Free Republic

By most codes of justice, his execution would be fitting retribution for a brutal life. But it won't extinguish the fires of sectarian hatred any more than it will relieve the pain of his victims By the time you read this, Saddam Hussein may be dead. When Iraq's Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Saddam's appeal of his death sentence, the tyrant's luck finally ran out. That there would be no reprieve was apparently evident to Saddam himself, who penned a farewell letter to his former subjects in which he seemed to welcome a martyr's death — while adding that if...

In the span of four years, the Bush Administration has been forced to rethink the pre-emptive "Bush doctrine" by which it hoped to remake the world, as the strategy's ineffectiveness was exposed by the very policies it prescribed, TIME's Mike Allen and Romesh Ratnesar report in this weeks cover story on 'The End of Cowboy Diplomacy' on newsstands Monday, July 9th. President George W. Bush came to office pledging to focus on domestic issues and pursue a "humble" foreign policy that would avoid the entanglements of the Bill Clinton years. After Sept. 11, however, the Bush team embarked on...

The Book Behind the Bombshell By ROMESH RATNESAR In the abstruse world of espionage, it's not always easy to know when you are in on a secret. So when intelligence sources approached New York Times reporter James Risen in late 2004 with evidence that the Bush Administration was running a covert domestic-spying program, Risen says he "wasn't sure what to believe." As Risen and Times colleague Eric Lichtblau looked into the story, more whistle-blowers came forward, convincing the reporters that the eavesdropping claims were credible. At that point Risen asked a few "very senior" government officials what they knew about...