Free Republic

Just in case you’re not celebrating diversity enthusiastically enough yet, here is more reason to start waving those diversity pom-poms: a new bill in Massachusetts would give Muslims privileged status. Here we see it yet again: “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts are inherently and in always and every case a gateway to the preferential treatment of the Left’s favored groups. “Islam must dominate, and not be dominated,” said Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood ... In line with the fact that Islamic texts and teachings frequently exhort Muslims to subjugate Infidels (who must be made to “pay the...

What is Islam? The obvious dictionary definition answer is that it’s a religion, but legally speaking it actually enjoys all of the advantages of race, religion and culture with none of the disadvantages. Islam is a religion when mandating that employers accommodate the hijab, but when it comes time to bring it into the schools, places that are legally hostile to religion, American students are taught about Islam, visit mosques and even wear burkas and recite Islamic prayers to learn about another culture. Criticism of Islam is denounced as racist even though the one thing that Islam clearly isn’t is...

If China shooting down one of its old satellites in a ballistic missile test isn't a shot heard round the world, it should be. The question every politician and consumer of cheap Chinese goods should be asking themselves is: Just what kind of military monster are we creating by supporting the Chinese economy? Balance of excerpt here

U.S. Banks on Technology in Revised Military Plan for a Possible North Korea ConflictBy THOM SHANKER Published: August 29, 2005 CAMP CASEY, South Korea - American commanders are making significant changes in their plans in the event of a military conflict with North Korea, to rely in large measure on a new generation of sensors, smart bombs and high-speed transport ships to deter and, if necessary, counter that unpredictable dictatorship, the senior United States commander in South Korea says. The shift in strategy is being undertaken even as the United States cuts the number of troops here by one-third and...

Something to Yak About – International Man of Mystery Has Secret ‘Post-Debate War Plan’ Buried deep within a news report on the run-up to the first presidential debate – the final sentence as a matter of fact – is the latest insight into the mind of John Kerry, International Man of Mystery. Regarding what the Kerry campaign loves to call the ‘spin war,’ Kerry spokesperson Stephanie Cutter is quoted as saying, “Kerry had his own post-debate war plan ready to go. She would not disclose it.” Hmmmmm… a non-disclosed post-debate spin war plan, eh? Maybe it’s something stitched together with...

AMERICA’S Iraq war commander, General Tommy Franks, has disclosed the best-kept secret of the conflict: through a double agent called April Fool, he tricked Saddam Hussein into fatally bungling the defence of his country. As a result, while American armoured columns raced to Baghdad from southern Iraq, Saddam held back many of his best divisions to fight expected attacks from the north and west, which never came. Inadequately defended, Baghdad fell in less than three weeks and the regime collapsed. “Because of the sensitivity of the deception, only a few in the US government were aware of it,” Franks writes...

CSpan: Saturday, July 17 at 10:00 pm and Sunday, July Sunday, July 18 at 7:00 pm 18 at 7:00 pm Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror Terror Thomas McInerney and Paul Vallely Description: At an event sponsored by the Women's National Republican Club, authors Thomas McInerney and Paul Vallely discuss their newest book "Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror." The authors, both retired career military officers and current Fox News Channel military analysts, write that in order for the United States to be successful in the war on terror, it needs to...

On Sept. 8, 2003, Bush administration officials awoke to find that Paul Bremer III had written an op-ed piece in The Washington Post laying out a seven-step plan for the democratization of Iraq. Bremer hadn't cleared the piece with his higher-ups in the Pentagon or the White House, and here he was describing a drawn-out American occupation. Iraqis would take their time writing a constitution, and would eventually have elections and take control of their country. For some Bush officials, this was the lowest period of the entire Iraq project. They knew they couldn't sustain an occupation for that long,...

Today, the President discussed his strategy for victory in the larger War on Terror – describing a clash of political visions between terrorists who want to impose a future of darkness across the Middle East, and America’s vision of liberty and respect for human dignity. Just as events in Europe determined the outcome of the Cold War, events in the Middle East will set the course of the War on Terror: If the Middle East is abandoned to dictators and terrorists, it will be a constant source of violence and alarm – exporting killers of increasingly destructive power to...

Hawks deliver manifesto to Bush Free Iran at ActivistChat.com! By David Rennie in Washington (Filed: 31/12/2003) President George W Bush was sent a public manifesto yesterday by Washington's hawks, demanding regime change in Syria and Iran and a Cuba-style military blockade of North Korea backed by planning for a pre-emptive strike on its nuclear sites. The manifesto, presented as a "manual for victory" in the war on terror, also calls for Saudi Arabia and France to be treated not as allies but as rivals and possibly enemies. The manifesto is contained in a new book by Richard Perle, a Pentagon...

Hawks tell Bush how to win war on terror By David Rennie in Washington (Filed: 31/12/2003) President George W Bush was sent a public manifesto yesterday by Washington's hawks, demanding regime change in Syria and Iran and a Cuba-style military blockade of North Korea backed by planning for a pre-emptive strike on its nuclear sites. The manifesto, presented as a "manual for victory" in the war on terror, also calls for Saudi Arabia and France to be treated not as allies but as rivals and possibly enemies. The manifesto is contained in a new book by Richard Perle, a Pentagon...

PARIS (AFP) Aug 28, 2003 Top Pentagon adviser Richard Perle admitted Thursday that the United States had made a key blunder in its planning ahead of launching its military campaign in Iraq -- the failure to forge close ties with the Iraqi opposition. Two more US soldiers were killed, and five wounded, in Iraq the previous day as the US military administration struggles to bring the country under control months after declaring the war over. The US administration has stepped up its efforts to defend its "noble cause" in Iraq this week after the death toll among US troops since...

<p>Top Bush administration officials grudgingly acknowledge that their post-Saddam Hussein plan for rebuilding Iraq has been substantially flawed on the security front.</p> <p>Some defense officials said privately in interviews that the plan in place for security after Baghdad's fall has been an utter failure. They said it failed to predict any significant resistance from Saddam loyalists, much less the deadly combination of Ba'athist holdouts and foreign terrorists preying daily on American troops.</p>

U.S. Moved to Undermine Iraqi Military Before War By DOUGLAS JEHL with DEXTER FILKINS ASHINGTON, Aug. 9 — The United States military, the Central Intelligence Agency and Iraqi exiles began a broad covert effort inside Iraq at least three months before the war to forge alliances with Iraqi military leaders and persuade commanders not to fight, say people involved in the effort. Even after the war began, the Bush administration received word that top officials of the Iraqi government, most prominently the defense minister, Gen. Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Tai, might be willing to cooperate to bring the war to a...

The New American Way of War By MAX BOOT WAGING MODERN WAR "The American way of war." That phrase -- popularized by the military historian Russell Weigley in his 1973 book -- has come to refer to a grinding strategy of attrition: the strategy employed by Ulysses S. Grant to destroy Robert E Lee's army in 1864-65, by John J. Pershing to wear down the German army in 1918, and by the U.S. Army Air Force to pulverize all the major cities of Germany and Japan in 1944-45. In this view, the Civil War, World War I, and World War...

Tony Blair has revealed for the first time that coalition forces in Iraq believed the war against Saddam Hussein would last for 125 days, suggesting why the military were so ill-prepared for the post-conflict situation. In an interview with The Observer, the Prime Minister said he had spoken to General Tommy Franks, the commander of US forces in Iraq, who had said the war was likely to last four months. In an admission that raises the question whether military intelligence understood the state of the Iraqi armed forces - which crumbled in the face of the American and British 'shock-and-awe'...

TAMPA, Fla. - Well before Americans saw the start of the ground and air war in Iraq, teams of U.S. special forces took control of Iraq's western desert - 25 percent of the country, Gen. Tommy Franks said in his first interview detailing how the war was planned, fought and won. War planners worried that Iraq might launch Scud missile attacks on Israel and Jordan from its western desert, so American forces had to infiltrate the area as quickly as possible to prevent a wider Middle East conflict, said Franks, the commander of U.S. Central Command, which was in charge...

In January in this space I wrote a book review of Robert Coram's excellent biography, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed History, the story of the late Air Force Col. John Boyd, the maverick (vast understatement) self-taught military thinker who in the 1980s completely revolutionized American military doctrine, strategy and tactics. In a tour-de-force briefing called Patterns of Conflict that contained some 180 PowerPoint slides and which took two days to present, Boyd laid out a completely new theory of modern warfare, shorthanded as "4th generation warfare" or just 4GW. At the heart of this theory was what Boyd called...

The DealWalid Rabbah, exclusive.ONE day after the start of the war against Iraq American Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared on American television screens to say something that the press interpreted as some sort of American propaganda. In reality, though, it was the basis for what was later to take place.Rumsfeld said that there had been communications between the Americans and leaders in the Republican Guard in Iraq. He said that the details could not be disclosed now, but urged listeners to wait for coming days.Three days later the American media played an audio tape on which recorded voices could...

Tuesday, April 15, 2003 By SEAN GONSALVES The Tao of War? I've got more questions than answers. That's not a bad thing. As the African proverb says: to ask well is to know much. My interdisciplinary research into military history and social ethics has led me to one of the many books I just finished reading, "The Tao of War," an ancient Chinese military classic in the tradition of Sun Tzu's "Art of War." "The Tao of War" was penned by a 9th century military commander named Wang Chen and is studied by all serious military leaders and scholars the...