Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative television news anchor Bill O'Reilly said on Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration and apologized to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.   The anchor of his own show on Fox News said he was sorry he gave the U.S. government the benefit of the doubt that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's weapons program poised an imminent threat, the main reason cited for going to war. "I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about...

German Trial Hears How Iranian Agent  Warned U.S. of Impending al-Qaida Attack  By Ben Aris  The Guardian  Saturday 24 January 2004  The United States was warned of impending September 11 terrorist attacks by an Iranian spy, but ignored him, German secret service agents testified yesterday in the trial of an alleged al-Qaida terrorist.  The spy, identified as Hamid Reza Zakeri, tried to warn the CIA after leaving Iran in 2001, but was not believed, two German officers who interviewed him told the Hamburg court.  Zakeri worked in the department of the Iranian secret services responsible for "carrying out terrorist attacks globally", one of the officers said. Prosecutors...

Selected by the Sundance Film Festival as a Special Screening, the feature documentary, “The Hunting Of The President” will have it’s world premiere on Friday, January 23rd at the Prospector Square Theater in Park City, Utah. “Hunting” is one of 12 films selected for these special screenings. The documentary is based on Joe Conason and Gene Lyons’ best selling non-fiction book, “The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton.” “Hunting” is the story of the unrelenting effort to defeat and discredit Bill Clinton through the deceit and manipulation of the media. “With the recent...

How to Lose Your Job in Talk RadioClear Channel gags an antiwar conservative.By Charles Goyette“Imagine these startling headlines with the nation at war in the Pacific six months after Dec. 7, 1941: “No Signs of Japanese Involvement in Pearl Harbor Attack! Faulty Intelligence Cited; Wolfowitz: Mistakes Were Made.”Or how about an equally disconcerting World War II headline from the European theater: “German Army Not Found in France, Poland, Admits President; Rumsfeld: ‘Oops!’, Powell Silent; ‘Bring ’Em On,’ Says Defiant FDR.”It seems to me that when there is reason to go to war, it should be self-evident. The Secretary of State...

<p>Following is the official list of American military personnel killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom since May 1, 2003, as of 5 p.m. EST Friday, Dec. 12, 2003.</p> <p>Click here to see the list of military casualties prior to May 1, 2003.</p> <p>Army Staff Sgt. Richard A. Burdick, 24, of National City, Calif. Killed in Mosul, Iraq, when his vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device. Assigned to Company C, 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), based in Fort Campbell, Ky.</p>

White House Wins Fight on OT Rule Changes WASHINGTON - Foes of the Bush administration's proposed rules changing which workers would qualify for overtime pay abandoned their fight Friday in the face of unrelenting pressure from the White House and the House. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the chief Republican opponent of the new rules, agreed to drop a provision killing the regulations from a massive spending bill, lawmakers, congressional aides and lobbyists said. Critics of the new rules said they could lead to 8 million Americans losing eligibility for overtime pay, largely white-collar workers earning more than $65,000 a...

I joined Freerepublic in an attempt to converse with other conservatives. Lately it's been a struggle even to find a conservative post. All I see are two kinds of people, the "blame Clinton(and/or) Democrats for everything bad that happens(ed), and the Bushbots that put GWB up to a place equaling Christ. Neither are true, and I'm a truthseeker first and foremost. All I see now are threads full of propaganda, ..War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Freedom is slavery. Lies are truth. Patriotism is treason. Fascism is patriotism. I see very few coherent posts, and almost none espousing true conservatism....

  Kennedy To Receive Bush Public Service Award      COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Oct. 3, 2003 - The George Bush Presidential Library Foundation today announced that United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy would receive the 2003 George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service at a dinner ceremony held at the Bush Library Center on the Texas A&M campus on November 7. Former President Bush will present the award to the Massachusetts Democrat, who will join former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl as Bush Award recipients. The award will be presented in a ceremony at the...

Springsteen wove strong criticism of the administration of President Bush into the first of the final three shows at Shea Stadium on Wednesday night, playing a recording of Bush talking about weapons of mass destruction, questioning America's motives for the war in Iraq and calling for Bush's defeat as he seeks re-election next year. "It is time to impeach the president and put in somebody that knows what they're doing," the musician, known as "The Boss," told the crowd. Heading into the hit "Born in the U.S.A.," he said: "The question of whether we were misled into the war in...

PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro, Sept. 19 — Basking in public adoration the United States can only dream of in Iraq, ex-president Bill Clinton got a hero’s welcome in Kosovo on Friday, four years after NATO bombing ended Serb rule. THOUSANDS OF KOSOVO Albanians turned out to greet the man they see as their liberator from a decade of repression under then Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. Schoolchildren got the day off and well-wishers waving the Star and Stripes thronged Pristina’s Bill Clinton Boulevard as his motorcade drove by. Loud applause erupted when Clinton, while also preaching ethnic reconciliation with Serbs, gave...

GAO Warns of Dangerous DeficitNewsMax.com WiresThursday, Sept 18, 2003 WASHINGTON -- The head of Congress' investigative arm warned Wednesday that the United States faces "large and growing structural deficits," which, if not soon addressed, could lead to "a dangerous budgetary and economic spiral that would ultimately hurt every American." "Our nation has a major long-term fiscal challenge that is not going away, and requires serious and sustained attention," David Walker, U.S. comptroller general and head of the General Accounting Office, said Wednesday at a luncheon at Washington's National Press Club. This challenge -- more than $7 trillion in accumulated...

Toby Keith was still the roadhouse patriot in concert at Staples, but behind the scenes his feelings are more complex. As he sang the lyrics to his celebrated patriotic hit Sunday at Staples Center, red, white and blue confetti rained down on the curled brim of Toby Keith's cowboy hat and rocket-red pyrotechnics shot up past a video screen showing the Statue of Liberty. This was the Toby the crowd wanted and expected, the roadhouse patriot. But a few hours earlier, in a hushed dressing room, it was a different Keith — one who talked about the increasingly onerous challenge...

Former NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark is on record that he’s just weeks away from declaring whether he will jump in the presidential race. In an exclusive interview with NewsMax.com, he acknowledges the attention is flattering and that he believes he has valuable experience to offer the nation in its war on terror. The movement to draft him for one more assignment, the nation’s biggest, is “stunning,” he says. The details, however, aren’t so riveting. When NewsMax asks if he has even decided on a venue for the announcement, he says only, “I haven’t worked out anything.” The West Pointer,...

Bad Call on Iraq By David H. HackworthA whole bunch of folks here in the USA and around this beat-up globe are all worked up over George W. Bush’s 16 shifty words in his “Let's Do Saddam” State of the Union speech when they should be taking a harder look at the president's judgment on the most critical matter to a state: war.              After all, most Oval Office dwellers during my lifetime told their fair share of whoppers. Just to name a few of the super-doozies: Ike and the Gary Powers spy-plane fiasco; LBJ and the phony Tonkin Gulf incident;...

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, one of the nation's most popular radio talk-show hosts and the most successful on-air counselor, is no longer practicing the rituals of Judaism – a religion she converted to a decade ago in her 40s. ''Almost 10 years ago, I talked on the air about becoming a convert to Judaism,'' she told her listeners last week. ''I was open on the air at that time about that evolution. Well, I would say within the last year I have had a de-evolution.'' Where is she now spiritually? ''Nowhere exactly,'' she chuckled. ''Suspended animation. I still see myself as...

<p>After three decades as one of Saddam Hussein's chief chemical warriors, Iraqi Brig. Gen. Alaa Saeed picks nervously at the kebabs on his plate as he talks about the deadly nerve gases and blister agents he once produced.</p> <p>His hands shake visibly as he describes his last terrifying meeting with Hussein, even though it was more than five years ago. He worries about his culpability for the sweeping documents he wrote declaring to the United Nations that Iraq was free of banned weapons. And thoughts of the price he may pay for his deeds haunt him.</p>

More aid requests from once affluent seen ALLEN – Mary Ann Knight thought she had seen and heard it all in the eight years she has worked at Allen Community Outreach, helping people make ends meet. That is, until former upper-middle-class residents, hit hard by corporate layoffs that have rocked North Texas the last three years, began walking through the agency's doors, seeking help paying bills. Mixed in their stacks of monthly bills that cover life's necessities are those that also cover lives the clients don't want to leave behind: $800 car payments, private school tuition that ranges from $1,200...

by Thom Hartmann   NEW YORK  - A political explosion happened this weekend in New York, and it may be the big one that gives Karl Rove nightmares. It could mean the end of George W. Bush's seemingly unending ability to tell overt lies to the American people and not get called on them by the American media. At a Saturday talk radio industry event put on by Talkers Magazine, Gabe Hobbs, Clear Channel Radio's vice president of News/Talk/Sports, announced that in the near future this corporate owner of over 1200 radio stations is considering programming some of their...

WASHINGTON, April 28 — Ignoring objections from his conservative base, President Bush is to make a Rose Garden speech on Tuesday in support of a $15 billion bill to fight AIDS internationally that will direct some money to groups that promote abortion. The bill, sponsored by Representative Henry J. Hyde, Republican of Illinois, has been the subject of intense negotiations between the White House and both parties on Capitol Hill. Now it is drawing fire from conservatives who say Mr. Bush's support is merely an attempt to win favor with moderate swing voters in 2004. "This is about politics," Ken...

The estranged wife of President George Bush's brother, Neil, plans a tell-all book about life within the first family. In the midst of a divorce wrangle with her former husband of 22 years, Sharon Bush travelled to New York to lunch recently with America's queen of celebrity biography, Kitty Kelley. At a Manhattan restaurant, the pair brainstormed ideas and discussed Mrs Bush's debut as author. Kelley, who scored hits with unauthorised biographies of Nancy Reagan, Frank Sinatra and the British royal family, is already writing a book on the Bush clan scheduled for release next year. Mrs Bush is believed...