Free Republic

It's been two decades since, on March 19, 2003, United States forces invaded Iraq. President George W. Bush ordered the invasion to neutralize what he said was the threat of weapons of mass destruction posed by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Except it turned out Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction. U.S. forces searched and searched and searched, and never found them. In all, 4,586 American servicemen and women died in the war, and 32,455 were wounded. It was the largest military and national security blunder of anyone's lifetime, a mistake so enormous it beggared belief. In the years...

Republicans created the Patriot Act, the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The same agencies that Barack Obama later weaponized with the creation of the Dept of Justice National Security Division (DOJ-NSD). The root issue around domestic surveillance and ultimately power & control, underlines Washington DC’s united opposition to Donald Trump. Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act turned the surveillance radar from pointing outwardly, to pointing inwardly, monitoring activity inside our nation....

Oil And Politics: Beijing plays the debt card as the Obama administration quietly lets China acquire major ownership interests in oil and natural gas resources across the U.S. at the same time it blocks the Keystone pipeline. Normally, foreign investment in the U.S. is to be welcomed. It creates jobs, boosts economic growth and promotes trade and exports. But when that investor is an ambitious and increasingly belligerent China to whom we owe over a trillion dollars, eyebrows and concerns need to be raised. Reversing a Bush administration policy, the Obama administration is encouraging Beijing to acquire equity interests in...

YOU KILLED PEOPLE.. An Iraq veteran gave George W. Bush a stark reminder this past weekend that although he’s now a liberal media darling, there are plenty of Americans who remember the lies that led to millions of deaths. Corporal Mike Prysner was captured on video launching into a tirade against Bush during a speech in Beverly Hills. “When are you going to apologize for the million Iraqis who are dead because you lied?” Prysner yelled at Bush. “You lied about weapons of mass destruction! You lied about connections to 9/11! You sent me to Iraq! You sent me to...

Why draw the line at Spain - why not have Republican officials tried in Cuba for maintaining a blockade? Even if the worst that happens is that former President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and all those who served in their administrations find it advisable not to visit Spain or take international flights that stop off there, it is intolerable that persecution more appropriate to Robert Mugabe should be visited upon former public servants of the most powerful democracy on earth. If such infamy has already been achieved by President Pantywaist in his first 100 days, what further disasters can the...

“ Former President George W. Bush’s spokesman vehemently denied an article from the New York Times that alleged he would not be voting for President Donald Trump in 2020. The NYT reported Saturday that a slew of high-profile Republicans do not plan on supporting Trump’s reelection. Included in that list was Bush, and the NYT cited “people familiar with their thinking.”

Read reports on the files at:Der SpiegelThe New York TimesThe GuardianIntro by Der Spiegel:Close to 92,000 US documents have been uncovered that shed new light on the war in Afghanistan. In an unprecedented development, close to 92,000 classified documents pertaining to the war in Afghanistan have been leaked. SPIEGEL, the New York Times and the Guardian have analyzed the raft of mostly classified documents. They expose the true scale of the Western military deployment -- and the problems beleaguering Germany's Bundeswehr in the Hindu Kush. A total of 91,731 reports from United States military databanks relating to the war in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury is investigating a prominent Democratic lobbyist and a former GOP congressman for their involvement in an influence campaign on behalf of Ukrainian interests tied to Paul Manafort, according to a person with direct knowledge of the investigation. At the center of the widening probe are Tony Podesta, a longtime Democratic operative, and Vin Weber, a former GOP congressman and leader of his own high-powered lobbying firm, Mercury LLC. The two men were hired as part of a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort directed by Manafort and longtime associate Rick Gates.

"..To many in the anti-Iraq war movement, the liberal opposition to the bill was as maddening as it was mystifying. ?You really have two options here: One is that you can vote for a change of course here and say we?re going to find a way out of Iraq, or, two, you can vote against it and hand George Bush a victory,? said Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran and co-founder of the anti-Iraq war VoteVets.org . ?It doesn?t make sense to me. George Bush got us into the war. They have challenged him on everything. Why would they give...

Bob is quoting Michael Moore's Material to Alan...and before that.... He asked Bob Graham about his books thesis that Bush needs to be impeached and removed from office for miss-leading the public. Then Hannity read some quotes to Bob. Then said what is wrong with that, and then Bob goes on to say that Bush should have done a comparative between the threat of al-Qaida and the threat from Iraq. Then he went on and on and said that Bush just miss-lead the People about WMDs and the ability or the lack of there of to deliver these WMDs to...

That was the 14th of July, 2008 when President George W. Bush wisely lifted the moratorium on oil drilling, thus sparking the precipitous drop in the price of gasoline from an average high of $4.12 per gallon to a cellar dwelling low of $1.60 by November of that year. Despite President Obama's promise of a newer, comprehensive energy plan, he has planned to do everything but open up drilling on the East Coast, West Coast, Gulf, and the Arctic. When President Obama bragged on "More energy production under his administration than the last ten years," recently, he also failed to...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - First Lady Laura Bush broke with husband President George W. Bush, saying she found nothing wrong with a new Spanish-language version of the US national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." "I don't think there's anything wrong with singing it in Spanish," Bush told CNN television in an interview.

A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a U.S. man convicted of plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush and conspiring with al Qaeda to 30 years in prison. In November, Abu Ali was found guilty of all charges in a nine-count indictment, including conspiracy to assassinate Bush, conspiring to support al Qaeda and conspiracy to hijack aircraft.

Robert Kagan (author, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment) Q: You ask the question in your speech tomorrow night: "Is the Security Council really the depository of international legitimacy?"KAGAN:...I think it's fairly clear that throughout most of its history the Security Council has not been the place where people go for ultimate legitimacy... When Europeans wanted to go to war in Kosovo to stop Slobodan Milosevic, Russia was unwilling to support action in the Security Council, so Europeans were perfectly happy to go without a Security Council resolution...Q: ...Are you arguing essentially that the Europeans have been hypocritical over Iraq?KAGAN:...

<p>Politics makes strange bedfellows, and it does funny things to birds, too. Some of our doves, accustomed to flying on only one wing — the left — are auditioning as hawks.</p> <p>Over 40 years the Democrats have raised sneering at military service and sacrifice to an art form. The mere sight of a uniform, especially if bedecked with medals and service ribbons, often sends liberals into something close to cardiac arrest. Add a flag or two and a little martial music and some Democrats (a former president and his mouthy wife come to mind) imagine they're back at the Nuremberg rally.</p>

Bush decided to order the Justice Department to seek the injunction after board of inquiry hand-picked by the White House reported that the two-week-old labor standoff has no chance of ending soon, said two administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The board's brief report does not go into detail about the economic and national security impact of the shutdown, but it does hold out little hope for a resolution of the conflict, said one of the sources.

The last presidential election was just a little close,…maybe a few hundred points apart. America was equally divided. The years of handouts from the Clinton clan had infected many. Socialism, the intoxicating liquor of the communistic leftwing democratic party had become an addiction to many. A future of dependency was no longer out of the question for large numbers of Americans who voted for Algore. That was then, but where is America today? Since the last election, the country has suffered a great deal. We've been attacked, the economy has fallen apart as a result of many factors, most out...

<p>They might have been surprised by the ferocity of the attacks, but the highest-ranking members of the George W. Bush administration knew before Sept. 11 that something terrible was going to happen soon.</p> <p>Bush knew something was going to happen involving airplanes. He just didn't know what or exactly when. His attorney general, John Ashcroft, knew. His national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, knew. They all knew.</p>