Free Republic

TONY Blair's much-hyped autobiography is more like "a love letter" to ex-US President George W. Bush, say insiders who have seen drafts of the book.... The News of the World can reveal Blair says he thinks Bush was the only politician in the world with the courage and commitment to take on al-Qaeda after the 9/11 terror attacks.

For me, the highlight of last week's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing came when Senator Joe Biden questioned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the Bush Administration's postwar strategy for Iraq. "What's the plan, Stan?" said Biden with all of the eloquence of a playground bully, yet with none of the charm. I am almost old enough to remember a time when military plans were kept secret. Today, they must be broadcast via satellite to the mustiest cave in Afghanistan. And the more plans on the table the better, if only to hide beneath later. Despite what you've heard, there...

DUTCH Foreign Minister Bernard Bot today questioned for the first time whether US-led troops should have invaded Iraq and said diplomacy might have achieved more. The Netherlands backed the US-led invasion of Iraq, but today Mr Bot was asked in parliament if the invasion was sensible. "That is a question you can legitimately ask, looking back, and it's possible that the answer will be that it wasn't sensible and that using diplomatic means we could have achieved more," Mr Bot said. Mr Bot later extended his remarks, telling Dutch television network NOS that he had been referring to the absence...

Scott Ritter, formerly the top United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, has long argued that claims that Saddam Hussein possessed biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programmes were massively exaggerated. His public campaign against the US-led invasion of Iraq made him a hated figure of the American right, which still demonises him as an apologist for the ousted Baghdad regime. Now, at the very moment when the absence of weapons of mass destruction in post-Saddam Iraq should make Mr Ritter feel vindicated, he faces new questions about his relationship with Baghdad after he quit his UN job in 1998. Mr Ritter...

The US has set in motion the final build-up of men and equipment for an invasion of Iraq which now looks all but certain to happen some time in February – whatever the UN inspectors inside the country unearth or fail to unearth. Although Iraq sought to demonstrate its co-operation with the inspectors yesterday by handing over a list of 500 scientists, Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary for Defense, has signed a 20-page Pentagon deployment order. This weekend the navy issued "prepare to deploy" instructions to two aircraft carrier groups, two amphibious assault groups and the 1,000-bed hospital ship USS Comfort,...

An advertisement signed by a group of artists, academicians, and “activists” called Not In Our Name (NION) appeared in the September 19 New York Times. The ad stated that the United States would not invade Iraq in their name. The “activists” were really Socialists, Maoists, Stalinists, Leninists, Marxists, and Communists. However, the mainstream media does not identify them as such. They prefer to call them “activists.” (Know your mainstream media code words.) The liberal mainstream media is fascinated by this ad and the organization that created it. Some journalists have written encomiums about it. In the September 21 Hartford Courant,...

Pre-Sweeps Regime Change Would Be ‘Disastrous,’ TV News Giant Says In a strongly worded statement to the White House, the Cable News Network warned the Bush administration today that any invasion of Iraq prior to the November sweeps period would be “disastrous” to CNN’s ratings. “We completely agree with the administration’s goal of regime change in Iraq,” the CNN statement read, “but not until sweeps.” The news giant, which has had its clock cleaned by the upstart Fox News Channel, warned that any pre-sweeps invasion of Iraq could further destabilize the cable news rating race. In particular, according to the...

The US president, George Bush, tried to win over sceptical UN heavyweights today when he telephoned the presidents of China, Russia and France in a bid to temper their opposition to bombing Baghdad. In a series of early morning calls from the Oval Office, Mr Bush talked to Jacques Chirac of France, Jiang Zemin of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia. Each could use their votes on the United Nations security council to veto renewed UN resolutions aimed at toppling Saddam. But the early signs were not hopeful for the US president. President Chirac's spokeswoman, Catherine Colonna, said the president...

Wire reports out of London say the U.S. Navy is shipping tanks and heavy armor to the Middle East/Persian Gulf region, using chartered commercial cargo ships. One ship just set sail from a southeastern U.S. port, the report said. According to Reuters, the latest shipment was the third one in a month, and it comes as the United States builds its case for a military invasion of Iraq. Military analysts say the shipping of tanks and other military supplies is similar to what happened in the run up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the report said.

<p>A terrorist nation is a bigger threat than al Qaeda.</p> <p>WASHINGTON--Now that Vice President Cheney has made it clear that the Bush administration is preparing the groundwork for the liberation of Iraq, it is time to take the case to America's allies. It should be an easy one to make.</p>

KISS, as the movie Casablanca put it, is just a kiss. But when the kiss is planted by the lips of the Iraqi representative on the cheeks of the Saudi representative at the Arab summit in Beirut, as happened last week, a kiss is no longer just a kiss. It is a major political statement which casts a shadow over this weekend’s meeting between Tony Blair and George W Bush at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas. That kiss was a symbol of Iraq being allowed back into the Arab fold. It was a signal from the Arab world that...