Free Republic

For a warrior’s view of the Iraq war, it would be tough to beat the perspective of Brian Kolfage – a retired Air Force senior airman who lost three limbs in a rocket attack. Kolfage’s perspective on President Obama: He looks like an “elitist rich thug,” not the leader of the free world. In an open letter to Obama released on Presidents Day, Kolfage talked about attending public high school in Hawaii, bicycling past Punahou School, which Obama attended on a scholarship two decades earlier. He wrote: Every morning I would ride past Punahou, the exclusive private school you attended...

We won. The Iraq War is over. I declare November 22, 2008 to be "Victory in Iraq Day." (Hereafter known as "VI Day.") By every measure, The United States and coalition forces have conclusively defeated all enemies in Iraq, pacified the country, deposed the previous regime, successfully helped to establish a new functioning democratic government, and suppressed any lingering insurgencies. The war has come to an end. And we won. What more indication do you need? An announcement from the outgoing Bush administration? It's not gonna happen. An announcement from the incoming Obama administration? That's really not gonna happen. A...

When historians look back on the past week in Washington, I suspect they will see it as a seminal moment. It was the moment when the president and his party recommitted themselves to an indefinite, decades-long Iraq occupation, and when the Iraq war was formally handed over to the next president, with forces near the maxed-out 2006 level. The realist and moderate Republicans were essentially defused by the calm, factual demeanour of General David Petraeus, with the key senators John Warner, Richard Lugar and Pete Domenici deferring to the president in the face of the first trickle of good news...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The women are too afraid and ashamed to show their faces or have their real names used. They have been driven to sell their bodies to put food on the table for their children -- for as little as $8 a day. Suha, 37, is a mother of three. She says her husband thinks she is cleaning houses when she leaves home. "People shouldn't criticize women, or talk badly about them," says 37-year-old Suha as she adjusts the light colored scarf she wears these days to avoid extremists who insist women cover themselves. "They all say...

In reply to a poster at the blog, Victoria Taft Blog, A Marine Responds to the NSA Ruling, a local Conservative Radio Talk Show, I took a comment made to a Marine as less than flattering and felt compelled to reply. My first attempt at creating a post here, so be kind ;). To Our Modern War ProtestersI sit back and watch as you protest, as you proclaim, “I support the troops, but not the war.” I see you bashing the President over every little thing he does. I’ve watched as you set up fake coffins outside of Walter Reed...

Happy Fourth of July - Today We Are All Americans.The Iraqi Conflict. The Media, in an Ideological Confrontation with the Bush administration, of whom, they don't regard as possessing the legitimacy to lead the nation, has framed the Iraqi Conflict as an unjust action, a dispirited cause, a quagmire of bombings and killings among the Iraqi citizenry, and an ever present collection of Grim Milestones of American Soldiers lives forfeited in Iraq: 500 gone; 1,000 killed; 1,500 lost; 2,000 dead; 2,500 extinguished, trumpeted throughout news headlines, in an unceasing meme of death and destruction. But the American Servicemen and women,...

A quote from Tony Blair at the joint press conference with Bush yesterday: "The biggest obstacle to our succeding in Iraq is the determinaton of our enemies to keep us from succeeding...their recognizing the threat that democracy holds for them." Note Blair's use of the word "enemies" in the quote above. He does not say "insurgents,"as the media does in their depiction of the Iraqi violence as a civil war (thereby implying that we should stay out of it.) Since the Iraqi establishment of their own popularly elected government, i.e. democracy, poses no "threat" to themselves, the "enemies" that Blair...

I just watched an interview with the daughter of the American Peace Activist held hostage in Iraq. While I can respect the strength of the man's convictions, I sharply and fundamentally disagree with them. He specifically stated that if taken hostage he did not want US or Iraqi forces to attempt his rescue with any use of force. Despite this, it is clear that he was there in direct opposition to US forces and was in fact abetting the very people our forces and the free Iraqis are fighting. When asked by the host if there was anything that she...

Delegates to the American Legion*s national convention in Honolulu, Hawaii, vowed Tuesday to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism." "The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," said Thomas Cadmus, national commander of the 2.7-million-member organization. While never mentioning Cindy Sheehan by name even though the "anti-war mom" has said she will soon return to Crawford, Texas, to continue her...

When I turned it on, they were interviewing Cpl Michael Oreskovic. This man lost an arm in Iraq. He's handling the lib interviewer's questions very well, and hitting them clear out of the park!Example (para-phrased, not verbatim):Interviewer: "So how does this effect your career plans?" (duh)Cpl Oreskovic: "Well I want to return to my unit, but they say I can't."Interviewer: "And do they allow you any say in this decision?" (Is this "fair"?)I don't remember his reply, but it was great!She also asked him something like about why don't we make a "negotiated withdrawl". He hit that out of the...

Iraqi Boy Helps Lead Troops to Roadside Bomb Mosul, Iraq -- Multi-National Forces from 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), were able to defuse a roadside bomb after an Iraqi boy provided them with information about it in northern Iraq on Jan. 10. Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, were on patrol in Mosul when an Iraqi child informed them of a roadside bomb in the area. The tip led to the diffusion and destruction of the bomb. No injuries were reported, and the child was compensated for his service. Release #050112r

During World War II, Frank Capra made a series of films called "Why We Fight" to rally Americans behind the war effort. Imagine a filmmaker doing that today. Actually, it's impossible to imagine. Hollywood either prefers to stay away from the war on terrorism altogether (the film version of Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" changed the villains from Islamist extremists to neo-Nazis) or to use it, even in its pre-9/11 form, as a morality play to warn against lost civil liberties (see "The Siege," starring Denzel Washington). The film community — whose exquisite sensibilities are routinely outraged by...

Donald Rumsfeld — who's known as a people-eating systems man — has a long history that shows he prefers technology to humans. Certainly as SecDef he's always gone for high-tech military gear rather than giving the boots on the ground max priority when it comes to the basics: armored vehicles and vests, sufficient ammo and all the other vital stuff that helps soldiers make it through the Valley of Death. His beloved shock-and-awe whiz-bang wonder weapons worked well enough initially in Afghanistan and Iraq, but as we saw on the tube last week, we're once again back to the age-old...

http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=10146 Debate Score: Bush 1, Kerry 0 Written by Gregory Borse Monday, October 04, 2004 In order for the creeping dynamics of the race for the presidency to change as a result of the first presidential debate, two things had to happen: President Bush had to commit a major gaff and Democratic challenger Senator Kerry had to hit a home run. Neither happened. Still, this first debate offered an opportunity--as a result of the fact that the two participants performed so well--a real contrast between the candidates. For all the harping before the first of the three scheduled debates, about...

When I was a kid, I loved Sunday mornings. I could hardly wait for the paper to come so I could get to the comics... especially The Phantom, the "Ghost Who Walks." Unlike most of the other comics in my Sunday paper, The Phantom (written by creator Lee Falk until his death in 1999, but inked at that time by Sy Barry) was well-drawn and had ongoing, interesting story arcs. Every once in a while, Falk would go back and explain the family background of his hero, the 21st Phantom. It gave the comic a sense of history and continuity...

Make no mistake about it; it was the Bush Administration’s error to pin the justification for the Iraq War on weapons of mass destruction. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the administration lied or deliberately misled the American people. Many valid arguments could have been made to justify the U.S. action in Iraq. But by picking one they thought would be more acceptable to the American public, the administration failed to put forward a convincing argument that military action was not only justified but also necessary. Twice during the latter part of the last century, the world endured wars...

The Central Intelligence Agency was told by relatives of Iraqi scientists before the war that Baghdad's programs to develop unconventional weapons had been abandoned, but the C.I.A. failed to give that information to President Bush, even as he publicly warned of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's illicit weapons, according to government officials. The existence of a secret prewar C.I.A. operation to debrief relatives of Iraqi scientists — and the agency's failure to give their statements to the president and other policymakers — has been uncovered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The panel has been investigating the government's...

The "Don't touch Saddam" lobby has transformed into a hunting party to chase British Prime Minister Tony Blair out of office. The claim is that Blair (and President Bush) "lied" about the reasons for the war against Saddam. A few months before the war, Blair published a dossier on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD). At the time, some of us realized that the dossier contained many flaws. But that didn't mean that there was no justification for going to war against Saddam. His WMD program was only one of many issues between Saddam and the United Nations. From August...

We don't care, liberals Posted: June 4, 2003 6:25 p.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Seething with rage and frustration at the success of the war in Iraq, liberals have started in with their female taunting about weapons of mass destruction. The way they carry on, you would think they had caught the Bush administration in some shocking mendacity. (You know how the left hates a liar.) For the sake of their tiresome argument, let's stipulate that we will find no weapons of mass destruction – or, to be accurate, no more weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps Hussein was using the...

<p>Every American soldier's death is a tragedy, and is portrayed as such with photos and personal stories by our media.</p> <p>But for each American death, literally hundreds of Iraqis die. With our overwhelming technology and weaponry we are waging what is essentially a predetermined, systematic slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqi military conscripts whose only crime was defending their country. An even greater number will suffer lifelong physical or psychological impairment.</p>