Free Republic

To toil at National Review is to know what it’s like to read “Buckley must be spinning in his grave!” at the beginning of umpteen letters, e-mails, blog posts, and tweets from less-than-gruntled critics supremely assured of their originality. The beauty of this evergreen — and its cheap presumptions about a great man — is that it can be wielded with equal convenience by trolls of every political persuasion and in response to any number of detected heresies.But, with the whiff of bigotry and malice that so many smell in popular politics since the tranquil days when the last Bush...

Saddam Accepted the American Ultimatum Before the US Invasion, According to Rights and Freedom International Monday October 30, 4:35 pm ET TORONTO, Oct. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- A former political adviser to Saddam Hussein's son said today that Saddam was willing to yield to all American demands before the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- but that the Bush administration refused his offers. The disclosure was made by Hossam Shaltout, a Canadian aerospace engineer, former American pilot, and founder of the peace organization Rights and Freedom International (http://www.rightsandfreedom.com), who said that war could have been averted, but Bush aides blocked his efforts...

BEIRUT, Aug 5, 2006 (AFP) - US Mideast envoy David Welch arrived in Beirut for talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora on the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese government source said on Saturday. Welch, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, was also due to hold talks with parliament speaker Nabih Berri after arriving overnight Friday, said the source, who asked not to be identified. The US embassy in Beirut declined to comment. The visit comes almost one week after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was forced to shelve a visit to Lebanon during...

In a step toward resuming U.S. peacemaking efforts in the Mideast, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will send two senior envoys to the region on Tuesday even amid uncertainty about stricken Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch and Elliott Abrams of President Bush's national security council staff, will look into arrangements for a Palestinian election Jan. 25 among other issues on the Mideast agenda. They were to have met last week with Sharon's top advisers, but Welch and Abrams postponed their trip after the prime minister suffered a second, and devastating, stroke. Rice notified Mahmoud...

Secretary of State Rice, the president's right hand on all foreign policy issues, has resolutely blocked pressure from Rumsfeld and Cheney to grant key appointments, especially in the Bureau of Near East Affairs and Middle East diplomatic posts, to neo-conservatives. She chose David Welch, a solid, widely respected professional Foreign Service Officer with immense experience in the Arab world as assistant secretary for Near East affairs. And State insiders say she and Welch are considering Richard Jones, another seasoned Middle East veteran and professional diplomat, who is Rice's current special advisor and coordinator on Iraq, for the crucial slot of...

We give billions in aid to our Egyptian allies. The result is an alternate reality like this. The View from EgyptBy Hani Shukrallah Al-Ahram Weekly | December 22, 2003 U.S. Ambassador in Egypt, David Welch, is a diplomat who does not mince his words. But then, neither do Al-Ahram Weekly journalists -- which made for a lively encounter at Al-Ahram's offices on Monday. Below are extracts from a two-hour round table discussion between Welch and a number of Weekly staff members David Welch Hani Shukrallah: We've wanted to conduct this round table for some time now and it happens to...

<p>The U.S. ambassador to Egypt, David Welch, has "deviated from all diplomatic norms," complains Mustafa Bakri, editor of the Egyptian weekly Al-Usbu.</p> <p>Mr. Welch answered a spate of columns and stories in the Egyptian press pegged to the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Local journalists and scholars seized on the date to give yet another airing to conspiracy theories that circulate widely in the Middle East, which claim Israelis or Americans themselves had staged the atrocities. "Leading Egyptian newspapers and magazines in the past two weeks alone have published columns by senior columnists who suggested governments or groups other than Al Qaeda were responsible," wrote Mr. Welch. "A leading Egyptian professor of sociology, in a public lecture on Sept. 11, spent nearly half an hour trying to cast doubt on Al Qaeda's culpability, and even went to far as to implicate the American government by asserting that America had benefited from the attacks."</p>