Free Republic

ATLANTA --Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has a message for critics of the war in Iraq: "Keep your mouth shut." The Republican governor made the remark Friday during a talk-radio session at the state Capitol with Bill Bennett, former U.S. secretary of education. On his "Morning in America" show, broadcast on Atlanta radio station WGKA, Bennett noted Perdue has been mentioned as vice-presidential material in 2008. He asked if Perdue agreed with some who say Republican candidates should distance themselves from President Bush on the topic of Iraq. Perdue said no, then added: "We have everyone that wants to talk about...

ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Monday sought to counter Democratic critics of the Iraq war by turning their own past words of warning about Saddam Hussein against them. "Reasonable people can disagree about the conduct of the war -- but it is irresponsible for Democrats to now claim that we misled them and the American people," Bush said in a campaign-style speech accusing Democrats of playing politics with the issue and trying to rewrite the past. He spoke to U.S. troops in an air base hangar in Alaska, a refueling spot for Air...

The home front is more worrisome than the battlefield. Democratic critics keep deconstructing federal reports about intelligence lapses that might have led to the tragedy of September 11. While they fault the administration — in some cases correctly — for an apparent lack of vigilance, they do not dare explore the real heart of the disaster. The 9/11 tragedy was not due simply to bureaucratic inertia or to some sort of oil conspiracy that overlooked criminal behavior of the sheiks of the petroleum states (though all that no doubt played a role), but was far more a dividend of political...

Since British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke to Congress on July 17, the omnivorous 24-hour news cycle -- with its distracting car chases and celebrity sexual offsides -- has buried and blurred his essential message to Americans and the United Nations about the rights of humankind around the world. Passages of Blair's speech should resound in future histories of this period, as have Winston Churchill's since the days of the Second World War. As George Orwell said, when a writer or speaker's thinking is clear, so is his or her language. Blair's words passionately transcended the jockeying for power (chronic...