Free Republic

The war in Iraq "is lost" and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, said Thursday. "I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," Reid said, on the same day US President George W. Bush was giving a speech at an Ohio town hall meeting defending the war on terror.

A member of the Sept. 11 commission on Friday lashed out at conservative pundit Ann Coulter for a "hate-filled attack" in saying the widows whose husbands died in the World Trade Center used the deaths for their own political gain. In her latest book, Coulter criticizes the four New Jersey widows who pushed for an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11, attacks. The women also backed Democrat John Kerry's presidential candidacy in 2004. "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief- arazzis. I've never seen...