Free Republic

PHILADELPHIA -- Relatives of Nicholas Berg, the young American entrepreneur beheaded in Iraq, have taken different paths as they've searched for solace in the year since his death. His father, Michael Berg, has intensified his anti-war activities and traveled the globe to meet families of other civilians kidnapped or slain in Iraq. His weekly peace vigil at a suburban Philadelphia courthouse and frequent interviews contrast sharply with the response of his wife, Suzanne, who has grieved privately since her son's body was found on a Baghdad street on May 8, 2004. "We're through the worst of the friction that emerged...

Responding today to a question someone had asked earlier in the week---"What will the libs do when Bush wins in November?"---Rush issued the downer of the week: They already have an insurance plan, which is to try to impeach Bush over the prison "abuses." That is why, he continued, the media is still beating this dead horse (no prison pun intended). Naive me, I had actually thought we might be past this, but Rush cited an article quoting "The Swimmer," Sen. Ted Kennedy, answering a question about a move to impeach Bush, in which he said something to the effect...

WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez (search), commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, has asked investigators to take the Abu Ghraib (search) prison abuse probe to the top of the chain of command — and that means to Sanchez himself, senior Defense officials have told Fox News. Sanchez has asked the Pentagon to appoint a senior investigating general who outranks him, and thus would be authorized to push the probe to the highest rungs of the command ladder, according to the officials.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Christine Iverson202-863-8614 Washington, DC-RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie issued the following statement in response to comments made today by John Kerry supporter George Soros comparing prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison to the terror attacks on 9-11. “Abu Ghraib was bad and the soldiers involved are rightly being punished, but for Democrats to say that the abuse of Iraqi fighters is the moral equivalent of the slaughter of 3,000 innocent Americans is outrageous. Their hatred of the President is fueling a blame America first mentality that is troubling.”

We know conclusively that the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal is as phony as a Bill Clinton sex denial because there are no calls for the resignation or indictment of the one individual most responsible for the abuses. That would be the officer in charge of Abu Ghraib and all U.S. military prisons in Iraq, the commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski. And why have there been no calls for her resignation? Let’s be honest. It is because she is a woman. Thus the frightening lesson of the abuse scandal: Political correctness trumps national security...

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Officials in the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community Monday flatly denied a New Yorker magazine report that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a clandestine unit to crack down on terrorists held at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, where inmates were abused. The article, by Seymour Hersh, quotes a former intelligence official saying the unit's instructions were, "Grab whom you must. Do what you want." The report also says the CIA pulled its people from involvement in interrogations at the prison in October "because it was out of control." "This is the most hysterical piece of journalist...

The scandal won't determine the fate of democracy in the Middle East.ACCORDING TO Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland, "the humiliating scenes of abused Iraqi prisoners" and the war in general "have turned that country [Iraq] into a model to be feared and avoided in the eyes of many in the Middle East, and a tool in the hands of governments reluctant to change." Telhami, who was a driving force behind a recent major Muslim-targeted public-diplomacy project chaired by former assistant secretary of state Edward Djerejian and paid for by Uncle...