Free Republic

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states launched airstrikes against rebel forces in Yemen’s capital and across the country in defense of what Riyadh called the nation’s legitimate government. The attacks began Thursday morning, hours after Yemen’s president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, fled the southern port city of Aden by boat when Iranian-backed Houthi militants closed in. The decision by Saudi Arabia and the region’s Sunni monarchies to intervene on Mr. Hadi’s behalf raises the stakes in their rivalry with predominantly Shiite Iran, which has raged in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the region. The raids also risked further inflaming sectarian...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says former Vice President Dick Cheney is lying when he claims that classified CIA memos show that enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding worked.

Who's funding the insurgents in Iraq? The list of suspects is long: ex-Baathists, foreign jihadists, and angry Sunnis, to name a few. Now add to that roster hard-core Euroleftists.

WASHINGTON — On the evening of Oct. 14, a young Marine spokesman near Fallouja appeared on CNN and made a dramatic announcement. "Troops crossed the line of departure," 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert declared, using a common military expression signaling the start of a major campaign. "It's going to be a long night." CNN, which had been alerted to expect a major news development, reported that the long-awaited offensive to retake the Iraqi city of Fallouja had begun. In fact, the Fallouja offensive would not kick off for another three weeks. Gilbert's carefully worded announcement was an elaborate psychological operation —...

Fox News is reporting with live coverage from Najif that US troops have taken the center of NAjif and have between 750 - 1500 "Terrorists" trapped in the Holy Mosque. The US troops are awaiting the Iraqi forces th enter the mosque to clean it out.

January 30, 2004 Lawmakers to Visit Iran, Meet Officials By BARRY SCHWEID ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) - As the State Department encourages wider contact with Iran, Congress is set to test sentiment for ending a quarter-century of icy relations by sending staff members to Tehran next month for talks with Iranian officials. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he hoped the visit, arranged at a dinner Wednesday involving several members of Congress and Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, would be followed by trips to Tehran by members of Congress and later by Bush administration policy-makers. "They are showing some signs...

We are witnessing the most recent iteration of the "Western way of war," a term developed by Victor Davis Hanson, a classics professor at California State University, Fresno, about a distinct style of combat used by Western armies over time. Hanson identifies a culture of combat in which predominantly free individuals, possessing private property rights and civil rights, engage in a fighting style that depends heavily on both unit discipline and individual initiative; which simultaneously seeks close combat yet employs standoff weapons; which has unprecedented lethality; and which pursues unconditional surrender by the enemy. It also involves a paradox in...