Free Republic

Even after “updating” a May 17 ‘Fact’ Check which this writer characterized as "taking three sentences from an hour-long May 1 Rick Hamada interview with Afghanistan combat veteran Rep. Charles Djou, twisting Djou's words into a pretzel and fact-checking statements Djou did not make", Civil Beat is still lying about Charles Djou’s Afghanistan combat record and his votes in Congress relating to that war. (See article below.) Shamed into retracting their “false” rating, Civil Beat on Friday shifted to a “half-true”. In spite of the shift, the “half-true” rating remains a lie which hangs on a single sentence of willful...

On Sunday, President Barack Obama traveled to Afghanistan to do a photo op with the troops amid fallout from the burgeoning Veterans Administration scandal. Announcing his visit, the White House promptly released a list of guests, including the name of the top CIA officer in Afghanistan. That officer is responsible for intelligence and drone warfare. The information was sent to over 6,000 email addresses. Oops. This is not the first time the Obama administration has compromised national security with leaks, either purposeful or inadvertent. SEAL Team Six. After the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Obama administration steadfastly refused to...

Sources have told the Daily Telegraph that just five unarmed locally hired Libyans were placed on duty at the compound on eight-hour shifts under a deal that fell outside the State Department's global security contracting system. Blue Mountain, the Camarthen firm that won a $387,000 (£241,000) one year contract from the US State Department to protect the compound in May, sent just one British employee, recruited from the celebrity bodyguard circuit, to oversee the work. The compound was overrun by a mob of Islamic extremists on the morning of September 12 in an apparent planned attack that resulted in the...

A small British firm based in south Wales had secured a contract to provide security for American diplomatic facilities in Benghazi despite having only a few months experience in the country. Sources have told the Daily Telegraph that just five unarmed locally hired Libyans were placed on duty at the compound on eight-hour shifts under a deal that fell outside the State Department's global security contracting system. Blue Mountain, the Camarthen firm that won a $387,000 (£241,000) one year contract from the US State Department to protect the compound in May, sent just one British employee, recruited from the celebrity...

THE DEPARTMENT OF Justice secretly obtained phone records for reporters and editors who work for the Associated Press news agency, including records for the home phones and cell phones of individual journalists, according to the AP, in what the agency characterized as “serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.” The records, covering all of April and May 2012, were seized by the DoJ earlier this year and covered more than 20 separate phone lines. The records listed outgoing calls for both the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, as well as the general...

MI6 agents could be asked to volunteer DNA as part of a renewed bid to discover how Gareth Williams died, the head of the Metropolitan Police confirmed yesterday.

Why did Canada and the EU abandon Chen Guangcheng? (Hint: Pandas ain't free.)In December 2010, a trio of Western diplomats stationed in China -- one each from Canada, Switzerland, and the European Union -- drove from Beijing to the village of Dongshigu, eight hours away in Shandong province, hoping to visit the detained dissident Chen Guangcheng. No one has spoken publicly about what happened next. They did not mention the excursion itself, and certainly not the rough reception they received from the hands of the guards who prevented them from seeing Chen. But one person with knowledge of the incident...

The State Department painted it as an elegant way out of a ballooning crisis involving Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng — but by day’s end, it looked like a disgraceful performance by US diplomats. Initial reports had Chen so pleased by the deal that he told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “I want to kiss you.” The agreement Clinton negotiated with Beijing yesterday supposedly allowed Cheng to stay in China and get medical attention, with the authorities guaranteeing his future safety. But things started unraveling just hours after the compromise was inked. First, while State claims Chen never wanted to leave...

A civilian working aboard a nuclear submarine drydocked at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine admits to starting two fires causing $400 million in damage. Maybe he should have just called in sick? A man who set two fires to a nuclear-powered submarine, causing $400 million in damage, admitted he did it because he wanted to leave work early. Casey James Fury, 24, was working aboard the USS Miami in Kittery, Maine as a civilian painter and sandblaster when he purposefully set two fires this summer, according to a criminal complaint filed in the United States District Court in Maine....

The Navy has decided that it will not repair the nuclear-powered submarine USS Miami after concluding that the cost of repairing damage from a fire set by a civilian worker is more than it can afford due to mandated budget cuts.

<p>KITTERY, MAINE – The Navy has said goodbye to the fire-damaged USS Miami.</p> <p>A formal decommissioning ceremony was held Friday at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine, where the nuclear-powered submarine was ravaged by a May 2012 fire set by a shipyard worker.</p>

(CNN) -- A pro-al Qaeda group responsible for a previous armed assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is the chief suspect in Tuesday's attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, sources tracking militant Islamist groups in eastern Libya say. They also note that the attack immediately followed a call from al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri for revenge for the death in June of Abu Yahya al-Libi, a senior Libyan member of the terror group. The group suspected to be behind the assault -- the Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades -- first surfaced in May when it claimed responsibility...

American hostage Warren Weinstein says in a video released late Sunday by al Qaeda that he will be killed unless U.S. President Barack Obama agrees to the militant group's demands. "My life is in your hands, Mr. President," Mr. Weinstein said in the video. "If you accept the demands, I live; if you don't accept the demands, then I die."

AP) WASHINGTON - The White House says the Obama administration does not and will not negotiate with al Qaeda even though it is concerned about the safety and well-being of a 70-year-old American aid worker kidnapped in Pakistan nine months ago. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration condemns the kidnapping of Warren Weinstein and called for his immediate release. In a video released by al Qaeda, Weinstein said he would be killed unless President Barack Obama agrees to the group's demands.

NYU isn’t letting a pesky thing like human rights stand in the way of its expansion in China. The university has booted a blind Chinese political dissident from its campus under pressure from the Communist government as it builds a coveted branch in Shanghai, sources told The Post. Chen Guangcheng has been at NYU since May 2012, when he made a dramatic escape from his oppressive homeland with the help of Hillary Rodham Clinton. But school brass has told him to get out by the end of this month, the sources said. Chen’s presence at the school didn’t sit well...

No good deed goes unpunished; this must be what US Ambassador to China Gary Locke must have been thinking as a firestorm of criticism erupted over his embassy’s handling of the Chen Guangcheng case. Under great pressure, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner arriving for high profile talks with China’s leadership, the embassy and colleagues in the State Department including Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Kurt Campbell had negotiated a delicate deal with Chinese counterparts that Chen accepted. Negotiated with the involvement of top legal scholar Jerome Cohen, and based on a...

An Iranian attempt to launch a satellite into space failed when the missile carrying the satellite exploded shortly after liftoff, completely destroying the satellite. HIS Janes reported that the accident took place in May, and that Iran's space agency has made great efforts to hide it from the public's knowledge. The failure is expected to set back Iran's space program considerably. Western experts said that the mishap shows Iran is facing difficulties in ballistic missile development. Janes revealed that U.S. spy satellites followed the attempted launch, which took place at the space center near Tehran. Black spots were seen covering...

A man was arrested in New York City's international airport with uranium destined for Iran hidden in the soles of his shoes, the US Justice Department said. Patrick Campbell, 33, who was arrested Wednesday as he arrived at the John F Kennedy airport from Paris, is accused of trying to act as an intermediary to sell Iran 1,000 tons of purified uranium, in violation of US law. The Sierra Leone-based Campbell had been under surveillance since May 2012, when he responded to an ad on the site Alibaba.com by someone looking to buy uranium 308, or yellow cake. The buyer...

Edward Jay Epstein has a large and distinguished body of work on intelligence and intelligence-related issues. Among his books in the field are Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald and Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA. Ed has also taken to the ebook form. His ebooks on intelligence-related issues include Killing Castro and James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right? This morning Ed has forwarded the following questions on the Petraeus scandal: Before we can walk the cat back, and establish the chronology of a possible penetration, we need to answer the following ten...

See for yourself. Issa’s committee was told last year that the report would be ready in September, two months before the election. Eight months later, the bomb finally dropped. Why? Did the IG initially underestimate the volume of malfeasance and how long it would take to dig it up? Or are there other, more cynical reasons?Even if the report wasn’t ready, Issa claims the IG had a statutory obligation to keep Congress updated on its findings as they were made. He didn’t. Why not? Issa is referring to part of the Inspector General Act that requires watchdogs to report serious...