordered by Secretary-General Annan, it was prepared by a panel of 16 former world movers and shakers now in their 70s, who will undoubtedly be hailed at Turtle Bay as wise men, and derided elsewhere as has-beens. Men who held previous posts like Russian foreign minister and Saddam champion Yevgeny Primakov, British U.N. envoy David Hannay, or current Arab League chief Amr Moussa, are not going to excite anyone looking for fresh insights into...

...Mr. Bush was granted Bill Clinton's wish to live in "interesting times,"... Instead of inheriting an economic recovery as Mr. Clinton did, Mr. Bush began his term facing the end of the 1990s' investment bubble and a looming recession. And instead of inheriting a placid post-Cold War world, he was presented with September 11.... On the economy, he compromised on his first tax cut to win 12 Democratic Senate votes, but it proved too Keynesian and too long-delayed to pack much punch. So Mr. Bush used his Senate victory in 2002 to double down on his tax cut bet.... Yes,...

What Wilson Didn’t Say About AfricaJoseph Wilson's Silent PartnersBy Fedora with help from a few FReeper friends Former ambassador Joseph Wilson has been a leading spokesman for critics who accuse President Bush of basing his case for war against Iraq on forged documents purporting that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger. Wilson’s charge has been discredited by a Senate investigation,1 but what remains unanswered are questions arising from what is now known about French intelligence’s role in pushing the forged documents on British and US intelligence. The role of France and Wilson in undermining Bush’s case for war looks...

Scowcroft: Sharon has "mesmerized" Bush "wrapped around his little finger" By israelinsider staff October 16, 2004 Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, slammed the current president's handling of foreign policy in an interview published this week in The Financial Times, saying that the current President Bush is "mesmerized" by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger," Scowcroft said. "I think the president is mesmerized." He added: "When there is a suicide attack, Sharon calls the president and says, 'I'm on the front line of terrorism,' and the president says,...

x-Security Adviser Rips Bush Diplomacy U.S. National - AP WASHINGTON - The national security adviser under the first President Bush says the current president acted contemptuously toward NATO and Europe after Sept. 11 and is trying to cooperate now out of desperation to "rescue a failing venture" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Brent Scowcroft, a mentor to the current national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), also said in an interview published in England that Bush is inordinately influenced by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger," Scowcroft told London's Financial Times....

...Measured in offices held, the GOP hasn't been this strong since the 1920s. Republicans hold the White House and both branches of Congress, albeit narrowly but also by dint of an historic mid-term election victory in 2002. The party also owns 28 of the 50 governorships, including in the large, dynamic states of Texas, Florida and California.... [T]he GOP has a chance to forge a real mandate to govern.... Granted, this is not the case on national security, where Mr. Bush has united the party behind the assertive use of American power. In a sense, all Republicans are "neoconservatives" now,...

The Saddam-9/11 Link Confirmed By Laurie Mylroie FrontPageMagazine.com | May 11, 2004 Important new information has come from Edward Jay Epstein about Mohammed Atta’s contacts with Iraqi intelligence. The Czechs have long maintained that Atta, leader of the 9/11 hijackers in the United States, met with Ahmed al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence official, posted to the Iraqi embassy in Prague. As Epstein now reports, Czech authorities have discovered that al-Ani’s appointment calendar shows a scheduled meeting on April 8, 2001 with a "Hamburg student." That is exactly what the Czechs had been saying since shortly after 9/11: Atta, a long-time student...

<p>As the election debate over Iraq unfolds, we're struck by the role reversal of the two major parties on one of the central questions of U.S. foreign policy. To wit: Is it in America's interest to aggressively promote freedom around the world, or is it generally better to satisfy ourselves with "stability" and the status quo?</p>

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Billionaire Fails in Bid for Global CrossingCharles R. SmithThursday, March 6, 2003This is the second article about Li Ka Shing's bid to purchase Global Crossing. Read Part I: Global Double Crossing. Li Ka Shing has lost the first round in his effort to take over Global Crossing. Li's bid for the defunct telecommunications giant failed before a U.S. national security committee charged with oversight. The credit for causing Li's failure must be distributed evenly to both NewsMax and our readers for passing so many valuable tips about the reclusive billionaire to the FBI. In the end, Li...

he end of effective Iraqi resistance came with a rapidity which surprised us all, and we were perhaps psychologically unprepared for the sudden transition from fighting to peacemaking. True to the guidelines we had established, when we had achieved our strategic objectives (ejecting Iraqi forces from Kuwait and eroding Saddam's threat to the region) we stopped the fighting. But the necessary limitations placed on our objectives, the fog of war, and the lack of "battleship Missouri" surrender unfortunately left unresolved problems, and new ones arose. We were disappointed that Saddam's defeat did not break his hold on power, as many...

DOCUMENT: You’ll never guess who said this. 9/09 9:00 a.m. National Review Online Axis of Hypocrisy? Times have changed. Compiled by Steven Eros and Sherry W. Eros, M.D. http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document090902.asp QUESTION: Who made the following statements suggesting that the U.S. take unilateral military action against Iraq? The continued rule of Saddam Hussein poses a danger to the stability and security of the region. He has threatened his neighbors while doing everything possible to acquire weapons of mass destruction in direct violation of international law, even during the last several years, when subject to the most restrictive supervision in the history of...