Free Republic

President Obama has scaled back the scope of the Afghan war, now about to enter its ninth year, to a limited military objective: Deny al Qaeda a safe haven. And since we are now told there are fewer than 100 al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan - the rest are in Pakistan's tribal areas - a three-way deal between the Karzai government, powerful warlords and Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar would seem to be the better part of valor. After Iraq, we cannot afford another trillion-dollar war.

Long gone are the days when President Kennedy used to say he got more out of the New York Times than out of the CIA. The print media are besieged. Foreign bureaus of newspapers and national magazines have been closed by the score all over the world. Washington's National Press Building has dozens of offices for rent. Daily newspapers are dying in print and reincarnated online, where they compete with everything from free blogs to free social networks - e.g., YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. Newspaper bankruptcy attorneys are prospering. And few people can remember accurately what they caught...

SINGAPORE, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Although political forecasting and economic prognostication have long made astrology look respectable, there is still a latter-day Nostradamus who has defied the odds. "If Nostradamus were alive today," said the New York Post, "he'd have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente" -- the man who tracks the world's social, economic and business trends for corporate clients.

More than 10 million people are jobless in America, an increase of almost 3 million in 2008. Unemployment is expected to reach 8 percent by year's end. One of the great symbols of American power in peace and war -- General Motors -- is on the verge of bankruptcy. With its myriad subcontractors, GM keeps 2.5 million people employed. But automakers, losing $2 billion to $3 billion a month, and their congressional supporters pleaded for a slice of Treasury's $700 billion rescue package. President-elect Obama favors supporting the auto industry with a greater economic stimulus. In a nutshell, GM's assembly...

It was the best decision in my 62 years of professional life as a journalist. I was the Washington Times' editor in chief and looking for a new editorial page editor. Tony Snow was the first and last recommended name I interviewed. The year was 1987. ..... Tony was 32 years old. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner the same day in a secluded beach location, away from...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Most terrorist trails lead back to Pakistan, Britain's MI5 (internal intelligence service) concluded a year ago. An average of some 400,000 Pakistani Brits a year fly back to the old country for vacation or to visit their relatives. From the airports in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, where they land, side trips to the madrasas -- Koranic schools -- where they were originally radicalized, or to a terrorist training camp in the tribal areas that straddle the Pakistani-Afghan border, go undetected. There is no way to keep track of thousands of passengers arriving from the United...

There is a fresh and sordid postscript to Benazir Bhutto's assassination. Tainted by her husband Asif Ali Khan Zardari's penchant for graft and corruption, Mrs. Bhutto was twice fired as prime minister (1990 and 1996). Her closest friends now say she did not appoint Mr. Zardari to succeed her as party leader in case of death. The political testament Mr. Zardari read on television was his recent creation, not hers. These friends of longstanding had never heard of such a document. Mr. Zardari is known as "Mr. 10 Percent" and is widely reviled as one of the most corrupt political...

Excerpts - ~ snip ~ Bhutto told this reporter two weeks before she flew home on Oct. 18 about her plans to flush the Taliban and al-Qaida out of FATA. She wanted to open up FATA to the country's principal political parties to compete with a coalition of six politico-religious parties, known as Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, now the only ones allowed to campaign there. The objective was to wean Pashtun tribesmen from MMA, Taliban and al-Qaida control. This was to be done in conjunction with some $750 million in U.S. aid already authorized to bring basic improvements to mountain villages that...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- Suspects in the assassination of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto number in the tens of thousands. Some 800 Pakistanis have been killed by suicide bombers in the past year. Bhutto had a close brush with death Oct. 18, a few hours after returning from eight years of self-imposed exile in Dubai and London. The suicide bomber killed more than 140 people and injured 350, some a few feet from where she was sitting in a large vehicle. Bhutto knew of at least three extremist leaders who had ordered her assassination. She had received a letter...

Osama bin Laden "is a man on the run, from a cave, who is virtually impotent other than the tapes" he releases from time to time. That was the mid-September assessment of Frances Fragos Townsend, top adviser to President Bush on Homeland Security, terrorism and counterterrorism.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistani nuclear scientists, in collaboration with former Pakistani intelligence officers, were assisting Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization in developing a "dirty" nuclear weapons capability, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agencies concluded, United Press International learned Thursday. Speaking not for attribution, intelligence officers in Washington and Islamabad are convinced documents uncovered in Kabul and the interrogation of nuclear scientists, who were frequent visitors to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan ostensibly involved in humanitarian work, are conclusive evidence al-Qaeda was trying to put together a "nuclear device in the 'dirty-bomb' category." One Pakistani general who has seen the evidence described the device as ...

After a brief interruption of his New Hampshire vacation to meet President Bush in the family compound at Kenebunkport, Maine, French President Nicolas Sarkozy came away convinced his U.S. counterpart is serious about bombing Iran's secret nuclear facilities. That's the reading as it filtered back to Europe's foreign ministries: Addressing the annual meeting of France's ambassadors to 188 countries, Mr. Sarkozy said either Iran lives up to its international obligations and relinquishes its nuclear ambitions — or it will be bombed into compliance. Mr. Sarkozy also made it clear he did not agree with the Iranian-bomb-or-bombing-of-Iran position, which reflects the...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON, March 21 (UPI) -- President Bush says frequently "we are fighting them over there so they won't come over here." "Them" are transnational terrorists and "over there" is Iraq. The insurgency in Iraq has much to do with al-Qaida's plans for a WMD act of terrorism in the United States, but not the way the White House believes. Assuming the Bush administration is successful in midwifing democracy out of a near-civil war situation in Iraq, the WMD threat level will remain unchanged. High, that is. Paradoxical though this may seem to Washington's armchair strategists, the defeat of...

The man in charge of hoodwinking the Western powers about Iran's now 18-year-old secret nuclear program believes the apocalypse will happen in his own lifetime. He'll be 50 in October. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Shi'ite creed has convinced him lesser mortals can not only influence but hasten the awaited return of the 12th Imam, known as the Mahdi. Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect holds this will be Muhammad ibn Hasan, the righteous descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. He is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the 9th century, at age 5. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war, bloodshed...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- The man in charge of hoodwinking the Western powers about Iran's now 18-year-old secret nuclear program believes the apocalypse will happen in his own lifetime. He'll be 50 in October. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Shiite creed has convinced him lesser mortals can not only influence, but also hasten the awaited return of the 12th imam known as the Mahdi. Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect holds this will be Mohammed ibn Hasan, the righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad. He is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the 9th century, at the age of five....

Praised as the Thomas Edison of the 21st century, Ray Kurzweil was selected as one of "16 revolutionaries who made America," along with the great inventors of the past two centuries. Forbes magazine called him "the ultimate thinking machine" and The Wall Street Journal dubbed him "the restless genius." Kurzweil is in the National Inventors Hall of Fame, With 12 honorary doctorates and the world's largest prize for innovation - the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT award. Kurzweil, now 57, published what is arguably the most blogged-about book of 2005, a 640-page blockbuster: "The Singularity Is Near," a road map to "a unique...

NEAR MIRANSHAH, North Waziristan, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Pakistan More than a year of intermittent talks with Osama bin Laden's clandestine network in Pakistan led to a 750-mile journey through territory forbidden to foreigners and two of the country's four provinces. The UPI team, in native kameez shalwar dress, included a Pakistani media consultant and personal friend, who asked his name be withheld pending a meeting with bin Laden; a driver; our security chief; and a constantly changing member of the secret network, as we moved from one relay point to the next. It soon became clear the operatives...

Surprise. Surprise. Three of Britain's home-grown suicide-bombers, born of Pakistani parents, were in Pakistan last year and in early 2005, where they were in touch with madrasas, the so-called Koranic schools that have taught entire generations to hate Christians, Jews and Hindus. Thus, some 5 million boys have been brainwashed in nearly 12,000 madrassas since the late President Zia ul-Haq, a military dictator for 11 years (1977-88), encouraged fundamentalism as an ideological barrier to communism. The U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were close allies in the guerrilla war against the decadelong Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979-89). The Koran, drugs, U.S.-supplied...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Before we convince ourselves al-Qaida's down for the count, look at the stats. Number of Islamist extremists in the world, as estimated by moderate Muslim leaders, about 12 million. Number of fundamentalist sympathizers: 120 million. That's one and 10 percent of the world's Muslim population of 1.2 billion. Then there's the number who trust Osama Bin Laden more than President Bush: a majority in Muslim countries whose populations total 450 million. European intelligence services know an alarming number of mosques are privileged sanctuaries used by extremists. Not all mosques have observable minarets the way...

<p>The dust is not about to settle over the intelligence failure in Iraq. But it has already blurred our vision about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).</p> <p>There is still time to remind ourselves WMDs were not the principal reason for going to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq; they were the pretext. And that's why irrefutable evidence was not the standard. Axis of evil regime change was the lodestar.</p>