Free Republic

U.S.TROOPS KEEPING THE PEACE**FORCES ARE SPREAD AROUND THE GLOBE IN EFFORTS TO CURB ARMED CONFLICT WASHINGTON--American forces are heading into an area marked by death, destruction and repression--and a fragile hope for peace. Their destination: East Timor, where 33 Americans are joining a U.N. mission to ensure calm before a summer vote on independence. From Western Sahara to Panama, Korea to Haiti and now Kosovo, more than 200,000 Americans, both military and civilian, are helping to keep the peace or protect U.S. interests. The Balkans mission--in which at least 7,000 Americans are expected to participate in a NATO-led secutiry force ...

Robert Fisk - Was it rescue or revenge? Bestialisation is an unpleasant sport. The Serbs bestialised the Albanians for years. Terrorists, mafia, communists, Marxists, murderers. Officially directed at the Kosovo Liberation Army, these epithets came to be applied to the entire Kosovo Albanian community. And when General Nabojsa Pavkovic warned that "settling scores... is what we'll do if our country is attacked from the air or the ground," the Albanians knew what to expect. The moment Nato commenced its blitz against Yugoslavia, the harassment of the Kosovo Albanians turned into persecution, and the atrocities into mass murder. But now ...

HEY THERE, HEYDAR! We don't know if they log on to Antiwar.com very much in Azerbaijan: a look at our hit report is quite unrevealing. It lists the "Russian Federation," the "former USSR" and various other ex-Soviet republics, but no Azerbaijan. Yet I am convinced that somebody in that Central Asian "republic" must have read a recent column in which I speculated that this predominantly Muslim oil-rich country could well be the scene of NATO's next intervention. In a country like Azerbaijan, nobody but a government official has access to computers, and so it must have been somebody high up ...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Pat Buchanan pledged an intense grass-roots campaign in Iowa this summer, saying a strong showing in an August straw poll will derail the "coronation'' planned by Republican Party leaders. Opening a five-day trip to Iowa, Buchanan said Monday that the same Republican establishment jumping on the bandwagon of Texas Gov. George W. Bush has led the party to defeat in the last two elections. "Now the establishment is telling us who we must nominate again, and they had a coronation set up with George Bush,'' Buchanan said. "We're going to tell the people of Iowa ...

Buchanan Pledges To Challenge Bush By MIKE GLOVER .c The Associated Press DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Pat Buchanan pledged an intense grass-roots campaign in Iowa this summer, saying a strong showing in an August straw poll will derail the ``coronation'' planned by Republican Party leaders. Opening a five-day trip to Iowa, Buchanan said Monday that the same Republican establishment jumping on the bandwagon of Texas Gov. George W. Bush has led the party to defeat in the last two elections. ``Now the establishment is telling us who we must nominate again, and they had a coronation set up with ...

Cisneros' Ex-Mistress Takes Stand By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT v.c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - Lawyers for former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros sought Monday to keep prosecutors from using tapes secretly recorded by his ex-mistress, saying they constitute ``tampered, inauthentic evidence'' that shouldn't be allowed at his upcoming conspiracy trial. ``The tapes shouldn't come in,'' said Barry Simon, a member of Cisneros' legal defense team. ``The bottom line is the government has advised the court already ... they were tampered with. End of story.'' Prosecutor Mark Jackowski acknowledged that Linda Jones had deleted portions of her taped phone conversations with Cisneros, ...

US, Cuba Hold Counter-Narcotics Talk By GEORGE GEDDA .c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - Amid protests from Cuban-American lawmakers, four U.S. officials met Monday in Havana with Cuban officials to discuss ways of improving counter-narcotics cooperation, a State Department official said. Meetings between U.S. and Cuban officials on issues other than migration are rare but not unprecedented. ``This is not a change in U.S. policy,'' said Michael Ranneberger, who heads the State Department's office of Cuban affairs. He said the meeting was taking place within guidelines for law enforcement efforts on counter-narcotics. The U.S. team consisted of two State ...

The accidental Armageddon By HELEN CALDICOTT The Y2K bug could trigger a nuclear holocaust. So what are the experts doing? Hoping for the best.... MANY of the world's chemical plants, nuclear reactors and nuclear-weapon systems rely heavily on date-related computer systems. So what will happen to them come the millennium bug? It is remarkable that the Pentagon, the United States Defence headquarters, computerised its nuclear weapons, delivery systems and early-warning systems, despite knowing there was a date-related problem. And it beggars comprehension that the nuclear power industry made the same mistake. There are 433 non-military nuclear power reactors in the ...

From today's Media Research Center alert.... Matching the theme of the MRC's Media Reality Check fax report plugged at the top of this CyberAlert, on McLaughlin Group over the weekend Newsweek's Eleanor Clift worked to discredit George W. Bush by trying to show he really is pro-like, which makes him "extreme." She asserted: "I think Bush is in bigger trouble when the suburban moms and women discover that he is really not laizez-faire on the particular issue. He is the most anti-choice Governor in the country in this session in the Texas legislature. He can only finesse that for so ...

Is it too early to begin playing matchmaker for President and Vice President? While the net was down, I put together a match for your consideration. Now, I know this will be met with varied opinion, mostly because I'm just such an insightful person but partly because as Freepers, I know you have no problem expressing yourselves. When I look at a FORBES/ROGAN ticket, I see two men from very different backgrounds and from two different geographical parts of America and yet I see their strong common ties. They have within them the very essence of what has made our ...

NOW THAT SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC has made yet another agreement with NATO, the Clinton administration has declared victory and its media allies have joined the chorus of congratulation. Yet the question must be asked: What is there to celebrate? Who is better off now -- and for how long? It is not nearly as difficult to get Milosevic to sign agreements as it is to get him to live up to them. Now the Russians have become a wild card in the game, creating new problems from day one. We have NATO and Russian troops facing each other on opposite sides ...

President Clinton acknowledged yesterday that he initially thought the Kosovo air war might last only a week and wants the 79-day campaign to become known as the "Clinton Doctrine," which he defined as intervention to halt ethnic cleansing worldwide.  "There's an important principle here that I hope will be now upheld in the future," the president said. "If the world community has the power to stop it, we ought to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing. Innocent civilians ought not to be subject to slaughter because of their religious or ethnic or racial or tribal heritage.      "That is what we did, ...

Special to washingtonpost.com Monday, June 21, 1999 "The decade begun in Kuwait ends in the skies over Serbia. No American government will, in the near future at least, simply assume that it has the military power needed to impose its will...." Thus retired Gen. John M. Shalikashvili grumbles about the "difference between being the greatest ... power in the world and omnipotence" and warns of the emergence of a "passive" and "isolationist" America as a result of the war in Yugoslavia. "The United States will be withdrawing from its aggressive leadership position not solely because it wishes to," says ...

How fake guns and painting the roads fooled Nato By Robert Fisk in Belgrade NATO officers began to realise the discrepancy between their own claims and reality within hours of the start of the Yugoslav military withdrawal. In just the first stage of the Serbian retreat, they logged 250 tanks moving out of Kosovo - all undamaged - and at least 40,000 men. This was supposed to be the troop strength of the entire Third Army; thousands more soldiers left in the next three days. All of which casts serious doubt on Nato's wartime propaganda. On 17 April, for example, ...

GOOD MORNIN’, AMERICA, HOW ARE YA? What If the Guy Beside You Is Bill Clinton? Bob Slosser June 18, 1999 (CBNnow) -- Let’s together hear the word of the Lord: "The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear" (Matthew 13:41-43, NKJV)! ...

Thanks to swift action by the Clinton White House, America's first line of defense against crazed gunmen in public school halls will be--teenage movie ushers? President Bill Clinton unleashed the full pomp of a White House ceremony to ask the movie industry to tighten enforcement of the film rating system, lest more shootings like the one at Columbine High School befall the nation. "You shouldn't have to worry about your G-rated kids getting into violent or suggestive R-rated movies,'' Clinton said. Interestingly, Clinton took no credit for improving the social graces of the nation's youth. Only 12 years ago, Tipper ...

According to the story found on PalmettoJournal.com the Quayle campaign may be going broke. The story is found in the Palmetto Insider column. Click here or here to read it.

[Warning Ladies: This speech is original and very profane. It was given before battle hardened troops who were preparing to give "their last measure of devotion" to the liberty of the United States.] The Speech Somewhere in England June 5th, 1944 "Be seated." "Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend you're homes and your ...

PRISTINA (Reuters) - Two British soldiers were killed in an explosion at a Kosovo schoolhouse Monday, the first deaths of NATO peacekeepers since they began deploying in the province 10 days ago, the British military said. At least two civilians were also killed and one wounded in the blast that occurred as Nepalese Gurkha soldiers were removing munitions from the school in the village of Negrovce, 20 miles west of Pristina, a British army statement said. It was unclear if the early afternoon explosion was caused by a mine, booby trap or unexploded ordnance. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) said ...

Gore Schedule for Tenn., Colo., June 20-22 To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: Office of the Vice President, 202-456-7035 News Advisory: Not for release or publication; For news planning only All times local ------ MONDAY, JUNE 21 NASHVILLE, TN 3:50 p.m. The Vice President leads a Family Re-Union interactive satellite session, ``Owning the Dream: Economic Vitality and Education for Leadership.'' Langford Hall, Vanderbilt University Medical School OPEN PRESS 5:45 p.m. The Vice President attends a reception for Family Re-Union Conference Participants. Bishop Commons, Vanderbilt University OPEN PRESS The Vice President has no other public events on his schedule for Monday, ...