Free Republic

Three years ago, a fellow Marine gave his life to save Kelly Miller. It has been a hard road since. Two mothers join forces EUREKA, Calif. -- Kelly Miller has the dream once or twice a week. He's on patrol in Iraq, searching a white Toyota Land Cruiser. The driver lunges out and grabs Cpl. Miller's squad leader, Jason Dunham, around the neck. The Iraqi and Cpl. Dunham tumble to the ground in a ferocious hand-to-hand struggle. Cpl. Miller beats the insurgent with a police baton. Another Marine races over to help. The Iraqi drops a hand grenade. The force...

The current debate over surging US military manpower has steadily lost focus on the real issue: Providing more U.S. troops can only serve a purpose if it is tied to a new and comprehensive approach to providing security and stability in Iraq. The problem is not total U.S. force levels or the security of Baghdad. It is the ability to reverse the current drift toward a major civil war and separation of the country by finding a new approach to U.S. intervention in Iraq.

Report: 5,000 Iran agents behind Shi'ite death squads in Iraq WASHINGTON — Iran maintains thousands of intelligence agents in Iraq, according to Saudi security sources. A report on Iran's intelligence presence in Iraq by the Saudi National Security Assessment Project asserts that Iran has at least 5,000 agents, responsible for helping establish Shi'ite death squads. Al Quds "has a close relationship with the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army, as well as with smaller Iraqi Shi'ite militias," the report said. "Members of the Al Quds Forces organized what came to be known as the death squads under the former Iraqi...

January 3, 2007: Ethiopia plans to get its troops out of the country with a month. Somalis don't like foreigners, and love to attack and rob outlanders, even if the prey is heavily armed. Meanwhile, captured foreigners, suspected of being Islamic terrorists, are being brought in. The Transitional Government is going to try and disarm the population, or at least collect "excess weapons" and stuff not needed for personal protection (machine-guns, mortars and other heavy weapons.) Kenyan border guards have arrested at least a dozen men, suspected of being Islamic Courts officials, as they tried to cross the border. Years...

January 5, 2007: NATO commanders believe that the Taliban are planning a more aggressive operation in the Spring, using groups of up to a hundred men to attack small towns, especially local government headquarters. These towns often have only a dozen or so policemen, and some armed locals. Coming in at night, the Taliban can take over, get some propaganda videos, and have a chance of getting away before government or NATO reinforcements show up. The Taliban are fighting a media war, as they have no chance of winning a military victory at this point. The Taliban believe that, in...

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's new strategy for Iraq, which the president is set to announce next week, will include a big boost in spending to fund reconstruction, economic growth and job creation, as part of a broader effort to help embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. People familiar with the matter say that Mr. Bush will detail his request for billions of dollars in new aid for Iraq next week in an eagerly awaited speech on his strategy to contain sectarian violence there and clear the way for an eventual U.S. military withdrawal. In his speech, Mr. Bush will...

January 3, 2007: Nearly 14,000 Iraqis were killed by criminal or political violence in 2006. The violence is not quite a war, but it is very violent, especially when you consider that nearly all of it is taking place in only a third of the country. While the Iraqi dead amount to about twelve times the murder rate in the United States, it's about two thirds the death rate in the United States during a year (1944) in World War II. The fighting is more and more Iraqis versus Iraqis, with some 95 percent of the dead in 2005 being...

January 2, 2007: Casualties in Iraq were down this year, about four percent less than the 6,793 dead and wounded in 2005. That's not the impression you get from the mass media, but that's because bad news leads, and good news gets buried. But Iraq is most definitely still a combat zone. Some U.S. troops sent there in 2006 became casualties, and about one in 200 was killed. Very much a dangerous undertaking. And those are just the physical, combat casualties. Even more troops got sick from disease, or were injured in non-combat accidents. Also, about one in 500 troops...

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein's execution could come by tomorrow, amid conflicting reports about whether he has been handed over to Iraqi officials. Mr. Hussein's lawyers filed documents Friday afternoon asking for an emergency restraining order aimed at stopping the U.S. government from relinquishing custody of the condemned former Iraqi leader to Iraqi officials, a spokeswoman for a federal court in Washington D.C. said. Earlier in day, Mr. Hussein's lawyers said the former dictator had already been transferred from U.S. custody, and an Iraqi judge authorized to attend Mr. Hussein's hanging said he would be executed no later than Saturday....

LOS ANGELES -- In September 2004, just days after Chechen rebels raided a school in Beslan, Russia, killing 331 men, women and children, the Los Angeles Police Department summoned senior officers to its decaying downtown headquarters. The issue on the table: What would they do if a similar attack took place here? Most of the talk that morning was about where to deploy SWAT teams if terrorists ever took over a local school. Detective Mark Severino, one of the city's counterterrorist investigators, then asked his colleagues: "Do we even have Chechen extremists in Los Angeles?" Blank stares and silence filled...

December 26, 2006; Page A3 JERUSALEM -- Israel is in the throes of an existential crisis, fueled mostly by concerns about Iran, the Islamic republic's bombastic president and the nuclear program he vowed on Sunday to push forward after the United Nations Security Council voted to impose sanctions. Historians say the current level of Israeli anxiety is unparalleled in the nation's nearly six decades of existence

WASHINGTON -- The incoming Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said no new U.S. troops should be sent to Iraq, setting up a potential political battle over President Bush's tentative plan to deploy tens of thousands of additional forces to try to stabilize the country.

U.S. intelligence monitoring international links to Saudi nuclear program WASHINGTON — The United States has questioned the need for a Saudi Arabian nuclear energy program in its first expression of concern about the Saudis' plans. In 2003, Saudi Arabia signed an agreement with Pakistan for nuclear cooperation. Officials said the intelligence community believes that Riyad financed much, if not all, of Pakistan's nuclear weapons efforts. The U.S. intelligence community has long been monitoring Saudi nuclear efforts. For more than a decade, Riyadh has been seeking ways to deter Iran's nuclear program, expected to produce atomic bombs over the next two...

This public relations plant is Rodham's opening salvo to destroy Obama.

Forty-nine percent of $843B in discretionary federal spending went for defense in fiscal 2006 and 4% for Homeland Security. The Journal sserts that Iraq spending may increase from approximately $100B in fiscl 2006 to $170B in fiscal 2007, $70B of which has already been appropriated. This is in addition to a projected defense budget of $435B in fiscal 2007, up from $411B in fiscal 2006. The Journal states discretionary spending has risen 23% under President Bush. The total federal budget was approximately $2.7T in fiscal 2006, 39% of which went for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare costs alone are...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton's national security adviser removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to find the trash collector to retrieve them, the agency's internal watchdog said Wednesday. The report was issued more than a year after Sandy Berger pleaded guilty and received a criminal sentence for removing the documents. Berger took the documents in the fall of 2003 while working to prepare himself and Clinton administration witnesses for testimony to the Sept. 11 commission. Berger was authorized as the Clinton administration's representative to make sure the commission got the...

RSVP for a night of politically correct fun with Nancy and special guest Richard (or is it Rachelle?) Gere.

Coll's bio. Coll wrote an interesting book on Afghanistan (Ghost Wars, 2001)

President Bush says the U.S. needs to increase the size of Army and Marines, and says strategy and tactics in Iraq will change to meet the situation on the ground. Bush also said Wednesday that insurgents in Iraq thwarted U.S. efforts at "establishing security and stability throughout the country" in 2006. At a year-end news conference, Bush said the United States will "ask more of our Iraqi partners" in 2007, and he pledged to work with the new Democratic Congress, as well. Bush sidestepped one question _ whether he would order a so-called surge of troops in Iraq as a...

President Bush says the U.S. needs to increase the size of Army and Marines, and says strategy and tactics in Iraq will change to meet the situation on the ground. Bush also said Wednesday that insurgents in Iraq thwarted U.S. efforts at "establishing security and stability throughout the country" in 2006. At a year-end news conference, Bush said the United States will "ask more of our Iraqi partners" in 2007, and he pledged to work with the new Democratic Congress, as well. Bush sidestepped one question _ whether he would order a so-called surge of troops in Iraq as a...