Free Republic

Former President George Bush said that “negotiating with killers is not an option for Israel” in the aftermath of Hamas’s terrorist attacks last weekend, according to video obtained by Axios. Axios published the footage Friday, in which Bush spoke with Mark Updegrove, president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation, and shared his personal support for Israel, though he expects things to get “ugly” as the country responds to the attacks.

An American contractor held hostage in Afghanistan for more than two years has been released in exchange for a convicted Taliban drug lord jailed in the United States, the White House said Monday, announcing a rare success in U.S.-Taliban talks since the militant group took power a little more than a year ago Mark Frerichs, a Navy veteran who had spent more than a decade in Afghanistan as a civilian contractor, was abducted in January 2020 and is believed to have been held since then by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network. He was traded for Bashir Noorzai, a Taliban associate convicted...

There are a few potentially important details surrounding the timeline leading to Bowe Bergdahl’s release that might deserve some discussion. Truth Revolt supplies some details on the timeline: This week’s [the week of Bergdahl’s release] secret diplomacy was not the first time the U.S. government had engaged the Taliban in an effort to negotiate a prisoner swap for the release of Bergdahl. In 2011, State Department officials held a series of meetings with Taliban leaders in Doha. In Congress, there was bipartisan opposition to any release of Guantanamo prisoners. After the negotiations were made public in early 2012 by Sen....

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that Republicans were engaged in bipartisan negotiations for federal gun safety measures following Uvalde, TX shooting. Murphy said, “It’s inconceivable to me that we haven’t passed significant federal legislation trying to address the tragedy of gun violence in this nation, especially because since Sandy Hook, we’ve seen even worse slaughter, in Las Vegas, in Orlando. The pace of everyday gun violence has dramatically escalated over the past two years. States have passed tighter laws, referendums passed. There are present of local efforts that have been successful in tightening up our...

Hello FReepers. Looking for any advice on negotiating the best price for a new car. (I'm getting a 2021 Honda CRV-EX, no options). I've put together an email (see following) that I will send to the local Honda dealers. Asking for any suggestions or wording to make it the most effective. Thanks in advance.

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump and European Union leaders announced Wednesday they have agreed to work toward "zero tariffs" and "zero subsidies" on non-automobile goods and would work to resolve U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports that have roiled European markets. The president, in a hastily called Rose Garden statement with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, said the EU had agreed to buy "a lot of soybeans" and increase its imports of liquefied natural gas from the U.S. Juncker, meanwhile, said the U.S. and EU had agreed to hold off on further tariffs as part of trade talks aimed...

Moammar Gadhafi’s death is not enough for Donald Trump, who says the United States did not get enough for the kill. On his YouTube page on Thursday, the one-time prospective Republican presidential candidate said, “So the reports are that we caught Gadhafi. Big deal. What do we get out of it? They have the oil. The rebels would have given us everything if we had some leader that knew how to negotiate. The rebels were being routed four months ago — absolutely routed by Gadhafi and his men.” Trump went on to lament the outcome as a missed opportunity and...

Obama’s Negotiations I have read of Obama’s leadership skills, or lack thereof, for some time now. Now, I read of Obama’s personal negotiation with terrorist. That in itself is highly questionable leadership. The release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl seemed like the result of poor negotiations. President Obama conducted the negations without benefit of the Congress and the law. I thought about how low level these five terrorist suspects must be and how high level Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl must be. Then I began to think of Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor, who was instrumental in providing Obama with the bragging rights...

Barack Obama broke a federal law that he signed just six months ago when he authorized the release of five high-ranking Taliban terror targets from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in exchange for the return of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, senior congressional Republicans claimed today. And the president may also have written a new chapter in the case for his own impeachment, according to a former federal prosecutor who helped bring the 1993 World Trade Center bombers to justice. 'The return of senior terrorists to the Taliban [is] ... a "high crime and misdemeanor",' author Andrew C. McCarthy told...

Negotiation is like any skill, it takes practice. But at the simplest level there are a few rules that must be followed. The first rule is that you must negotiate as if you expect to win. When the conservatives in the house passed the bill to defund Obamacare Boehner should not have wavered. He should have embraced Cruz and thanked him for carrying the water.

Vladimir Putin allegedly said off the record: "Negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon. The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, sh*ts on the board and then struts around like it won the game."

(CNSNews.com) - Secretary of State John Kerry said in a speech at the State Department yesterday that President Barack Obama is “deeply committed to getting to the negotiating table” with a Syrian regime that the administration is convinced committed a “crime against humanity” and is led by a "thug and murderer" because “there is no ultimate military solution” to the problems in Syria. However, Kerry also said that whatever action President Obama took would “be limited,” would not involve “boots on the ground”—but that “history would judge us all extraordinarily harshly if we turned a blind eye to a dictator’s...

Former presidential candidate thinks Republicans are giving Pres. Obama, Democrats leverage, that the fiscal cliff is like a 'fantasy'

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that House Republicans should stop negotiating with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on the fiscal cliff, saying that by doing so, they give Obama all of the leverage in the talks. “One of the things I would say to House Republicans is to get a grip,” Gingrich said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. “They are the majority. They’re not the minority,” he said, enunciating the words as if explaining the concept to someone who did not understand it. “They don’t need to...

As if the Taliban wasn’t bad enough. KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — The US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan on Sunday confirmed a meeting with the Haqqani insurgent group, as signs of a dialogue between the United States and rebels continue to grow. ‘We had one meeting with Haqqani network,’ Marc Grossman told a news conference in Kabul. His remarks come after US and the Taliban militants confirmed preliminary talks for opening an liaison office for the Taliban in the Qatari capital of Doha – increasing speculation of an end to the decade-long bloody insurgency in this war-torn country.

On Jan. 20, 2007, five American soldiers were killed and three seriously wounded in Iraq. As Bill Roggio relates at the Long War Journal, it was a daring operation: a twelve-man terrorist team disguised as U.S. servicemen attacked our troops as they held a previously arranged meeting with local officials in Karbala. Four of the soldiers were alive when they were abducted from the scene. They were handcuffed and murdered in a remote location when the coalition forces attempting to rescue them closed in. ... That President Obama has exchanged a terrorist for hostages is now obvious, as should be...

One of Britain's most senior policemen says the country should talk to Al Qaeda to try and end their bloody campaign of violence. Sir Hugh Orde, a front-runner to replace Ian Blair as the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said he could not think of a single terrorist campaign that ended without negotiation. And after 30 years of tackling the IRA Sir Hugh, head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said he was convinced that policing - detecting plots and arresting people - was not enough alone to defeat terrorists. His comments come the day after Al Qaeda released...