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“Biden Gets China,” headlined the January 2, 2012 report in The Atlantic. As author Steve Clemons explained, “Vice President Joe Biden will take the lead on the administrations next phase China policy.” This marked a shift to a “strategy of engagement with Biden at the top,” that allows the US to deal with China’s likely next president from a Vice President to a Vice President/Next President status -- and to continue both the Departments of State’s and Treasury’s ongoing engagement with other designated key Chinese leaders.” As Clemons explained, the move to put Biden at the top was “orchestrated” by...

The Palestinian Authority has launched a campaign for the release of a Palestinian terrorist captured in Iraq. PA Local Authorities Minister Saeb Erekat said the arrest of Abul Abbas, head of the Palestine Liberation Front, violates the 1995 accord with Israel that granted amnesty for all Palestinian insurgents. Erekat said the agreement was also signed by then-President Bill Clinton. "The Palestinian-Israeli interim agreement signed on September 28, 1995 stated that members of the Palestine Liberation Organization must not be detained or tried for matters they committed before the Oslo peace accord of September 13, 1993," Erekat said. "This interim agreement...

You may ask yourself, is it worth one of the best American non-fiction writers producing a book of just under 600 pages on an arrogant and abrasive egotist whose highest sustained rank in the State Department was that of a lowly assistant secretary? The answer is unabashedly yes. This is a remarkable work about a remarkable, if deeply flawed, statesman whose career was intimately intertwined with the 50 years of American decline from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Nearly all biographies have long, boring stretches you want to skip. This one has none. The access to Richard Holbrooke’s papers and to the...

  In 2014 China made a round trip to the moon with robotic explorers. The Chinese intend to launch a mission to the moon that will return samples back to Earth. They have outlined their ambitious plans for outer space here. IEEE/Spectrum calls China the "Next Space Superpower."“The Chinese have said repeatedly that they are not going to go into space, land on the moon, look around, say, Been there, done that,’ and consider themselves done,” says Johnson-Freese. “They’re going to do stepping-stone infrastructure, and in those terms their space station makes sense.” Where else might Chinese astronauts go? Their...

Warren M. Christopher, a key figure in peace efforts in Bosnia and the Mideast as secretary of state in the Clinton administration, has died at the age of 85. His family issued a statement late Friday, saying Christopher died of complications from bladder and kidney cancer at his home in Los Angeles. He was surrounded by his family.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher died at the age of 85 Friday night, KABC-TV Los Angeles reported on its 11 p.m. newscast. Christopher attended the University of Redlands before transferring to USC, where he graduated in 1945. He was secretary of state under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. He died from complications of kidney and bladder cancer, KABC reported.

ATHENS, Ga. (AP) - Five former U.S. secretaries of state are urging the next presidential administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and open a dialogue with Iran. Each says closing the facility in Cuba would bolster America's image abroad. Regarding Iran, they say it's important to maintain contact with adversaries and allies alike.

his year, the nuclear proliferation spotlight has swung away from Iraq and North Korea, only to focus on Iran. Western intelligence agencies have not discovered clandestine Iranian nuclear weapon facilities, nor have they, in fact, developed irrefutable evidence that Iran has a bomb program. But they have assembled a substantial body of evidence suggesting that, although Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it is secretly pursuing a broad, organized effort to develop nuclear weapons ... But it was Secretary of State Warren Christopher who, on May 1 [1995], gave the clearest statement of the U.S. position on Iran's nuclear...

Every time neocon warmongers like me get exasperated by the Bush administration (and we've had increasingly good reasons for exasperation in the last year or so, I might add), someone like first-term Clinton secretary of state Warren Christopher pops up. Maybe "pops up" isn't quite right, conveying as it does an implication of activity and even energy. So let's just say that Warren Christopher presented his credentials to the Washington Post op-ed page Friday, criticizing the Bush administration, more in sorrow than in anger. Bush, you see, had "resisted all suggestions that the first order of business should be negotiation...

For the past year, about two dozen of the city's top civic and business leaders have been quietly meeting at the elite 54th floor City Club overlooking downtown Los Angeles to ponder major policy and political issues. From extending term limits to exploring the effort by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District, the group has used an extensive network of contacts to meet with and question policymakers. "We are definitely not trying to be like the old Committee of 25," attorney George Kieffer said, referring to the group of business leaders who dictated public...

Col. Charles Beckwith, founder of the Delta Force, tells a story about White House planning in April 1980 for the mission to rescue our 53 hostages in Tehran. Beckwith had visited the White House Situation Room to brief President Carter. In the meeting, according to one writer, "Charlie mentioned that his Delta shooters would 'take out' the hostage guards. "Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher looked over at Charlie, eyebrows raised. 'Take them out,' Colonel?" Beckwith replied: "Yes, Mister Deputy Secretary. We're going to double-tap 'em. Shoot 'em each in the head — twice." Christopher protested: "Couldn't you just shoot...

New FReepers don't know what they have missed on FR. Here is another classic from the archives. ORIGINAL POST. ====================================================An Ominous Deja Vu It is significant that the man Clinton turns to for military advice ---who argued against the tanks and APC's for the raid in Mogadishu---is the same Warren Christopher (then a high official in Jimmy Carter's National Security Council) who helped plan the disastrous raid to rescue the hostages in Iran. At a planning session for the Tehran rescue, the man selected to lead the raid, the late Colonel Charlie Beckwith, was asked what the would do about...

LOS ANGELES We stand at a moment of rare opportunity for the United States in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate Palestinian leader, dominates the field for January's presidential election. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel has brought the Labor Party into his government, a move that frees him from being held hostage to his own Likud Party's right wing. A sudden warming of relations between Israel and Egypt accompanied a signing of a three-way trade agreement among Egypt, Israel and the United States. And to give wings to hopes for peace, the European Union, the United States and...

HOW CLINTON'S ADMINISTRATION HELPED CAUSE 9-11 Mohamed Atta is thought to be the ring leader among the 19 hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks. Prior to the attacks, Atta, like the other hijackers attracted little attention. They arrived in small groups, used post office boxes for addresses and opened bank accounts with cash. They wrote few checks and there were no rent, utilities or car payments to track government analysts have found. The relative anonymity of the attackers highlights the difficulty in identifying and stopping terrorists before they strike. Terrorist pilot Mohammad Atta blew up a bus in...

ATTN Freepers: I just received this information but have not been able to confirm it. Does anyone know whether or not this is true? Mohammad Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986. The Israelis captured, tried and imprisoned him. As part of the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians in 1993, Israel had to agree to release so-called "political prisoners. However, the Israelis would not release any with blood on their hands. The American President at the time, Bill Clinton, and his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, "insisted" that all prisoners be released. Mohammad Atta was freed and eventually...