Free Republic

Ukraine needs heavy weapons and air support. Tanks, multiple-launch rockets, self-propelled artillery, air support — MiGs and Sukhoi aircraft — and mobile air defense. They need hundreds of thousands of 152mm artillery rounds. The US-supplied Javelins and Stingers are necessary but no longer sufficient. Why? Because there is a window of opportunity now — for a week or two perhaps — in which Ukraine can counterattack in the north, south and east to expel Russian forces. This will require mobile armored forces and air power. And if this window is lost, the future is darker and more uncertain. [cut] NO...

Ukrainian police said Sunday that a U.S. video journalist was killed in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, which has been devastated by Russian attacks as Moscow’s invasion enters its third week. Although the police statement described the filmmaker, Brent Renaud, as a New York Times staffer, he is a former contributor who was not on assignment in Ukraine at the time, according to the Times. .....

Q: What moves could the United States make beyond sanctions right now that would help protect Ukraine? A: The most important move now is for the president to announce Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. Really. This gives enormous diplomatic leverage and a greater incentive to help the campaign. ... Q: You advocate a no-fly zone? A: Absolutely. The airspace belongs to Ukraine. If they ask for help, why can’t we fly airplanes in there? Say, oh, it’s because of the Russians, they might come up and contest it. That’s the Russians’ problem. They’re going to get shot down. Okay,...

Earlier in Joe Biden’s presidency, we wondered if his wife Jill was running the White House, and in effect the country. It’s still not out of the question, but it’s beginning to look more like Chief of Staff Ron Klain, unelected and not confirmed by the Senate, is the real president. This should make all Americans uncomfortable. Klain, who was the vice president’s chief of staff when Biden held that office, has been called “the man executing Biden’s mission” (which seems to be carrying out the Cloward-Piven model that advocates manufacturing a political and economic crisis so that politicians can...

David Chipman, the gun control activist who President Biden nominated today to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) claimed last year that members of the Branch Davidian sect shot down two helicopters during a standoff with federal agents in Waco in 1993. That is certainly an odd statement considering it didn’t happen and Chipman served 25 years with the ATF. Chipman posted the comments as part of a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” event and even posted a photograph on the Reddit thread to confirm his identity. In response to a comment about the Waco siege from...

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” this week to discuss the origins of the Steele dossier. He said it should really be called the “Simpson” dossier. Although Christopher Steele likely contributed “stories” to the dossier, and his years of experience in British intelligence lent credence to the document, Nunes believes that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson may actually have written the majority of it. In his book “Spygate,” journalist Dan Bongino makes the same case. He points out the striking similarities between articles Simpson and his wife, Mary Jacoby wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 2007...

A former commander of NATO said allies of the U.S. are asking whether President Trump was blackmailed by Turkey to pull U.S. military forces out of Syria. In a CNN segment Monday, Wesley Clark, a retired Army general and former Democratic presidential candidate, said there was no apparent strategic logic for the move that critics view as an abdication to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "You have to ask why was the decision made?" Clarke said on Christmas Eve. "People around the world are asking this and some of our friends and allies in the Middle East are asking, did...

For Trump, trouble began on several of these fronts before he was even in office. He dismissed the service and sacrifice of Sen. John McCain and, by implication, all those who had suffered as prisoners of war. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said while campaigning in Iowa. “I like people who weren’t captured.” He engaged in a back-and-forth with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, Gold Star parents whose son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan, died in combat.

The photos from the Singapore summit were meant to impress, but the substance was thin indeed — for a vague pledge to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula our president gave up U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises in a surprise move that whacked both South Korea and Japan. Maybe it will all work out. But to understand what President Donald Trump is really after, let me put this into perspective. Trump is a businessman, so let's think of him as a new CEO and his supporters as the shareholders. When new CEOs come in they work hard to...

Working with dubious sourcing, a group close to NATO's chief military commander Philip Breedlove sought to secure weapons deliveries for Ukraine, a trove of newly released emails revealed. The efforts served to intensify the conflict between the West and Russia. Most of the 1,096 hacked emails date back to the dramatic 12 months of the Ukraine crisis after Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014. Thousands died in the skirmishes between Kiev's troops and Moscow-aligned separatists. More than 2 million civilians fled eastern Ukraine. Breedlove sought counsel from some very prominent people, his emails show. Among them were Wesley Clark, Breedlove's...

THINNER GRUEL [Jonah Goldberg] Salon.com has a "defense" of Joe Wilson. For the most part, the piece is a dull, he-said she-said about the controversy so far, generally sympathetic to Wilson, with some sneaky bits hid in the dull prose in order to make them seem more reasonable. For example the author, Mary Jacoby, says "But no sale of uranium ever took place, Wilson reported, and that conclusion is not in dispute." That's true, but Bush never said Iraq purchased the uranium, he merely said Iraq sought it. Wilson said Iraq didn't and that his cryptic sweet-tea swilling conversations proved...

Sixteen of the nation’s top retired military commanders are urging Congress to pass gun control legislation, arguing that there are many steps that can be taken to curb gun deaths that do not violate the Second Amendment. In a letter they plan to send to Congressional leaders, the retired commanders, including Army Gens. Wesley Clark and Michael Hayden, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, Air Force Lt. Gen. Norman Seip and Marine Brig. Gen. Stephen Cheney, argue that Congress is “no longer speaking or voting for the majority of Americans, including gun owners” when it comes to the issue of firearms. “There...

On Monday, Native Americans conducted a forgiveness ceremony with U.S. veterans at the Standing Rock casino, giving the veterans an opportunity to atone for military actions conducted against Natives throughout history. In celebration of Standing Rock protesters’ victory Sunday in halting construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline, Leonard Crow Dog formally forgave Wes Clark Jr., the son of retired U.S. Army general and former supreme commander at NATO, Wesley Clark Sr. This was a historically symbolic gesture forgiving centuries of oppression against Natives and honoring their partnership in defending the land from the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Gen. Weasley Clark’s Son To Lead Veterans’ Group To Protest Dakota Access Pipeline The son of retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark heads a veterans’ group committed to preventing law enforcement from evacuating Dakota Access Pipeline protesters. The group plans to arrive at the encampment Sunday.The group will supplement the few veterans who already arrived at one of the encampments earlier in the week and and demanded that law enforcement lay down their firearms.Wesley “Wes” Clark Jr. and former U.S. Marine Michael Wood Jr. lead Veterans Stand for Standing Rock. Clark’s father was also a 2004 Democratic presidential primary...

Albanian-American roofer Florin Krasniqi has been living in Brooklyn and smuggling American guns into Kosovo to arm the Kosovo Liberation Army--this time for war against its erstwhile saviors, NATO and the UN. The KLA are the bin Laden-trained, Iran-backed narco-terrorists whose 1999 jihad against the Christian Serbs we helped fight, abetting secession and creating a mono-ethnic terror haven and future Islamic republic in Europe. Krasniqi, who raised $30 million from fellow Albanian-Americans to help finance the KLA's war, is the subject of a documentary by Dutch filmmaker Klaartje Quirijns, titled "The Brooklyn Connection," which will air Tuesday night at 10...

Saudi Arabia’s [Prince] Turki al Faisal addressing Bill Clinton at Clinton Global Initiative shindig, September 25, 2012: “Muslims will never forget your deliverance of Bosnia-Herzogovenia and Kosovo, and near-deliverance, within 100 meters, of Palestine from occupation.” There by a smiling Chelsea’s side, in a room full of people who warmly approve of the term Israeli “occupation”: her sellout Jewish husband.

“If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine. It’s their right, and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”Thus spoke retired General Wesley Clark, a former Democratic Party presidential candidate, in an interview on MSNBC this past Friday.Back in 2004, Clark, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, was harshly critical of what he considered the Bush administration's excessive response to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center towers...

I've always liked Wes Clark. I interviewed him in 2005, when the topic of torture was new and fresh in our minds and he told me how disappointed he was in Dick Cheney. Our cell phone connection was horrible, but he called me back from the airport. I say this because when I watched this segment I was as totally shocked as Digby was. I hope he rethinks his position after he listens to what he actually said. He's talking about bringing back WWII Japanese style internment camps to America, which has always been a blight on US history.

Former US General Wesley Clark went on MSNBC to promote detaining domestic 'radicals' or people 'disloyal to the United States' in internment camps for the duration of the war on terror. The host asked Clark "How do we fix self-radicalized lone wolves, domestically?" First, Clark cites people who lose a job or break up with a girlfriend as being especially dangerous. Next he tells us what he'd do to those who're disloyal to the U.S. during the war on terror. "In World War II, if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn't say that...

Advocates life sentence for people who have not committed a crime (Infowars) – Retired US Army General and the former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe for NATO Wesley Clark advocates rounding up “radicalized” and “disloyal” Americans and putting them in internment camps for the “duration” of the war on terror. “In World War II if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn’t say that was freedom of speech, we put him in a camp, they were prisoners of war,” Clark told MSNBC. The difference is that World War II was a war declared under...