Free Republic

HAVANA (AP) — The United States is responsible for ``bloody acts'' against Cuba, a former Cuban security official has testified in a lawsuit accusing the United States of waging a dirty war against the communist nation. The lawsuit, filed in late May in Havana, asks for $181 billion in compensatory and punitive damages for the deaths of 3,478 Cubans and permanent physical damage to 2,099 more people in a variety of acts ranging from the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 to the bombing of Havana hotels in 1997. More than 100 people are expected to testify before the ...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, July 3 (UPI) - To bring democracy to Kosovo, international officials must act undemocratically in the short run based on lessons learned in implementing peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), according to the newly appointed Southeastern Europe coordinator for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "I believe that we should have done more to alter the structure of the (government) institutions when we first got here," U.S. Ambassador Robert Barry, also head of the OSCE mission in BiH, said in an interview. BiH is a former Yugoslav republic comprising Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs that declared independence ...

07/06/99 By Carolyn Barta / The Dallas Morning News Some people call them kooks. That doesn't bother Susan Pejovich, Mike McCullough and Hugh Sprunt. They have busy lives - professional and personal. But their spare time is devoted to an unusual avocation: trying to uncover the cracks in the public accounts of former White House counsel Vince Foster's death. Move over, Kennedy assassination aficionados. Here come the Foster conspiracy buffs. As the sixth anniversary approaches July 20 of Mr. Foster's death, repeatedly ruled a suicide, this trio of local cybersleuths and 40 others around the country are keeping alive ...

07/06/99 By Carolyn Barta / The Dallas Morning News Some people call them kooks. That doesn't bother Susan Pejovich, Mike McCullough and Hugh Sprunt. They have busy lives - professional and personal. But their spare time is devoted to an unusual avocation: trying to uncover the cracks in the public accounts of former White House counsel Vince Foster's death. Move over, Kennedy assassination aficionados. Here come the Foster conspiracy buffs. As the sixth anniversary approaches July 20 of Mr. Foster's death, repeatedly ruled a suicide, this trio of local cybersleuths and 40 others around the country are keeping alive ...

(CNS) - A new report analyzing television coverage of the recently released Cox Committee report on Chinese espionage and the 1987 congressional report on the Iran-Contra scandal shows a large disparity in coverage of the two events by the three major broadcast TV networks. The report by the Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group Media Research Center showed that ABC, CBS and NBC aired a total of five stories the evening the Cox report was released. But 12 years ago, the networks air three times as many stories on the day of the Iran-Contra report, raising fresh questions about media bias. The ...

Some people call them kooks. That doesn't bother Susan Pejovich, Mike McCullough and Hugh Sprunt. They have busy lives - professional and personal. But their spare time is devoted to an unusual avocation: trying to uncover the cracks in the public accounts of former White House counsel Vince Foster's death. Move over, Kennedy assassination aficionados. Here come the Foster conspiracy buffs. As the sixth anniversary approaches July 20 of Mr. Foster's death, repeatedly ruled a suicide, this trio of local cybersleuths and 40 others around the country are keeping alive the idea that the Arkansas lawyer didn't die as ...

Accord With NATO Lets Moscow Add Troops in Kosovo* By STEVEN LEE MYERS with MICHAEL WINES WASHINGTON -- NATO and Russian military commanders resolved their differences over Russia's role in the peacekeeping operation in Kosovo Monday, clearing the way for about 3,600 more Russian troops to arrive in the Serbian province after weeks of wrangling. The first planeloads of Russian paratroopers could begin arriving as soon as Tuesday at Kosovo's main airport west of the capital, Pristina, alliance and Russian officials said. There they will join several hundred Russian troops who have hunkered down there since they entered Serbia on ...

7/6/99 Intel Agencies Urged To Change Assessments Of Missile, WMD Threats Inside Missile Defense June 30, 1999 Pg. 1 Intel Agencies Urged To Change Assessments Of Missile, WMD Threats In a letter from the now-defunct Rumsfeld Commission to U.S. intelligence community officials and key lawmakers, panel members call for ballistic missiles, along with weapons of mass destruction, to be regarded in intelligence assessments as strategic instruments of power and not as contraband traded in violation of international standards. Traditionally, the ex-commissioners write, "intelligence about the ballistic missile and WMD threat is sought and produced principally to support the development ...

In the years of World War II, the Army Air Forces trained 193,000 pilots, 50,000 navigators, and 45,000 bombardiers, but top spot in the aircrew training programs went to aerial gunners. Flexible gunnery schools turned out 297,000 graduates, most of them enlisted men. A high percentage were volunteers who, like bombardier trainees, knew they had but one destination on graduation--combat. The success of bombing campaigns in every theater of operations rested heavily on the aerial gunners, whose lot was not easy. Of all crew positions, the gunners had the most physically demanding, especially in heavy bombers that flew at altitudes ...

MOSCOW, Jul 5, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Russian interior ministry troops fired mortar shells overnight at Chechen gunmen who twice opened fire on a Daghestani border post in the northern Caucasus, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported Sunday. No servicemen were injured in the fighting that occurred after Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo on Saturday ordered military action against guerrillas in Chechnya. The gunmen twice attacked the border post near Kizlyar, northwest of Makhachkala, late Saturday and in the early hours on Sunday, ITAR-TASS said quoting interior ministry sources in the Daghestani capital. An interior ministry official in Makhachkala ...

IN Republican circles, the common rationale for nominating George W. Bush for president is, "We have to win" -- an understandable sentiment. After eight years of Clinton-Gore, there is a palpable yearning among GOP activists for a Republican in the White House. In purely electoral terms, the case for Bush's candidacy is formidable. He is the first governor of Texas this century to be elected to consecutive terms. In 1998, on his way to a landslide reelection, he won an estimated 49 percent of the Hispanic vote, 27 percent of the black vote, and 66 percent of the women's ...

Q. ...I'm a senior citizen on a fixed income. I'm covered by Medicare, and I need a number of prescription medications. Since Medicare doesn't pay for medications, I have to decide whether to spend my limited funds on food or medication. I'm already in debt, and unless somebody does something soon to change the system, the problem is going to get worse. Is the government doing anything to try to help senior citizens deal with this problem? For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

The Vietnam War was unique in many respects. It was the first air war in which both tactical and strategic operations were heavily dependent on air refueling. Strategic Air Command (SAC) tankers on temporary duty in the Pacific and Southeast Asia began flying missions in June 1965 and completed nearly 200,000 sorties during the course of the war. Except from the aircrews they served, the tankers have not received the recognition they earned. One of the most unusual refuelings was flown on May 3, 1967, by a crew of the 902d Air Refueling Squadron operating from U Tapao RTAB, Thailand, ...

This is a vanity I know but, C-span is discussing Al Gore right now and the guest is saying that Gore's father lost his Senate seat because he was for the Civil Rights Act. Here on Free Rrepublic I have read that Gore's dad and all the southern Democrats, in fact, voted against the Civil Rights Act and that it was the Republicans who actually pushed it through and that LBJ sid it wouldn't have happened without the Republicans help.Can someone who is articulate and quick on the button with the actual info, contact C-span and tell them the facts ...

BY WES ALLISON Times-Dispatch Staff Writer Now you can add your voice to the din surrounding whether Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee should have a spot on Richmond’s Canal Walk wall. Beginning this morning, images of Lee and other characters from Richmond’s past will be posted for your perusal at the Richmond Centre at Fifth and Marshall streets. The pictures represent the revised set of murals proposed for the floodwall along the new Canal Walk. The proposed murals were announced last week by a biracial committee of community leaders, politicians and historians. The committee was formed last month after protests ...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- There are plenty of reasons to think the huge budget surpluses President Clinton and Congress forecast last week are wishful thinking and will fall victim to recession or politicians' penchant for spending. The projections -- with both sides envisioning about $2.9 trillion in surpluses over the next decade -- also could turn out too conservative. Economists for the most part say even if the economy stumbles, the federal budget still would avoid the annual deficits that until last year were a budgetary mainstay for three decades. ``It's probably too optimistic, and I wouldn't spend all the ...

When a president uses his lofty office to attack a candidate in the other party, you know he's running scared. The modus operandi for presidents has been to publicly stay above the fray, even if it is their vice president's campaign they are concerned about. That's why it was a surprise to many political observers when, in last week's news conference with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Bill Clinton teed off on GOP frontrunner George W. Bush. What particularly irked Clinton was the record $36 million the Texas governor has so far raised for his White House bid. That's about ...

The Rant I am, therefore I rant. . . The weekend warrior vs. the draft dodger Let's see if we have this straight. The Los Angeles Times turned a team of reporters loose for six months to try and dig up some dirt on GOP Presidential front runner George W. Bush. After six months, the best they could come up with was that he may or may not have gotten preferential treatment to get into the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. We say "may or may not" because the Dallas Morning News took a look at the ...

Whatever luxury was, it isn't any more. It's not a trip to Hawaii. It's first dibs on a flight into outer space for a cool $100,000. It's not front-row seats for Rod Stewart's next concert. It's paying $1 million to have the rock star play at your wedding. It's not dinner at New York's chi-chi Le Cirque. It's a night out at a Las Vegas resort, where Hollywood superchef Wolfgang Puck and his crew are jetted in just to work the kitchen. Today, luxury is about time - and the creative things that only the wealthy can do with ...

The debate rages, with the left winning a significant number of converts from among conservative ranks.  The argument of the left is subtle and plays to the concerns of narrow personal interests so effectively that whole sections of the Constitution would need to be eviscerated from it to allow the victory so many seek.  If successful the far left and the far right may get what one wants and the other can't see coming, the final total-democratization of the US form of government.  A "democratic parliamentary" form government is favored by leading socialists on the left, one demanding coalitions of ...