Free Republic

BAGRAM AIR BASE, AFGHANISTAN - US troops won't be leaving the scarred battlegrounds of Afghanistan any time soon. Far from crumbling after the destruction of the Taliban's national government, Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters have proved to be tenacious guerrilla warriors, lying low, launching hit-and run-attacks – and fighting back when confronted. The commander of US forces in Afghanistan says that the US and its allies fighting the war against terror are "up against an adaptive enemy that has managed to change its operational tactics." Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill says that Al Qaeda and Taliban forces are avoiding large formations,...

PARIS - The Uighur region of Northwestern China. An island in the Indonesian archipelago. The arid and mountainous border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. Ask intelligence experts where they think Osama bin Laden might be hiding from American wrath, and you find yourself riffling through the pages of an atlas in search of some of the world's most remote and inhospitable corners. But the fact remains that "nobody knows where he is," says Alex Standish, editor of the authoritative Janes Intelligence Digest. Nine months after President Bush said he wanted Mr. bin Laden "dead or...

Underlying the political fallout over President Bush's reported shift in opinion on climate change is the inaccurate assumption that scientists now have the tools to predict the consequences of rising temperatures for specific parts of the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has triggered several days of intensive news coverage by issuing a report envisioning drowning barrier islands, dried up alpine meadows in the Rockies, droughts in some parts of the country and floods in others. But in fact, it is not now possible to make the kinds of precise forecasts that have dominated coverage of the report sent...

U.S. investigators believe cyber-savvy terrorists may be looking to wreak havoc with the nation's water works, oil pipelines and emergency services.Agents found a pattern of suspicious surveillance of Silicon Valley and government networks on computer lines patched through Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Pakistan, today's Washington Post reports.Information about sabotaging remote control devices used to operate 911 emergency systems and power plants also has been found on computers seized from suspected Al Qaeda operatives."The event I fear most is a physical attack in conjunction with a successful cyber-attack on the responders' 911 system or on the power grid," The Post...

<p>Where's a San Francisco earthquake when you really need one?</p> <p>That's what most Americans must have been thinking yesterday, when a panel of judges on the notoriously - nay, outlandishly - leftist 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, sitting out by the Golden Gate Bridge, declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional.</p>

A Sunday school teacher who asked a 16-year-old boy to write "What would Jesus do?" on his penis will spend a month on work release, according to the sentencing agreement reached Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court.Todd Warren, 42, who pleaded guilty in April to a misdemeanor count of indecent exposure, was also originally ordered to write a letter describing the incident to fellow worshipers at Prairie Oak Community Church in Andover. But the church balked at the sentence, arguing that such a letter would be considered pornographic and would identify the teen-age victim.Although the church was not a party...

<p>June 27, 2002 -- PRESIDENT Bush's bold Middle East speech is a vindication of the ideas of Ariel Sharon. Ironically, it came during the 20th anniversary of Israel's war in Lebanon, which temporarily made Sharon a political outcast.</p> <p>It was in June 1982 that then-Defense Minister Sharon, backed by the Cabinet, sent troops into Lebanon to expel Yasser Arafat.</p>

HAVANA - Fidel Castro has warned that limited Cuba-U.S. relations could be cut further and the American mission here could be closed if U.S. diplomats persist in "violations of our sovereignty." Migration agreements between the two countries also were being put at risk by American diplomats "who go around the country as they like, organizing networks and conspiracies," the Cuban president said Wednesday. Castro's warning comes as Washington steps up programs it says are aimed at bringing democracy to the communist island, such as distributing radios here so Cubans can tune in to U.S. government programming and increasing funding for...

The scandal swirling around Martha Stewart is starting to make some of her advertisers nervous. Several companies that buy space in her magazines said they are monitoring the crisis — and experts said advertisers may abandon the enterprises. California Closets spokeswoman Jan Schlesinger started paying close attention to Stewart's insider-trading woes this week. "We're definitely watching it, because it can get squirrely," she said. "We have a marketing committee meeting tomorrow, and I bet they're going to be asking questions about this." Restoration Hardware, which bought space in two issues of Martha Stewart Living this spring, "absolutely would" take the...

SRINAGAR, India June 27 — Suspected Islamic militants hurled a grenade into a crowded market in the troubled Indian state of Jammu-Kashmir on Thursday, injuring at least 25 people, police said. The attack took place in the town of Anantnag, 35 miles south of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir. Twenty civilians and five paramilitary soldiers were among the injured, a local police officer said.Few other details were immediately available. The officer said Muslim militants were suspected to be behind the attack.More than a dozen Muslim guerrilla groups have been fighting for Jammu-Kashmir's independence or merger with Islamic Pakistan since...

<p>It would be overstatement to say that the last shreds of public faith in corporate America evaporated with the news that WorldCom overstated its profits by $3.8 billion.</p> <p>But the assertion is not far off.</p> <p>Even before Tuesday's announcement by the mammoth phone company, U.S. firms had already lost a good deal of the world's trust - the result of multibillion-dollar financial scandals at Enron, Global Crossings and elsewhere.</p>

More Unreal Tournament Weapons by Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg Impact Hammer Luckily we've moved past the archaic, pixellated days when first-person shooter characters who ran out of guns had no choice but to pound demons into infernal putty with their bare fists. In the enlightened-yet-darkened world of Unreal Tournament, all combatants carry with them, at all times, a device designed for cracking skulls like fortune cookies. The industrial design and sound effects keep this from being as pure and simple as one might hope, but I appreciate the effort nonetheless. C+ Enforcer It's pretty much your standard gun. It's nice that...

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Extending a blackmail campaign to every town and city in Colombia, left-wing guerrillas have threatened to kidnap or execute all mayors and municipal judges who refuse to quit by today. "This puts Colombia's democracy in checkmate," said Luis Perez, mayor of Medellin, the nation's second-largest city. A commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, issued the threat late Tuesday during an interview with Reuters. He said the nation's 1,097 mayors and all its municipal judges must step down by midnight Wednesday as the rebels press their monthlong crusade to drive out local officials. "The...

CBS's Andy Rooney appeared recently on "Larry King Live." King asked Rooney about "Bias," the book by Bernard Goldberg that accuses CBS, in particular, and mainstream news, in general, of a liberal bias: "What did you make of Bernard Goldberg's book," asked King, "critical of television liberal bias, and especially harsh on some of your folks at CBS." "I thought he made some very good points," replied Rooney. "There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias. I mean, I'm consistently liberal in my opinions. And I think some of the – I think Dan is...

Alabama's 7th Congressional district is 62 percent black and its 5th-term congressman, Earl F. Hilliard, is an active member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Despite this caucus's extraordinary help, including six of them who traveled to Alabama to campaign for him, Hilliard was defeated by a 34-year-old Harvard-educated attorney, Artur Davis, who received 52,356 votes to Hilliard's 41,050, Davis graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard as an undergraduate and Cum Laude from Harvard Law School. The Hilliard Campaign featured one TV spot which morphed a white man into Davis … who is black. Another spot showed Davis supporters as white,...

Would you ask a doctor to operate on you who had never performed surgery? Of course not, but every day, we are sending our troops into harm's way without the critical training they need and deserve in order to complete and survive their missions. The USS Kitty Hawk is the only permanently forward-deployed aircraft carrier in the world. She and her Battle Group must be ready to meet a crisis anywhere in the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean on a moment's notice. Her air wings are to be strike ready at all times, which means they must drop a...

June 27, 2002 -- CONSERVATIVES and Republicans screamed and hollered yesterday when word came of the federal appeals-court decision against the use of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. They were horrified. They shuddered in disbelief. They were consumed with anguish. Don't believe a word of it. In truth, Republicans are in a state of gleeful ecstasy. They're happier than they've been in years. With its decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Republican Party the keys to a political bulldozer and invited the GOP to flatten American liberalism. For a year, frustrated conservatives have been...

Residents whose property has been burned or is being threatened by wildfires currently out of control in Arizona are becoming increasingly frustrated with what they view as extreme environmental woodlands policies that they say have directly contributed to the destruction of more than 375,000 acres. "There's a lot of resentment from folks about the environmental community and some of the challenges we've had in the past," said Lewis Tenney, a longtime area rancher and former forest firefighter. Tenney is also a Republican candidate running for an open seat in the U.S. House that was created by redistricting last year. Tenney...

When the U.S. Forest Service asked Ron Largent, general manager of a major gold-mining operation in Colorado, for the use of some extra-heavy equipment to fight the Hayman fire, he was more than happy to help. Cutting strings and red tape, in a matter of hours Largent and his mine operations superintendent, David Tolhurst, arranged for two behemoth bulldozers – Caterpillar D-10 bulldozers, which the Forest Service specifically requested – to be hauled 25 miles north, from the Cripple Creek and Victor Gold Mine near Cripple Creek to Lake George, where a command center for fighting the fire had been...

<p>GOTCHA! Embattled Salomon Smith Barney telecom analyst Jack Grubman was caught on camera by CNBC outside his Upper East Side apartment yesterday morning.</p> <p>Salomon Smith Barney's Jack Grubman could be facing criminal charges by the time New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is through with him.</p>