Free Republic

We won. The Iraq War is over. I declare November 22, 2008 to be "Victory in Iraq Day." (Hereafter known as "VI Day.") By every measure, The United States and coalition forces have conclusively defeated all enemies in Iraq, pacified the country, deposed the previous regime, successfully helped to establish a new functioning democratic government, and suppressed any lingering insurgencies. The war has come to an end. And we won. What more indication do you need? An announcement from the outgoing Bush administration? It's not gonna happen. An announcement from the incoming Obama administration? That's really not gonna happen. A...

January 30, 2008 -- Democrats in 22 states across America go to the polls next Tuesday to pick between two presidential prospects: Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. We urge them to choose Obama - an untried candidate, to be sure, but preferable to the junior senator from New York. Obama represents a fresh start. His opponent, and her husband, stand for déjà vu all over again - a return to the opportunistic, scandal-scarred, morally muddled years of the almost infinitely self-indulgent Clinton co-presidency. Does America really want to go through all that once again? It will - if Sen....

Four back-breaking, soul-crushing, nation-rending years later, U.S. troops are at last scoring remarkable successes in Iraq - saving lives, calming strife and fostering the conditions necessary to build a self-governing country from its own rubble. There are thousands of reasons why the picture has brightened in these past few months. One of them is Army Spec. Pierce Clouden, of Canarsie, Brooklyn, who has been stationed at Camp Taji, northwest of Baghdad, since August as part of the "surge." "Don't know when I am going home, but it's not any time soon," Clouden told us last week. "I love my job,...

“BLOWBACK” is an intelligence term for adverse, unintended consequences of secret operations. The CIA first used it in a report on the 1953 operation that overthrew the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. Some in the intelligence community have been working with liberal journalists and Democrats on Capitol Hill to embarrass President Bush and to stymie his foreign policy initiatives. The most successful of these covert operations was the Valerie Plame affair, in which White House officials were falsely blamed for “outing” a CIA undercover officer who was not in fact undercover. (It was then Deputy Secretary of State Richard...

Wounds of Mohamed al Dura's Father Date Back to 1992, Surgeon Reveals Jamal al Dura, who claims that Israelis fired at him and his son in 2000, was in fact injured by axe blade and not bullets in 1992, according to an Israeli surgeon who performed reconstructive surgery on the wounds two years later. And who wounded Mohamed Al Dura's "father" in 1992? Jamal al Dura declared on medical records in 1992 that Palestinian militia had attacked him with axes.

NEW YORK -- Eleven public officials were charged Thursday in a widespread FBI corruption investigation, officials said. At least one state assemblyman, several local mayors and school board officials were arrested by FBI agents in early-morning roundups. The officials are expected to be arraigned on corruption charges in Trenton Thursday afternoon. United States attorney Chris Christie and FBI Special Agent in Charge Weysan Dun are expected to explain the charges at a 3:30 p.m. press conference in Trenton. WNBC.com has learned that several of the officials were allegedly caught accepting payoffs from undercover agents in a sting operation. Others were...

An Ocean City woman who has been charged in the death of an infant was denied bail this afternoon, and has not been charged in connection with the discovery of the remains of three other infants in and near her home. During a bail review hearing this afternoon, Christy Freeman, 37, told a judge that, if granted bail, she would not flee, because she wants to clear her name. Her defense attorney had requested $100,000 bail, but District Judge Daniel R. Mumford ordered Freeman held and scheduled a preliminary hearing for Aug. 27. Freeman has been charged with first- and...

Hundreds of immigration policy protesters came to Sen. Norm Coleman's house, hoping he will relate to their pain. A few hundred protesters crowded together briefly Sunday afternoon on the sidewalk and in the street in front of U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's St. Paul home, shouting for an end to immigration policies and enforcement practices that the demonstrators say unfairly divide families. The rally -- during which participants first gathered at Summit Avenue and North Lexington Parkway and then marched about a mile to Coleman's house on Osceola Avenue -- came a day before today's burial of Coleman's father, Norman Coleman...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) - A driver ran a checkpoint at a nuclear weapons plant early Monday and crashed into a barrier, then fled on foot, authorities said. Guards at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, a primary storehouse for bomb-grade uranium, said the man "appeared to be impaired in some way" when they stopped him around 5 a.m. at a security checkpoint near a rear entrance, spokesman Bill Wilburn said. They asked him for identification, but the man hit the gas and drove through the checkpoint, then crashed into security barriers a short distance away, Wilburn said. "When he hit...

Be Our Guest He's your son, riding a commuter train to work. Your daughter, taking the subway to go shopping downtown. Your grandparent, boarding an airplane at JFK en route to a family reunion. Your husband or wife, working anywhere in America. John Doe is you. Me. All of us. And he's in trouble. Yesterday, members of Congress met in conference to finalize provisions of the 9/11 security bill, which implements the final recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. But as of press time, the Democratic majority was using a technicality to block the so-called John Doe amendment from being included...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) - Militants in northwest Pakistan disavowed a peace pact with the government and launched two days of suicide attacks and bombings that killed at least 70 people, dramatically escalating the violence in the al-Qaida infiltrated region. The attacks Sunday and Saturday followed strident calls by extremists to avenge the government's bloody storming of Islamabad's Red Mosque and a declaration of jihad, or holy war, by at least one pro-Taliban cleric. Termination of the peace treaty, the hopeful handiwork of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, puts even greater pressure on the military leader as he struggles with both Islamic...

It's customary for stories about Washington D.C. written in the final hours before Congress takes its August break to make some comparison to the city's sweltering steamy heat. This has been a rather cool and dry summer as a matter of fact, but if Congress can't wait to get out of here, most of us are so steamed at its behavior that we can't wait for these pampered, self-serving clowns to beat it out of town. Our military pulls the laboring oar to complete the mission in Iraq, and the troops seem to be doing quite a job of it...

Civil rights attorneys are on a national crusade to force Medicaid to pay for abortions when the mother's health is in jeopardy. Monday, they took that years-long fight to the Georgia Supreme Court. Currently, Georgia women who have abortions must foot the bill unless their life is in danger. So doctors at health clinics across Georgia are seeing poor women who can't afford abortions risk their own health by continuing dangerous pregnancies, argued New York-based attorney Louise Melling, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in Fulton County in 2003 on behalf...

Calendar No. 144, 110th Congress, S. 1348 In the Senate of the United States May 9, 2007 Mr. Reid (for himself, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Menendez, and Mr. Salazar) introduced the following bill which was read the first time May 10, 2007 read the second time and placed on the calendar

I am glad that the Chairman and I were able to reach a sensible solution on the resolution that would avoid immediate issuance of subpoenas for testimony and documents from the Department of Justice on the FALN clemency matter. As I said last week, I did not agree with the President?s decision to grant clemency to the FALN prisoners. Furthermore, I have heard nothing to make me change my view that his decision was wrong from the hearings held in this Committee or in the Foreign Relations Committee or in press reports. On the other hand, I do not believe...

The newly released e-mails on the U.S. Attorney firings are here. TPM Muckraker is enlisting its readers to pore through them. But you know that the people who read that blog won’t pick out the parts that aid the Administration’s case. That’s where you come in. I am enlisting the Great Patterico Army — all few dozen of you — to look through these and tell us what the media is going to leave out. It’s not about defending the Administration. It’s about keeping the other side (Democrats and Big Media, but I repeat myself) honest. Or some reasonable facsimile...

How many times have you sat in front of the television over the last four years, watching anti-war activists march on Washington, chase the ROTC off your local college campus, vandalize war memorials, insult the troops and wreak havoc under the surrender banner? How many times have you thought to yourself: What can I do? Here is the answer: Get off the sofa and join the Gathering of Eagles on March 17 in Washington, D.C. On that day, well-funded, celebrity-studded anti-war groups plan to march to the Pentagon on a protest route that will take them past the Vietnam Veterans...

WELLESLEY, Mass. — The senior thesis of Hillary D. Rodham, Wellesley College class of 1969, has been speculated about, spun, analyzed, debated, criticized and defended. But rarely has it been read, because for the eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency it was locked away. As forbidden fruit, the writings of a 21-year-old college senior, examining the tactics of radical community organizer Saul D. Alinsky, have gained mythic status among her critics — a “Rosetta Stone,” in the words of one, that would allow readers to decode the thinking of the former first lady and 2008 presidential candidate. Despite the fervent...

One of the most irksome traits of columnists or media gurus is that they never change their mind. Would Rush Limbaugh ever admit "Iraq was a dumb idea"? Columnists occupy valuable real estate, yet dwell in a cave of certitude. Having written this column over these past 16 years, I, too, may have fallen into the same trap. So let me venture into uncertain ground by admitting that I've changed my mind about a few things. I won't suggest that these changes will affect the course of our society, but I thought I'd acknowledge them anyway. Cable television news: In...

You're a big-shot Republican senator who supports President George W. Bush's troop surge in Iraq and are desperate to make nice with the America's religious right. Where do you go to officially launch your presidential campaign? If you're John McCain -- always trying to be hip, always trying to be a maverick -- you announce your plans to talkshow host David Letterman, a left-leaning, Bush-bashing war opponent who is pretty much reviled by right-wing Republicans. And McCain wonders why Americans are confused about him. In case anyone missed it, he appeared Wednesday night on Letterman's show to state the obvious...