Free Republic

US Vice-President Dick Cheney repeated assertions on Sunday on links between the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda despite a recent Senate intelligence committee report that concluded otherwise. In defending the decision to invade Iraq despite its lack of weapons of mass destruction, Mr Cheney said the fact that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former head of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed in a US air strike this year, was in Baghdad before the war was evidence that Iraq had links to al-Qaeda. “If we had to do [it] over again, we would do exactly the same thing,”...

Iraqi self-determination would probably result in the partitioning of Iraq or at least the creation of a loose confederation in which the Kurds, Sunni and Shia would autonomously govern their own affairs. It just gets worse and worse for the Bush administration. In the U.S. war on terror, allegations have surfaced that the policies of “torture light” and sexual humiliation of prisoners were widespread around the world and originated from high levels in the administration. Suspicious plea bargaining—normally used to give leniency to lower-level offenders to get their help in implicating higher-level people—has been used with an enlisted interrogator at...

Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.

France insists Saddam has never bought uranium By Kim Sengupta 21 July 2003 The British Government's claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium from Niger has been dismissed by the French ambassador to the central African state. In another blow to the credibility of the Blair Government over the issue, Denis Vène said it was impossible for uranium to leave the country without French officials knowing. France has a substantial stake in the two companies that mine, process and export uranium, and its movement is "perfectly controlled". The ambassador told The Sunday Telegraph: "The mining companies check and...

Why We Should Be Willing to Accept the Costs of A Difficult War, Including Substantial Numbers of Casualties George W. Bush is deadly serious about protecting America from terrorists and the rogue regimes that support them. Indeed, he took an oath, under the Constitution, to do just that - protect America. The President invoked that oath when he gave a 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein: "The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security. That duty falls to me as Commander in Chief by the oath I have sworn, by the...

Iraq preparing to use chemical weapons: US Qatar, March 28 The US military said on Friday it had gathered fresh evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein has issued "first orders" for the use of chemical weapons. "We have seen indications through a variety of sources and reporting means that first orders have been given that at a certain point chemical weapons might be used," General Vincent Brooks told a briefing at allied command in Qatar. "We have seen chemical protective equipment in a number of areas south of where we thought that red line might be." Brooks said...

Demonstrations over the weekend show the left's dedication to preserving murderous, dictatorial regimes--no matter what the cost. THERE WAS A TIME--the 1960s, 1970s--when the political left in America favored wars of national liberation in countries ruled by dictators, some of them fascist dictators. True, the left would have installed communist dictatorships in their place. But at least leftists targeted enemies who were corrupt, brutal abusers of human rights. Now the left has flipped. The effect of its crusade against war in Iraq would be the survival--indeed, the strengthening--of Saddam Hussein's oppressive regime. The left has brushed aside the pleas of...