Free Republic

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – The Pakistani government on Sunday urged people stranded by a military offensive against Taliban militants in the Swat valley to try to get out.

...possible successors to the [Zarqawi]. One of them, Iraq-based Egyptian terrorist Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was also named by Major-General William Caldwell... The other two are an Iraqi named Abu Aseel and a Syrian named Abu al-Ghadia. Masri (reportedly... born in 1966) is believed to have entered Iraq to join Zarqawi in 2002 and founded a cell for al-Qaeda in Baghdad. ...Masri received his training at military camps in Afghanistan during the Taliban rule and met bin Laden at the Farouk Camp, where Masri was working as an instructor... is also reportedly close to Egyptian Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri... Abu Aseel and...

Over the last ten days I have, with the rest of America and the world, watched a horrific natural disaster and tragedy unfold. I say natural disaster because that is exactly what a hurricane is when it strikes humanity and destroys property and lives and leaves suffering in its wake, as hurricane Katrina did along the Gulf Coast last week. I say tragedy because I have sat transfixed as I have watched as governmental social programs long in place, contributed to the disaster, and as a number of unimaginable and crass mistakes made by those who could have and should...

While no one knows how or when the war in Iraq will end, one thing is certain: With the fall of the Baathist regime, the country could face a political vacuum. President Saddam Hussein is now in more or less effective control of just over five per cent of Iraqi territory. His regime is in no position to fulfill the normal functions of a government.Signs are that opinion is hardening in the Bush administration in favor of direct American rule for at least five years. Although the Pentagon is not keen, other parts of the administration, including the Sate Department...

Iraq doesn't exist. Not as a real country. Not in the real world, where people live their daily lives, as distinct from the legal world defined by lines on maps, treaties and seats at the United Nations General Assembly. On March 20, 2003, when the US military began to pulverise Saddam Hussein's power structure, this country, which for centuries was known as Mesopotamia (it was named Iraq in 1921) became no more than what it really is, an unstable and accidental amalgam between a Kurdistan in the north, a Shiite Arab enclave in the south, and a rump that for...