Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Now that the festivities are over, it is time for the masters of the media to stop asking inane questions of the new folks in town -- such as, "How do you like your new office?" -- and for the Obama administration to get down to work on a clear and present danger. Notwithstanding the "day one" and "first week" coverage, the most pressing issue confronting the American people isn't closing "Gitmo" or the always ephemeral "Mideast peace process" in the aftermath of Gaza or even "fixing the economy." Item No. 1 ought to be preventing the world's...

WHEN THE IRAQI REGIME collapsed in April 2003, few observers saw reason to mourn the loss of Saddam's brutal dictatorship. While a great deal of information about the former Iraqi regime's assorted atrocities has been uncovered since the invasion, newly-released documents go even further in demonstrating its manifest depravity. One such document is CMPC-2003-012666, a letter from Qusay Hussein that directs as follows: Transfer all Kuwaiti POW's / a total of 448 captured Kuwaitis who are located at the Al-Nida Al-Agher Prison and the Intelligence / General Center and Kazema Prison in Al-Kazema, to make them human shields at all...

Iran considered pursuing a nuclear deterrent when it began its nuclear program in the 1980s, during an eight-year war with Iraq, a former president has been quoted as saying. Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s comments comes at a sensitive moment, as Iran implements an agreement reached with world powers in July aimed at curbing its nuclear program, to allay Western fears it was trying to build an atomic bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations nuclear watchdog, is investigating whether Iran’s nuclear program ever had a military application. It is due to issue a report by Dec. 15....

Iranian Warships Arrive Near Yemen Comes just days after U.S. announced it would send its own warships A fleet of Iranian warships arrived near the southern coast of Yemen on Wednesday in a move likely to add greater tension in a developing U.S.-Iranian standoff in the region, according Iranian military leaders. Just days after the United States announced it would send its own warships to Yemen in order to prevent Iran from smuggling weapons to terror forces fighting there, a flotilla of Iranian destroyers docked in the same area. Iran’s military moves are likely to increase tensions between the two...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Gold-colored bars seized by US forces in Iraq appear to be melted-down shell casings made mostly of copper, rather than gold, the White House said in a report obtained yesterday.</p> <p>The US military announced the discovery of truckloads of the gold-colored bars in May.</p>

As Israel considers allowing Egypt to control the critical Philadelphi corridor along Israel’s border, startling revelations about Egyptian chemical weapons proliferation are coming to light. Egypt secretly helped former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his chemical weapons program, according to a CIA report. The report, authored by the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group, says that Egypt sent specialists to Iraq in the 1980s to help him manufacture poison gas. Iraq later used the gas against Iranian citizens as well as Iraqi Kurds. The report says that the Iraqi government paid Egypt $12 million, "in return for assistance with production and storage...

“I first began to fathom the extent of Nadhmi Auchi's reach and corrupting influence when I was given responsibility for monitoring illegal transfers of technology and munitions to Iraq as well as overseeing all coalition transportation and communications reconstruction in Iraq." ### Barack Obama has been appropriately strident in his condemnation of the mortgage-based financial corruption which nearly led to the collapse of the investment banking system in the United States. But there are some strong smelling financial skeletons in his own closet. Obama has his own personal housing crisis that is tied not into Fanny Mae, but into a...

Thirty years after the end of the war between Iran and Iraq a fierce battle is being fought amongst statesmen, military commanders and scholars about the war. Three questions remain contested: Why did the war began in the first place? Why did the war continue after Iran's liberation of territories occupied by Iraq? And why did the war with Iraq end? -excerpt- Thanks to the Iraqi invasion of Iran, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini and the revolutionary regime managed to rally a fragmented nation around the revolutionary leadership. The revolutionary leadership also managed to keep the remains of the Imperial Army busy...

Victims of Iran war with Iraq found in mass grave BASRA, Iraq (AFP) — A mass grave containing 30 corpses of people killed during the Iran-Iraq war, including Iranian soldiers, was found on Sunday near the southern Iraqi port city of Basra, officials said. Mahdi al-Timimi, an official with a local human rights group in Basra, said the grave was uncovered in Al-Zubair town, east of Basra city. "Several local people discovered the grave after which we sent our team to the site and found 30 corpses, including those of Iranian soldiers," he said. "The team was able to identify...

1. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pronounced mah-MOOD ah-mah-dih-nee-ZHAD) was born Oct. 28, 1956, three years after the CIA-sponsored coup that installed the pro-Western leader Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Iran's leader. A Shiite Muslim, he and his wife, a professor, have two sons and a daughter. 2. When he was an infant, Ahmadinejad's family moved from the village of Aradan to Tehran. It was at this point that the family changed its name from Saborjhian, which translates to "thread painter" (the lowliest job in Iran's traditional carpet-weaving industry), to the more religious Ahmadinejad ("race of Muhammad" or "virtuous race"). 3. Ahmadinejad is...

ALARM - Teheran threatens to attack the Iranian Kurdish rebels in Iraq TEHERAN - the commander of the Guards of the revolution, the ideological army of the Islamic mode of Iran, the general Yahya Rahim Safavi, threatened Wednesday to attack the Iranian Kurdish rebels in Iraq if the Iraqi government does not expel them border areas.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein said on Monday he would take responsibility "with honor" for any attacks on Iran using conventional or chemical weapons during the 1980-1988 war but he took issue with charges he ordered attacks on Iraqis. The former president and six others are on trial for the Anfal -- Spoils of War -- military campaign against ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s in which prosecutors say up to 180,000 people were killed in gas attacks and mass executions. "In relation to Iran, if any military or civil official claims that Saddam gave orders to use...

How [radical] Islam makes one into a fascist, whether you are Arab, black, etc. The broader view of the deep & wide reality of Islamofascism What do the Arab Muslim massacre in NYC WTC, The Pakistani Muslim bombing in London, the Arab Muslim bombing in Madrid, an Indonesian attack on Australians in Bali, an Arab Muslim racist attack on an ordinary Jew in Paris, Arabs' onslaught in the genocide campaign in Sudan, WW2's Bosnian Muslims attacking Christian Serbs, Jordanian Arab murderer: Zarqawi that seperated (Nazi style) between Shiite & Sunni kids on a bus, Arab slave masters in Mauritania, a...

Mr. Stability The wrongness of Brent Scowcroft's realism. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2005, at 1:47 PM ET Scowcroft longs for the "peace" of Saddam's regime The sole point of the non-findings of the Fitzgerald non-investigation, into the non-commission of non-crimes and the non-outing of a non-covert CIA bureaucrat, is (as Messrs. Kerry, Krugman, Rich, and others keep reminding us) that it might even yet trigger the long-awaited inquest into the Iraq intervention. I very strongly hope that there is a full-dress postmortem into this country's Iraq policy, though I am not ready to assume that "inquest" or...

Iran: Students Protest Burials Of War Dead On Tehran Campuses By Golnaz Esfandiari University students in Iran are expressing deep concern over official attempts to turn university grounds into burial sites for the remains of Iranian soldiers who died during the Iran-Iraq War. The dean of one university was beaten up amid clashes between students and pressure groups on March 13. Islamic Republic officials attach a near-sacred status to the soldiers who died during the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s, and many public squares and streets are named after them. PRAGUE, March 15, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Iranian officials say burials...

Some 2,000 chemical war-disabled have lodged a complaint against Iraq's former dictator, Saddam Hossein, the Persian language daily `Sharq' reported Monday quoting Iran's Red Crescent Society. All chemically wounded people and war veterans who were injured during the eight-year Iraqi imposed war (1980-88) enjoy the right to file a suit against Saddam, said the head of the secretariat of Iran's Humanitarian Rights National Committee, Mohammad-Taher Kanani. However, he urged all the chemically disabled persons and war veterans to present their complaints to the foreign ministry or Iran's embassy in Baghdad, saying the request is because of the security condition ruled...

<p>September 17, 2002 -- NEW Jersey voters already concerned about Sen. Robert Torricelli's low ethical threshold now learn that he's been a paid shill for a group the government identifies as a terrorist organization. Called on this by his Republican opponent, Douglas Forrester, in a debate Thursday, Torricelli said the group had been pulled from the State Department's global terror list and given a clean bill of health. Not true.</p>

100,000 chemical arms victims in Iran Sep 6, 2005 The Iranian foreign ministry said Tuesday that 100,000 Iranians are suffering from injuries with chemical weapons they sustained during the war with Iraq. The Iranian News Agency, IRNA, quoted the director of political affairs department at the ministry Peruz Husseini as saying 50,000 of the afflicted are in dangerous conditions and are exposed to slow death. Husseini accused the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein of having used chemical weapons against Iran during their 1980-1988 war. Speaking at the opening of the third meeting of Asian countries that have signed the...

The Iranian government is to contact the Iraqi tribunal prosecuting Saddam Hussein to seek justice for the Iranian victims of Iraqi chemical weapons attacks which contaminated up to 100,000 people. Tehran promised last week to present a dossier to the tribunal documenting Saddam's use of poison gas in the 1980-88 war with Iran. So far, the only charges Saddam will face are those relating to crimes inside Iraq and during the 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait. Western countries offered Saddam tacit support during his war with Iran, refusing to blame Iraq for its invasion and the subsequent use of poison gas....

Iraqi PM in landmark Iran visit BBC Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has begun the first top-level visit to Iran since the two neighbours waged an eight-year war in the 1980s. More than 10 ministers are accompanying Mr Jaafari to open what Iranian media have called a new chapter in ties. They are expected to discuss security and the control of their long border. A new friendship is blossoming between Tehran and Baghdad to the consternation of the US, still bogged down in Iraq, says the BBC's Frances Harrison. After decades of no diplomatic relations, Iraq now has a prime...