Free Republic

George F. Will, the elite conservative commentator, will call in his next column for U.S. ground troops to leave Afghanistan, according to publishing sources. “[F]orces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters,” Will writes in the column, scheduled for publication later this week. Obama ordered a total of 21,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan in February and March, and casualties have mounted...

'JUSTICE Secretary Kenny MacAskill freed Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al- Megrahi over fears Scotland would suffer a terrorist backlash if he died behind bars. He believed Megrahi would have been seen as a MARTYR by Islamic extremists if he had been left to die in Greenock Prison. And last night a source close to the Cabinet Secretary said: "Kenny feared the repercussions would have haunted Scotland for a generation and more. "If Megrahi had died in a Scottish jail, we'd have seen burning Saltires across the Middle East." MacAskill and SNP First Minister Alex Salmond are preparing to publish...

Tourists are being warned to steer clear of Asian hornets that are colonising France, after swarms of the aggressive predators attacked seven people. An Asian predatory wasp (vespa velutina), a predator of honey bee hives An Asian Hornets' nest A beekeeper holds an Asian Hornets' nest The bee-eating hornets, instantly recognisable by their yellow feet, are rapidly spreading round France Hundreds of the insects attacked a mother on a stroll with her five-month-old baby in the Lot-et-Garonne department, southwestern France, at the weekend before turning on a neighbour who ran over to help. The baby was unharmed. They then pursued...

Here is video of John Brennan, Obama's top Homeland Security and Counterterrorism official, giving a speech today where he said the United States is not engaged in a "War on Terror," and also does not believe we are in a "global war" nor are we fighting "jihadists." He said the only acceptable term is that we are fighting "Al-Qaeda." Who does he think Al-Qaeda is? The are "Jihadists!" But political correctness will not allow Obama to say what is true, that Islamic Jihadists have declared war on the United States and we do face a Global War against those who...

Obama, Medvedev Call for Cut to 1,500-1,675 Nuclear Warheads Title only - story to follow

Mexico got tough with the U.S. today, raising tariffs on $2.4 billion in U.S. exports to retaliate for the ending of a pilot program that allowed illegal Mexican day laborers to wait on U.S. curbs for work. President b. Hussein, in his first big trade policy test, immediately wimped out, issuing an executive order that gives a tax break to any American employer who pulls their pickup into the parking lot of a Mexican grocery and flashes five fingers on one hand, then all 10 fingers twice. (Translation: “Five laborers needed, at $20 an hour.”) Tax breaks will be calculated...

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is leaning toward making a major diplomatic overture to Iran before the country's presidential elections in June. This initiative could come in the form of a letter from President Obama to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to two senior European diplomats who have met in recent weeks with key State Department officials crafting a new US policy toward Iran. The letter would be aimed at initiating talks over the Iranian nuclear program and Iran's role in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the...

President Obama said the military was not winning the counter insurgency war in Afghanistan as he opened the door for peace negotiations. By persuading Iraqi Sunni insurgents to turn on al-Qaeda extremists, US commanders engineered a sharply drop in violence in Iraq. President Obama said deals similar to those implemented by General David Petraeus in Iraq could be cut in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work...

In the March 9, 2009 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 2), "Radical Islam is A Fact of Life. How To Live With it" Fareed Zakaria makes the case for why the West needs to adopt a more sophisticated strategy toward Radical Islam. Plus: Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman discuss the country's future in their first foreign media interview since winning in the recent election. Lastly: A review of the latest comic book inspired movie, "Watchmen."

In his latest “Memo from Cairo,” New York Times correspondent Michael Slackman virtually begs the Obama administration to avoid using the word “terrorist” in reference to Hamas and Hezbollah. According to Slackman... calling these groups “terrorists” turns off the Arab world, in which people view Israel as the “real terrorist,” whereas Hamas and Hezbollah are just “trying to liberate their countries.” In turn, intimates Slackman, using a “loaded word” like “terrorist” when describing Hamas or Hezbollah makes peace impossible. Let’s leave aside for a moment that Slackman has managed to pass off his own view on the mind-numbingly dull one-man’s-terrorist-is-another-man’s-freedom-fighter...

U.S. Senate Republicans are not planning to try and use procedural maneuvers to delay passage of a proposed $789 billion economic stimulus bill, the party's leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said on Wednesday. McConnell said there was a widespread feeling in the minority party that they "ought to vote and move on." He spoke after congressional negotiators said they had reached a deal on the massive package of spending and tax cuts to try and rescue the flailing economy.

I'm with David Frum on this from yesterday: But Obama? McCain’s attack on him is the equivalent of the William McKinley campaign attacking William Jennings Bryan for having kept company with Nathan Bedford Forrest decades after the Civil War. Yes, the old rebel was an unrepentant traitor. Mostly though, he was all washed up. Republicans have been fighting this second American civil war for eleven election cycles now. It’s been a good run! But just as 19th-Century Republicans eventually ran out of Union generals from Ohio, so the modern Republican Party has bumped up against the statute of limitations on...

Judging by the reaction to Thursday night's CNN debate, everything seems to be falling into place for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for president. After flirting with subjecting her to some scrutiny, the media seem to be coming to the conclusion that her nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate is inevitable. The moderator, Wolf Blitzer, let Hillary off the hook on the issue of illegal immigration while luring Hillary's main competitor, Barack Obama, into a Wolf trap, and he stiffed candidate John Edwards on air time during the debate. It was Hillary's moment to shine, which is what CNN intended....

BARRINGTON, N.H. (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd said Saturday the United States cannot afford to wait for President Bush's successor to end the war in Iraq. "We really can't wait another 18 months," the U.S. senator from Connecticut said while campaigning. "We have to have the convictions to stand up to this president." Dodd said the war has been waged "for all the wrong reasons" and that it is eroding both the nation's security and its moral leadership. For those reasons, he said, it was not difficult for him to vote in the Senate against continued funding...

GREEN OAK TOWNSHIP -- Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney started a two-day campaign swing through Michigan by accusing Democrats of surrendering in the Iraq war. Romney said the United States must defeat the Islamic jihad movement, and that President Bush will do whatever it takes to protect the American people. "When we're dealing with nations of the world, we stand united,'' Romney said Friday night at the Livingston County Lincoln Day Dinner at the Barnstormer Banquet Center on M-36 in Green Oak Township. Romney also was scheduled to speak at GOP events today in Flint, Saginaw and the Lansing area....

Michael Ramirez's latest cartoon commentary on Harry Reid is here.

In an effort to put a stop to Israeli overflights in Lebanon, the French Armed Forces has deployed an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) squadron in southern Lebanon to conduct intelligence-gathering missions in place of the IDF. France, a member of UNIFIL, has expressed adamant opposition to IAF overflights in Lebanon. Last month, OC Planning Division Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan traveled to Paris for meetings with senior military officials during which he tried to explain Israel's operational needs. The flights, the IDF claims, are necessary for gathering intelligence and keeping an eye on the Lebanese-Syrian border through which weapons are smuggled to...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 — Democrats sought on Friday to put their new political power to use in shaping the debate over Iraq, promising stepped-up Congressional oversight of the war and a resolution demanding a schedule for reducing the number of troops there. David Scull for The New York Times President Bush met Friday with the Senate’s incoming majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. After the meeting, Mr. Reid said Democrats will increase the focus on Iraq when they formally take over in January. After two days in which both sides pledged bipartisanship in the aftermath of the Democratic victory in...

Ask people outside the French immigrant community why the Jews are leaving their country, and the usual answer is that they are making aliya to escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. Ask the French olim themselves, however, and the responses become more diverse and complex. Many recent arrivals say in no uncertain terms that it was primarily anti-Semitism that brought them from France to Israel. Others acknowledge that while anti-Semitism has increased in recent years, the phenomenon has been due largely to the intifada and emanates mainly from young Muslim immigrant men, mostly from North Africa and poorly integrated into...

Nicolas Sarkozy is campaigning hard to be the next president of France on the jogging trails of Central Park and in the corridors of the White House. On a four-day trip to the United States, the 51-year-old minister of the interior, France’s leading presidential hopeful on the right, pinned the Legion of Honor on the police commissioner of New York, honored firefighters in Midtown Manhattan for their losses on 9/11 and signed hundreds of copies of his new best-selling book on France’s future. He told Jewish leaders of his love of Israel, American business leaders of his love of free...