Free Republic

Ben Rhodes is perhaps the weirdest foreign policy adviser in the history of the White House. His path to his current position as deputy national security adviser for strategic communications was, as this New York Times profile informs us, "perhaps not strictly believable, even as fiction." Forget his title. Ben Rhodes is "the single most influential voice shaping American foreign policy aside from Potus himself," according to the Times. What makes that so bizarre is that Rhodes has no background in foreign policy at all. He was a failed short story writer who wandered into the orbit of Obama aides...

Wednesday evening, Twitter was filled with angry tweets claiming that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump "blew off" a group of pro-lifers just days after he had issues with his stance on abortion. Inciting the angry tweets were articles in Politico and the Daily Beast announcing the supposed slight. There was only one problem with the stories - they were false and neither news source bothered to correct their error. The falsehood seems to have begun with Politico on Wednesday, as their article was originally posted at 11:49 a.m. and tweeted by Politico, with declaration, "Trump Expected to Address Anti-Abortion Leaders."...

China's mishandling of North Korea's nuclear ambitions may come back to haunt it Emanuele Scimia says Beijing's unwillingness or inability to rein in Pyongyang has brought it the unwelcome consequence of greater US vigilance The US and its allies in East Asia have always been suspicious of China's attitude to North Korea's military adventures. Recent events, such as Pyongyang's launch of a long-range rocket and testing of an alleged hydrogen bomb, have contributed to this climate of mistrust towards Beijing. China is often blamed for not pressuring Pyongyang enough, but now its ability to contain North Korea's nuclear and ballistic...

Last year’s controversial Iran nuclear deal has sparked an atomic arms race, claimed Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon following a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah. Ya’alon revealed that Israel had indications suggesting that certain Arab countries were now actively pursuing nuclear weapons, reports the Telegraph. The Defense Minister declined to specify which countries or how Israel had ascertained they were working to create their own atomic arsenals. The Sunni Arab world has long feared the specter of a nuclear capable Iran, and now that the Iran deal effectively permits the Islamic Republic to resume its atomic program with no limits...

This story actually broke just as we were warming up for the debate last night and our readers were discussing it in comments while most of the political sphere was focused on New Hampshire. Ahead of their original schedule, Kim Jong-un launched a missile into orbit allegedly carrying an “Earth observing satellite” over the objections of pretty much everyone else on the planet. Like we needed this on top of everything else that’s going on.(WaPo) North Korea on Sunday declared that it had successfully put an "earth observation satellite" into orbit under the direct orders of leader Kim Jong Un,...

Saudi Arabia is not ruling out developing a nuclear bomb if its regional rival Iran obtains one, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday. Asked if Saudi Arabia had discussed seeking a nuclear bomb in the event Iran managed to obtain one, al-Jubeir replied the country would do "whatever we need to do in order to protect our people". "I don't think it would be logical to expect us to discuss any such issue in public and I don't think it would be reasonable to expect me to answer this question one way or another,"...

We believe, based on comments made by two remarkable experts on this subject, Dr. Peter Pry of emptaskforce.org and Ambassador Hank Cooper of highfrontier.com, the latter of whom worked in the Reagan Administration, that Iran already has the bomb and is working on figuring out how to get it into a vehicle and send it our way. It will not, however deliver annihilation to any single city or cities in the conventional sense. That would be pointless, futile and suicidal. Instead, working together with North Korea, they will seek to take out our electric infrastructure and anything electronic via satellites...

      Aktuell   China's participation in atomic smuggling Fissionable material for the coalition by  Matthias Gebauer The new dislosures about China's role in the sale of nuclear know-how has the discussions over the export of the Hanau fuel element plant boiling up again. Some Greens are threatening openly with the end of the coalition if Chancellor Schröder allows the deal to go through. MARCO-URBAN.DE Governing-Team Schröder/Fischer: Looking for a solution without losing face. Berlin - Green party leader Angelika Beer didn't want to say much about the Hanau topic during her press conference on Monday. "There isn't any new position",...

On Monday, as it announced it would be wrapping up its investigation into Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors in Vienna received a report from the IAEA Director General bringing evidence that Iran had indeed been working towards building a nuclear explosive device up until 2009. “This was one of the most important days in the nuclear Iran affair, and the IAEA board of governors did nothing” said a distraught Dr. Ephraim Asculai. The IAEA board of governors is a body made up of representatives from 35 members states of the 167...

If true, North Korea has created a major escalation in the standoff on the peninsula. But is it true that Pyongyang has a hydrogen bomb ready to deploy? Reuters reports that analysts remain skeptical of the claim: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared on Thursday to claim his country has developed a hydrogen bomb, a step up from the less powerful atomic bomb, but outside experts were skeptical.Kim made the comments as he toured the Phyongchon Revolutionary Site, which marks the feats of his father who died in 2011 and his grandfather, state founder and eternal president, Kim...

N.Korea Digging New Nuclear Test Tunnel North Korea is digging a new tunnel at nuclear test site in remote North Hamgyong Province, satellite pictures appear to show. "Imagery from October and November 2015 show an additional structure and what appear to be significant tailings, indicating excavation of a new tunnel is underway," the website 38 North at Johns Hopkins University said Wednesday. The new tunnel lies to the northwest of the nuclear test site and is connected to nearby Mt. Musan. There are two older tunnels where the North conducted its nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013 and one...

Last night, radio talk show host and former US Justice Department official Mark Levin shocked many listeners when he reported that President Bill Clinton gave nuclear technology to the Iranians in a harebrained scheme. He said that the transfer of classified data to Iran was personally approved by then-President Clinton and that the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program. The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, handed a blueprint for a nuclear bomb to Iran, according to a new book "State of War" by...

Risen: No, they haven't printed it, but again, I don't want to get into The New York Times, one way or the other. Mitchell: But did you have concerns about putting it into your book? Risen: I thought about it, you know. I thought about everything. one way or the other, but I thought that this story was so old, that it no longer really mattered. As I said, goes back to the Clinton years. Mitchell: How do you balance your own role finally? You've broken some major stories here, and critics, the administration will say that it compromises American...

Iraqi Ayatollah Ahmad Al-Baghdadi Talks of America's Annihilation and the Muslim Conquest of the World; Declares Support for Nuclear Bombs for Muslim and Arab Countries The following are excerpts from speeches and interviews with Iraqi Ayatollah Ahmad Husseini Al-Baghdadi, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on May 5, 2006, on Syrian TV on May 3, 2006, and on ANB TV on April 14, 2006.TO VIEW THIS CLIP: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1135. "The Mujahid Iraqi People... Has Shattered the American Plan, Not Only in the Region, but Throughout the World"Ayatollah Ahmad Husseini Al-Baghdadi: "Jihad in Islam, from the perspective of Islamic jurisprudence, is of two...

Venezuela and Bolivia are supplying Iran with uranium for its nuclear program, according to a secret Israeli government report obtained Monday by The Associated Press. The two South American countries are known to have close ties with Iran, but this is the first allegation that they are involved in the development of Iran's nuclear program, considered a strategic threat by Israel.

Cyber warfare has gone nuclear. So says Valerie Plame, the former covert CIA agent who spent her intelligence career working against the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Now she’s taking on a new task: helping government agencies and companies stem the relentless flood of hacker attacks. “There’s a huge impact on national security and intelligence,” says Plame, who this spring became an adviser to cybersecurity startup Global Data Sentinel. “The new normal is going to be more and more of these hacks, whether it’s Target or Home Depot or the Office of Personnel Management or Jennifer Lawrence’s nude photos.”...

WASHINGTON — Americans following this year's presidential campaign would never know it from mainstream media coverage, but the commander in chief we hired four years ago has set the United States on a course for unilateral disarmament. The following people hope you won't notice until after Nov. 6: Vladimir Putin, Liang Guanglie, Kim Jong-un, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Sayyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, A.Q. Khan and of course, Barack Obama. The 10 individuals above share a common fascination: nuclear weapons. Vladimir Putin, Russia's modern czar; Liang Guanglie, minister of national defense for...

'It's Terrifying': Students Build Grassroots Momentum for Nuclear Disarmament Activist Students Say Nuclear Weapons Elimination Should Be a Top Priority for Their Generation By HUMA KHAN May 3, 2010— Scott Ibaraki has been on the road for the last three weeks. Ibaraki, 22, has driven from Florida to Washington, D.C., in a dusty green van, accompanied by two colleagues for what he describes as an important mission: warning people about the dangers of a nuclear world. It is so important to him that Ibaraki, at one college campus, used a Pikachu outfit and ran across the campus with a megaphone...

Executive Summary The Iranian nuclear deal is a full capitulation to Iran’s terrorist mastermind Mullahs, and the latest in a series of betrayals of the American people and allies by the Obama administration. At the highest level of the administration, Barack Obama’s Senior Advisor, the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett, prioritized rapprochement with the terror state. Throughout the process and negotiations, she had the backing of billionaire investor (and Obama-backer) George Soros, and his multi-headed network of tax-exempt foundations. Their efforts were driven by deep-rooted anti-Semitism and personal greed. Meanwhile, since the mid-1990s, a small but very connected Iranian lobby (funded, in...

A New York Times reporter will be subpoenaed to answer questions ahead of an upcoming trial of a former CIA officer accused of leaking classified information, though a Tuesday hearing indicated there is much confusion about what the journalist may be asked to reveal. Prosecutors say they will not ask James Risen if ex-CIA man Jeffrey Sterling was his anonymous source for part of the 2006 book “State Of War” that detailed a botched CIA effort to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. However, they do want to know if the two had a prior, on-the-record source relationship. Risen’s lawyer, Joel Kurtzberg,...