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Yesterday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Turkey to begin a series of meetings intended to prevent further escalation of the current conflicts in the Middle East. (And what could possibly go wrong if we have Winkin’ Tony Blinken on the job, right?) Meanwhile, officials in Israel seem to be sensing that Joe Biden’s resolve to continue supporting our ally is weakening in the face of political headwinds from the left. Perhaps as a result, the Israeli Defense Minister proposed a series of steps to be taken to return Gaza to some semblance of functionality after Hamas has been...

Since Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time in eight years, Russian troops have ravaged Ukraine’s cities, raped its women, and stolen its children. Russian missiles and Iranian drones strike Ukrainian cities daily, often hitting civilian targets. Russia is the aggressor. Ukraine is the victim. For Americans who believe in respect for national borders, the primacy of national sovereignty, and the right to self-defense, support for Ukraine is natural. Ukrainians are not asking for, nor do they want, US troops to help them fight Russia. All they ask for is the resources required to give them a fighting chance. Meanwhile,...

Update from Ukraine | Where is Attack on Kreminna? Soldiers fight against corruption in Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9JkynHoc5M Follow on Instagram up to date uploads. https://www.instagram.com/denys_pilot/ SUMMARY Military Maps & Comment here: https://militaryland.net/maps/

The German government said on Saturday that it would launch an investigation into Nazi influence on the country’s post-war central government. The probe at a cost of €4 million ($4.2 million) will run until 2020, and will complement some 20 such inquiries already made at numerous ministries and institutions to determine the reach of alleged Nazi networks following World War II. €1 million will be specially devoted to uncovering Nazi influence at the heart of German power — the Chancellery. Investigators will seek to clarify what continuity there was in the staff of the Chancellery, the office that serves Germany’s...

Where previous presidents fostered American strength, Obama revels in weakness. Director Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, set during the Depression, was a divine counterfactual thought experiment designed to remind a suicidal George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) that his hometown, Bedford Falls, would have turned out to be a pretty miserable place called Pottersville without his seemingly ordinary presence. Consider the Obama administration’s first six years as a prolonged counterfactual take on what the world might have been like for the last 70 years without a traditionally engaged American president dedicating our country to preserving the postwar Western-inspired global order. The...

The first obvious feature of a postwar election is that domestic issues matter more. The two candidates who have been surging, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee, have almost no foreign policy experience between them. But the more comprehensive difference between a wartime election and a postwar election is that there is a shift in values. In wartime, leadership traits like courage, steadfastness and ruthlessness are prized. Voters are willing to vote for candidates they distrust so long as they seem tough and effective (Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani). In a postwar election things are different. When Wall Street Journal/NBC...

Corrections:                                                                                                            1. SUBJECT: Deptartment Of Defense Iran Policy Office                FALSE CLAIM: A report drafted by "a Pentagon unit ... appears to be a gambit by some officials in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office and elsewhere to gain sway over television and radio broadcasts into Iran." (E.g. "Pentagon Study Claims U.S. Broadcasts To Iran Aren't Tough Enough," Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau, 9/26/2006)                FACT: The claim that a "Pentagon Unit has drafted a report" on U.S. radio broadcasts into Iran is incorrect in every respect.  An individual DoD employee -- because of specific language skills -- was...

What WAS the relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden ? This article outlines media perceptions THEN - which are in sharp contrast to what is bruited about NOW.

My lefty pastor and all those social-justice types are always so concerned about the "devestating effects of the war" on Iraqis. All those poor innocent people getting killed! But is the war really creating more death and destruction? There's no arguing with a liberal; I've learned that long ago. Saddam Hussein starved hundreds of thousands of his own people, but my lefty pastor always blames it on the sanctions. Well, while the Saddamites were living it up in the sort of preposterous luxury which would embarrass a media mogul, laundering food aid for cash and weapons, those poor people weren't...

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Sept. 2, 2005) – The Army has launched a special online presentation, focusing on its role in post-war Japan, in time for the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. On Sept 2, 1945, Gen. Douglas MacArthur accepted the Japanese surrender and signed documents aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, officially ending the war. The online presentation highlights the last year of the war in the Pacific and the ensuing seven-year occupation of Japan with a series of video vignettes. The entire presentation lasts about 20 minutes, said Robbie Thompson, a multimedia producer...

Bush faulted on postwar planning REUTERS WASHINGTON - An independent assessment of the tumult in Iraq led by two top former presidential advisers found that the Bush administration was unprepared for postwar Iraq and underestimated the number of troops needed in a miscalculation that helped fuel the insurgency. The report by a Council on Foreign Relations task force, released Wednesday, concluded that the failure to prepare properly for the period after the war had given "early impetus for the insurgency" now gripping the country. The task force was headed by two former national security advisers, Democrat Samuel "Sandy" Berger and...

A staff paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair eight months before the invasion of Iraq concluded that U.S. military officials were not planning adequately for a postwar occupation, The Washington Post reported. "A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise," authorities of the briefing memo wrote, according to the Post. "As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden." The eight-page memo was written in advance of a July 23, 2002, meeting at Blair's...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

A U.S.-sponsored poll shows Iraqis have lost confidence in the occupying authorities--and that the majority of Iraqis want Coalition troops out of the country ‘immediately’"The first survey of Iraqis sponsored by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shows that most say they would feel safer if Coalition forces left immediately, without even waiting for elections scheduled for next year. An overwhelming majority, about 80 percent, also say they have “no confidence” in either the U.S. civilian authorities or coalition forces ..."For full article CLICK HERECLICK HERE TO DIRECTLY DOWNLOAD THE  IRAQI POLL PDF FILE

LONDON - The retired American general who headed the first occupation government in Iraq (news - web sites) says the decision to disband the Iraqi army was one of several major mistakes Washington has made in Iraq. AP Photo Latest headlines: · Pentagon Sending More Marines to Iraq AP - 51 minutes ago · US readies extra marines for IraqAFP - 56 minutes ago · Iraq's Shiites Oppose U.S. Election Plan AP - 1 hour, 47 minutes ago Special Coverage   The United States should also have put more more troops into Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news...

In a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday, President Bush asked the world to "contribute greatly to the cause of Iraq [sic] self-government." But, the world just shrugged its shoulders and walked away. Why won't they help us? Europe, especially France, Germany, and Russia, won't help because Europe has not felt threatened by Iraq. Nor, does Europe foresee any future threat from Iraq or the international Islamic militants. The reason: they have maintained good relations with not only all the Arab/Muslim nations, but, unlike President Bush, have actively supported the Palestinian cause and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian President. This...

They spent 40 years trying to tear it it down, but a German artist now wants to rebuild the entire Berlin Wall for its 45th anniversary in 2006, coinciding with the city holding the football World Cup. Christof Blaesius, an events manager based in Cologne, has been working for three years to raise the €25m (£18m) he says it will take to rebuild a 29-mile plastic copy of the Berlin Wall across the city. Mr Blaesius said: "The World Cup shows all nations can communicate and cooperate with each other while the wall separates. Today there are still several divided...

<p>The media has been focusing obsessively on the relatively minor issue of how an incorrect assertion about Iraq's nuclear ambitions got into the president's State of the Union speech. In doing so, it has missed the much larger issue, which is that of Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction. The inability to locate these weapons is vastly more consequential to American credibility than the fact that the White House staff failed to vet 16 words in a single speech. The missing weapons reflect a much more fundamental institutional intelligence failure.</p>

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - "Republic of Fear," the chilling portrayal of Saddam Hussein's brutality, was a landmark in its exiled author's long intellectual journey of discovery. Now, Kanan Makiya has returned to an Iraq his words helped expose and says he finds it a vexing and complex landscape. Makiya returned to Baghdad on April 21 for the first time in 34 years. He said the return has been an exhilarating ride - meeting long-unseen relatives, old friends, reclaiming the family's Baghdad home on the Tigris River and negotiating access to government documents in now in U.S. hands. The 54-year old...

<p>WASHINGTON - The small circle of senior civilians in the Defense Department who dominated planning for postwar Iraq failed to prepare for the setbacks that have erupted over the past two months.</p> <p>The officials didn't develop any real postwar plans because they believed that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops with open arms and Washington could install a favored Iraqi exile leader as the country's leader. The Pentagon civilians ignored CIA and State Department experts who disputed them, resisted White House pressure to back off from their favored exile leader and when their scenario collapsed amid increasing violence and disorder, they had no backup plan.</p>