Free Republic

Director Rob Reiner‘s new movie Shock and Awe is a movie about journalists. According to the movie’s description on Rotten Tomatoes, the film is “based on the true events of Knight Ridder journalists who were the only ones who ‘got it right’ in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War when they questioned the true nature of the Bush White House’s justification for the conflict.” Yet, you would be forgiven for not knowing that because this weekend practically no one bought tickets to see the film, which opened in limited release on July 13th. According to Box Office Mojo, for...

Khalid Sheik Mohammed: George W. Bush's Shock and Awe Response to 9/11 Prevented Other Attacks Far from trying to draw us in, KSM said that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as we had the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut — when, KSM told Mitchell, the United States ‘turned tail and ran.’ ‘Then he looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’’ Mitchell writes. ‘KSM explained that if the United States...

A late surge of support and months of restrained spending have left the Republican National Committee flush with cash with little time to spend it — $68 million as of Oct. 17, which was nearly seven times the amount the Democratic National Committee had in the bank. Adding in the cash from other presidential campaign committees, the mismatch still was stark: $156 million for Mitt Romney and his GOP allies to $94 million for President Obama and his allies. State Republican parties also had 50 percent more cash than their Democratic counterparts, according to an analysis by The Washington Times....

Everyone knows that burial at sea story was fishy. Here is the real truth.

THE US opened its war on Iraq with a pre-dawn missile barrage at the Iraqi leadership yesterday but apparently failed to kill Saddam Hussein, whose image later appeared on television to accuse President George W. Bush of a "shameful crime". It was not clear if the less-than-10-minute address broadcast by his son Uday's Youth television was live or pre-recorded. The assassination attacks in Baghdad, targeting Hussein and his sons, Uday and Qusay, signalled the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, described by Mr Bush in a televised address from the Oval Office as a "broad and concerted campaign". As Iraq claimed...

The U.S. Air Force's B-2 stealth bomber would be able to attack and destroy an expanded set of hardened, deeply buried military targets using a new 30,000 pound-class penetrator weapon that Northrop Grumman has begun integrating on the aircraft. The company is doing the work under a seven-month, $2.5 million contract awarded June 1 by the Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio. Northrop Grumman is the Air Force's prime contractor on the B-2, the flagship of the nation's long-range strike arsenal. The new Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), which is being developed by The Boeing Company, is a...

In the wake of an Iraqi official last month blaming America's use of depleted uranium munitions in its 2003 "Shock and Awe" campaign for a surge in cancer there, the Defense Department is facing an October deadline for providing a comprehensive report to Congress on the health effects of such weapons. The report is required by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, which President Bush signed into law last year. The request for the study is an outgrowth of claims by Iraq war veterans that exposure to depleted uranium and other toxic substances there has negatively affected...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The alleged "D.C. madam" dropped a name in court documents filed Thursday, but the man named bristled at being accused of hiring the high-end escort service run by Deborah Jean Palfrey. Government prosecutors say Pamela Martin and Associates was actually a prostitution ring that Palfrey operated in the Washington area for 13 years. Palfrey denies that her business provided sexual services to its customers. In her motion to reconsider appointment of counsel, Palfrey named Harlan K. Ullman as "one of the regular customers" of the business. Ullman is one of the leading theorists behind the "shock and...

The Raptor in the Real World By John A. Tirpak, Executive Editor In little more than a year, the Air Force has transformed its newly operational F-22 into something remarkable—a weapon of true intimidation. The Raptor has proved itself time and time again in USAF’s toughest wargames. In live exercises, it has trounced the best “opponents” USAF can muster. It hits them at unprecedented speeds and altitudes—and with impunity. The F-22 does this while in the hands of operators—not test pilots, but rank and file fighter pilots. They consider it to be nearly as reliable as mature F-15 and F-16...

   You Call This A War? June 29, 2006 Maybe those in command of the War On Terror should take a break and watch a movie.  They might get a clue about what to do when you ask brave Americans to go in harm’s way, and fight a WAR.  Ask Sean Connery...You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send on of his to the morgue!...Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that? Perhaps W and Rummy have...

--snip--    Budgets reflected this love affair with aerial killing. Since Gen. Huba's first exposition in the early 1990s, 70 percent of defense investments, more than $1.3 trillion, have gone into shock and awe, delivered by Air Force and Navy aircraft and missiles.     The Army got 16 percent. Thus, we come today to an amazingly perverse strategic circumstance. We have more first-line fighter aircraft costing $50 million to $400 million per copy than we have Army and Marine infantry squads, costing less than $100,000 each.     Since Gen. Huba's experiments began, we have achieved a "kill ratio" in aerial combat of 257 to...

Another voice has been added to those who believe that air strikes should halt Iran's quest to develop nuclear weapons. Gary Berntsen, the former senior CIA operative who led the search for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in late 2001, believes the United States has the ability to easily destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. He said the US could use bunker-buster bombs and other weapons to carry out the operation. "We can dig those things out. We can destroy them," he told The Jerusalem Post in an interview. "We can take care of it in a couple of days with air...

#1: America Takes Off Gloves, Puts on Brass Knuckles Author: Propaganda Department, The United States has often been called, directly or indirectly, the most brutal, repressive, and rapacious empire ever to place its yoke on the shoulders of humanity. But today, in an alarming policy shift that has the world recoiling in horror, the Bush administration, fed up with its critics, announced that the United States will immediately begin to live up to its unflattering, media-driven image. "We're damned if we do and damned if we don't," a stone-faced Vice President Dick Cheney snarled at a morning press conference. "For...

UH-60 in Mosul, Iraq Night video. In this video, a helo fires at an insurgent position with its minigun, 20mm cannon and rockets. Unfortunately, the location is unknown. Also see a video reportedly of an UH-60 Blackhawk attacking an insurgent position in Mosul. Visit the video archives

When 'Shock and Awe' launched the first stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom the phrase became synonymous with a massive military strike—terrifying and overwhelming. It was a strategy designed to end the war in hours or days. That was the theory.

Yipes! Looks like this whole America-healing thing has been a bit slower than earlier anticipated. We here at Iowahawk are all about keeping hope alive, so here's fresh batch of positives to keep our progressive friends warm during the upcoming Rovian ice age: On an up note, Democratic efforts to increase voter turnout was a major success story in 2004. Progressives have shown that they know how to get first-timers and young people to the polling booth. Next time, you can work on the problem of making them vote for you. Kerry's lack of success in the South was largely...

THE "FLIP-FLOP" CHARGE WAS A DIVERSION? The guys at CrushKerry.com interview a GOP campaign operative - I think I know who they're talking to, and if I'm right, their description of his title and duties is accurate - and get a sense of an emerging strategy shift on the Bush campaign:~~~~~~~~~~~ We recently expressed our frustration over the “flip-flop” narrative with a veteran GOP campaign operative in daily contact with, and in some cases working side by side with, high-level "Bush/Cheney 04" campaign officials, and asked them why, given all the evidence that this message had long since played itself...

After-debate discussion here!

I just finished "American Soldier" by Gen. Tommy Franks, and thought I'd share what I noticed. Overall, this is one of the better memoirs I've read. His ghostwriter, Malcolm McConnell, did an excellent job of letting Franks "talk" through the narrative. I forgot I wasn't reading Franks' own writing, which is the greatest compliment you can pay a ghostwriter. The book is well balanced, with about 1/3 going to the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Even so, you don't hurry through his boot camp or Vietnam experiences. Although Franks doesn't toot his own horn too loudly, he makes it clear...

Yes, I believe itTONIGHT, exactly a year ago, was the night that people all over the world went to bed, but couldn't get to sleep. The politicians had voted. The UN inspectors had left. The invasion force, or at least the American part of it, was ready. As the sands ran out on the final deadline of the final US ultimatum, I was lying on my "executive mattress" at the Palestine Hotel, Baghdad, biting my nails and wondering if I was going to die. I wasn't the only one. Even at 3am, the lights in the flats opposite were on,...