Free Republic

LONDON : The US-led war on Iraq, far from countering terrorism, has helped revitalise the Al-Qaeda terror network, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think-tank warned. The London-based body said in its annual Strategic Survey 2003/2004 that the deadly train bombings in Madrid in March, the worst terror strike in Europe for more than a decade, showed that Osama Bin Laden's terror network "had fully reconstituted". It also predicted the Islamic group would step up its anti-Western attacks, possibly even resorting to weapons of mass destruction and targeting Americans, Europeans and Israelis while continuing to support insurgents opposing the...

My plan is working well. When I, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the ruler of Iran, launched my plan to get you Americans to do our work for us - to destroy our personal enemy, Saddam Hussein, and also to destroy our historic enemy, the country of Iraq - I could only pray that my plan would work so quickly. Our weapon of mass destruction, of course, was Ahmad Chalabi. ...[snip]whereas Khomeini expelled the Americans from Iran, it falls upon me, Khamenei, to expel the Americans from Iraq. Although, of course, to get the Americans out, first we had to get them...

WHAT EXACTLY IS NEOCONSERVATISM? Journalists, and now even presidential candidates, speak with an enviable confidence on who or what is "neoconservative," and seem to assume the meaning is fully revealed in the name. Those of us who are designated as "neocons" are amused, flattered, or dismissive, depending on the context. It is reasonable to wonder: Is there any "there" there? Even I, frequently referred to as the "godfather" of all those neocons, have had my moments of wonderment. A few years ago I said (and, alas, wrote) that neoconservatism had had its own distinctive qualities in its early years, but...