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With Mike Huckabee's continuing surge, the Republican Party now has an Iowa front-runner whose religious beliefs are virtually identical to those of George Bush. He's anti-choice, born-again, against gay-marriage, and gets political advice directly from God. So why is the Republican establishment suddenly in a state of near-apoplexy about Mike Huckabee? Shouldn't they be happy? They've been cultivating evangelicals and fundamentalists for 30 years. Now they finally have a candidate who's truly part of the movement. So what's the problem? Actually, that is the problem. The evangelical crowd was fine when it was just a resource to be cynically exploited...

Why does the GOP Establishment fear Huck? Juan Cole's got a bad case of left-wing Huckenfreude: I simply can not tell you how much I am enjoying this. The GOP has been pandering to these stupid bastards for years, and every time I pointed it out I was called “anti-Christian” or something or other. Those of us who saw what the party was becoming were told to shut up, that it was good politics. Enjoy your new GOP, folks. And here is something else to think about- are the evangelicals going to support Romney or Giuliani if you do manage...

Iranian-made weapons were among a large cache of arms and ammunition found during operations in a Shiite militia stronghold south of Baghdad, the Iraqi Army said Monday. Major General Jamil Kamel al-Shimari, a senior officer in the 8th Iraqi Army Division, said the cache was the biggest store of weapons found since the launch of Operation Lion Pounce on Saturday. Iraqi security officials said that 3,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen supported by military tanks and hundreds of US and Polish troops launched the assault Saturday to flush out Shiite militants from the city. The stockpile, which included roadside bombs, rocket-propelled...

The Longest Morning By Jeff Emanuel Published 11/1/2007 12:08:23 AM This article is the cover story of The American Spectator's new, November 2007 issue. To subscribe to our monthly print edition, click here. Samarra, Iraq THE DAY OF AUGUST 26, 2007, began like any other for the soldiers of Charlie Company, 2-505 Parachute Infantry Regiment (from the 82nd Airborne Division) -- with a mission in the city. Over a year into its deployment to Samarra, Iraq, and now working on the three-month extension announced by Secretary of Defense Gates in the spring, the company knew the city like the back...

ASADABAD, Afghanistan — A raid late Sunday night on a house the U.S. military says was housing foreign al-Qaida “facilitators” in Afghanistan’s restive northeast resulted in the killing of several insurgents and detention of five others, a U.S. military spokesman said. The operation was focused in the Asadabad District in the mountainous Kunar province, a hotbed for clashes between U.S. and insurgent militants fighting for both al-Qaida and Taliban networks. U.S. spokesman Maj. Chris Belcher said intelligence indicated a foreign al-Qaida presence in the Asadabad area, and when U.S. and Afghan forces reached the house, they called for the insurgents...

Children mass in the doorway of their Zaidon, Iraq, classroom Oct. 22 after receiving school supplies from Iraqi Police and Marines from Company I, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 6. The supply run served the dual purpose of both helping schoolchildren by providing much-needed pens, pencils and bookbags, in addition to introducing the city's new mayor, Iraqi Police Lt. Col. Ishmael, to the people. “The relationship between us and the IPs is absolutely critical. Lt. Col. Ishamel established the IPs, and they have made it possible for the kids to come back to school after four...

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President Bush has endorsed General David Petraeus's recommendation to begin withdrawing 30,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by next summer. Yet the drawdown would only restore troop levels to where they were before the surge began in January 2007. In the final months of 2006, debate in Washington centered on how fast a reduction from pre-surge levels could occur. The Iraq Study Group recommended that approximately half of the 130,000 troops then in Iraq be withdrawn by early 2008. In marked contrast to that and similar proposals, President Bush is now endorsing a step that would mean a return to the...

Anthony Giacchino had just started as a producer at The History Channel in 1996 and was looking for a topic for his first documentary film. During a chance meeting at a church service, his former high school history teacher told him about a group of anti-war activists who, 25 years earlier, were caught red-handed breaking into a draft board office in Camden. Remarkably, they won a rare and momentous legal victory for the anti-war movement. The teacher brought up the story because the pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Camden, where Giacchino's parents worshiped, was the Rev. Michael Doyle,...

Iraq to free 6,000 Sunni insurgents from jail By Colin Freeman in Baghdad, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:58am BST 02/09/2007 Up to 6,000 suspected Sunni insurgents are to be freed from Iraqi jails in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the country's government from collapsing under the strain of sectarian in-fighting. Iraq’s prison population is 85pc Sunni and a release scheme is seen as an attempt at reconciliation with Sunni parties The release scheme, which could put some hardened combatants back on to the streets, is part of a high-stakes gamble by Iraq's Shia-led government to win back the confidence of...

History, as Marx famously said (by way of paraphrasing Hegel), repeats itself -- "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." A catchy concept, to say the least. And while there's definitely something to it, it's also true that sometimes history does not repeat itself. Take American wars in Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam and Iraq. President Bush, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, recently made a case -- a flawed case -- for a kind of core continuity linking these disparate conflicts. It's not that he didn't admit there are many differences among them ("There are many differences" among...

BAGHDAD — Local citizens fed tips to Soldiers from the 1st "Ironhorse" Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, which led to the finding of four weapons caches and the detaining of two suspects in multiple operations north of Baghdad, Aug. 8 and 9. Troops from Battery B, 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment, attached to the 1st BCT, acting on a tip from a neighborhood watch volunteer, uncovered an improvised explosive devices cache near the town of Sab Al Bor, Aug 8. The cache included five complete IEDs and 12 incomplete IEDs. The cache also included 20 munitions of varying...

Nabi Sensoy, Turkey's ambassador to Washington, is complaining that Kurdish guerillas staging cross-border attacks into Turkey from Northern Iraq are armed with American weapons that were supplied to the Iraqi army. Sensoy also accused the U.S. of not applying enough pressure on Kurds in the Iraqi government to rein in the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting for an independent Kurdistan since the 1980s.Turkish officials are promising retaliatory military strikes against the PKK in Iraq, which will further destabilize the country. Turkey's military chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, is prodding the government to set political guidelines for an incursion...

 Introduction The references cited in this article strongly suggest that: 1. WMD did indeed exist inside Iraq before the war. 2. The weapons inspectors were both fooled and bribed to ignore evidence. 3. Massive amounts of WMD were removed to known locations in Syria just prior to the war. 4. Massive numbers of Saddam's audio tapes and paper documents were collected and most remain unavailable and presumably un-translated. 5. U.S. officials refused to investigate a number of likely WMD sites. 6. The U.S. intelligence community, and other branches of this government, are stonewalling the issue. Readers are urged to review...

The U.S. military is enlisting hundreds of fighters each day from tribal and insurgent groups in alliances aimed at countering al-Qaeda in Iraq, the top U.S. general in Baghdad said yesterday, calling it a "very positive development" but one that requires caution to ensure it works to promote security. Maj Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of Multinational Division Baghdad, said U.S. and Iraqi troops control nearly half of the capital's neighborhoods, but that hard fighting remains as operations continue to clear out insurgents from the rest of the city. Overall attack levels in Baghdad remain constant, he said, but...

TEHRAN, June 12 (Reuters) - Iran will make the United States "regret" its detention earlier this year of five Iranians in Iraq, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted as saying on Tuesday. Iran says the five Iranians detained by U.S. forces in Iraq in January are diplomats and have demanded their release. U.S. officials say they were involved in supporting militants inside Iraq. "We will make the Americans regret their ugly and illegal action against the Islamic Republic of Iran's consulate in Arbil, Iraq, and the abduction of the five Iranian diplomats," Mottaki was quoted as saying by the Web...

BAGHDAD, June 6 -- A Sunni insurgent group that waged a deadly street battle last week against the rival group al-Qaeda in Iraq in a Sunni neighborhood of west Baghdad announced Wednesday that the two forces had declared a cease-fire. The Islamic Army of Iraq, a more moderate and secular Sunni group, said it had reached the cease-fire with al-Qaeda in Iraq because the groups did not want to spill Muslim blood or damage "the project of jihad." Last week, the two groups fought for several days in the Sunni neighborhood of Amiriyah, leaving about 30 of their fighters dead....

There are some things today that are simply unacceptable. Offering olive branches to those who are committed to evil is one of them. History has shown that when you offer cease fires to a bunch of murderous thugs and Muslim extremists, more bloodshed follows. Just look at the problems the Israelis are continuing to have with those who seek their absolute destruction. Is it any wonder why there never seems to be any permanent resolution with that region of the world? Offering concessions to terrorists is like giving freedoms to disobedient children. You give them an inch, they're always determined...

KUWAIT CITY, May. 23, 2007 (AP) Seventy percent of insurgents fighting in Iraq come from Gulf countries via Syria where they are provided with forged passports, an Iraqi intelligence officer alleged in a published report Wednesday. "They, according to their own confessions, gather in mosques in the said (Gulf) states to travel to Syria using their passports, taking with them phone numbers of individuals waiting for them there," Brig. Gen. Rashid Fleih, the assistant undersecretary for intelligence of Iraq's Interior Ministry, told Kuwait's Al-Qabas daily in an interview. Fleih did not provide more specific details about the alleged insurgents or...

KUWAIT CITY - Seventy percent of foreign insurgents arrested in Iraq came from Persian Gulf countries via Syria where they were provided with forged passports, an Iraqi intelligence officer said in a published report Wednesday. "They, according to their own confessions, gather in mosques in the said (Gulf) states to travel to Syria using their passports, taking with them phone numbers of individuals waiting for them there," Brig. Gen. Rashid Fleih, the assistant undersecretary for intelligence of Iraq's Interior Ministry, told Kuwait's Al-Qabas daily in an interview. Fleih did not provide more specific details about the alleged insurgents or which...