Free Republic

It’s a sad day for the United States when the president of any other country, but especially Russia, can outmaneuver our president and successfully claim the moral high ground on anything. But that’s exactly what happened thanks to President Obama's feckless “foreign policy by gaffe” – if you can even it call it policy – toward Syria in recent weeks. But in the course of seizing that high ground, Vladimir Putin got a couple of things wrong. He wrote a column in The New York Times Wednesday that concluded, “My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by...

Give to President Putin the Nobel Peace Prize Mr. Obama was given in 2009. Whereas Mr. Obama made a sincere commitment to starting a war with Syria, engaging our military in unwanted conflict, and doing so without the support of his people we resolve that Mr. Obama should deliver the Nobel Peace prize given to him in 2009 to a man of Peace, the President of Russia, Mr. Putin. Where as Mr. Putin enabled the United States to avoid an unwanted and unwarranted military action he has brought us to the "brink" of peace.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Vice President Joe Biden is heading into the belly of Democrats' anti-war opposition, venturing into a politically influential heartland state for the first time since President Barack Obama publicly endorsed a possible military strike on Syria. Biden is scheduled to headline a fundraiser in Iowa Sunday for Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, an annual steak picnic for the senator who is popular with anti-war Democrats. Even if Biden sidesteps talk of Syria, the issue will be as much a part of the backdrop as the bales of hay and smoke from the grilling steaks, and in a...

As if it didn’t have enough problems on its hands, the U.S. now finds itself in a debate over one of the unchallenged notions of U.S. national consciousness. The argument was set off by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who clearly knows what buttons to press to quickly get Americans riled up. Button number one is American “exceptionalism, the notion that the U.S., based on its values and history, occupies a unique place in the world.

Al-Qaida's leader on Friday marked the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by calling on Muslims to strike inside the United States, with big attacks or small, using any opportunity they can to "bleed" America financially. In an audio message released two days after the 12th anniversary of the attacks, Ayman al-Zawahri said America is not a "mythic power" and that the mujahedeen - Islamic holy warriors - can defeat it with attacks "on its own soil." Al-Zawahri, the successor to Osama bin Laden, used the anniversary to argue that the United States can be defeated by targeting its...

Lebanese daily says 20 trucks crossed into Iraq last week, bearing equipment and material used for manufacturing chemical weapons. Syria has moved 20 trucks worth of equipment and material used for the manufacturing of chemical weapons into neighboring Iraq, the Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal reported on Sunday. The newspaper reported that the trucks crossed the boundary separating Syria with Iraq over the course of Thursday and Friday. Border guards did not inspect the contents of the trucks, which raises suspicions that they contained illicit cargo, according to Al-Mustaqbal.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials say the CIA has been delivering light machine guns and other small arms to Syrian rebels for several weeks, following President Barack Obama’s decision to arm the rebels. The agency has also arranged for the Syrian opposition to receive anti-tank weaponry like rocket-propelled grenades through a third party, presumably one of the Gulf countries that has been arming the rebels, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official and two former intelligence officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the classified program publicly.

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has told the Islamist militants who are some of Syria's toughest opposition forces to avoid alliances with other rebel fighters backed by Gulf Arab states and the West. His comment reflects a deepening rift between groups of the Western- and Arab-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) and guerrillas sympathetic to Zawahri's ultra hardline network, which seeks to wage a transnational armed campaign against the West

AMERICA’S WAR-HORSE HARLOTSStoop, Romans, Stoop,And let us bathe our hands in Caesar's bloodUp to the elbows, and besmear our swords;Then walk we forth, even to the market-place,And waving our red weapons o'er our heads,Let's all cry, "Peace, freedom, and liberty !"                            Julius Caesar, Act III, i According to experts if you really, really want to get rid of a neighbor—“bump off” is the professional term—call the mafia. But if you’re a down-at-the-heels fast fading super power, broke and bewildered, and need to continue the Arab Spring fairy tale about having the Arabs choose America-friendly democracies that sprout like orange groves throughout the Middle...

China doesn’t have the same record of killing foreign enemies overseas that Russia does. But it has a large enough overseas network and piles of cash that it could get the job done if it needed to. Just ask Naw Kham what happened after the Mekong River Massacre. The bodies of the Chinese, the crew of two cargo boats, were found badly mutilated on the Thai side of the river in early October 2011. The killings, the worst slaughter of Chinese citizens abroad in recent memory, angered the Chinese public. Chinese investigators insist that Mr. Naw Kham was the mastermind...

The first eight-plus months of 2013 have convinced us of one thing: Rand Paul acts and the rest of the potential 2016 Republican presidential field reacts. On drones, Paul led a 13-hour-long filibuster that drew Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (among others) to the floor in support. On Syria, Paul was out front in his opposition to a military strike — a position that 30 of his Senate Republican colleagues shared as of this writing. Those 30 include both Rubio,who voted against the use-of-force resolution in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. ... Below are our rankings...

President Obama has now sabotaged four decades of stability in the Middle East. First he pulled down the biggest pillar of peace, the Mubarak regime in Egypt; then he bombed Libya into the Dark Ages; and now he has paraded "My Army" and "My Navy" against the Assad regime in Syria, which is just as evil as the rebels. The one thing Obama has never faced honestly is what everybody knows to be the real threat -- namely mullahs with nukes. In the strangest twist of history, it is Obama the radical leftist who is now acting as the destabilizing...

Two Republican senators who are among President Barack Obama's sharpest foreign policy critics on Saturday blasted a Syrian chemical weapons agreement as "an act of provocative weakness" by America that will embolden enemies such as Iran as it continues its push for a nuclear weapon. The House Democratic leader said the deal, under which Syria will be expected to put its stockpile of chemical weapons under international control before they ultimately are destroyed, represented "significant progress" in efforts by the U.S. to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction. "What concerns us most is that our friends and enemies...

For his final New Rule of the night, Bill Maher returned to Syria and this week’s 12th anniversary of 9/11. With the country on the verge of bombing another Muslim country, Maher said, “America must stop asking, ‘Why do they hate us?’” “We’re starting to look not so much like the world’s policeman, but more like George Zimmerman,” he explained. “Itching to use force and then pretending it’s because we had no choice.” As much as he hates chemical weapons, Maher said, “We have to stop bombing Muslim countries if we ever want to feel safe from terrorism in our...

Elizabeth O’Bagy, a pro-Syrian opposition analyst whose credibility has come under fire, might have even more explaining to do – as court documents show she once vouched for a rebel group whose website displayed extremist and anti-American images. Among the pictures was one showing a burning U.S. Capitol. O’Bagy was fired earlier this week by the Institute for the Study of War for allegedly lying about her academic credentials. Her writings had been used by U.S. officials to bolster their case for military action against the Assad regime. O’Bagy discussed the rebel group in question in a June 19, 2013...

On the Kuhner Report yesterday, Walid Shoebat told of he is now being harassed and spied upon by the Obama administration over the work he has done uncovering Obama’s familial Islamist ties, especially his brother Malik Obama who is a supporter of terrorism. Shoebat said his phone is being tapped so they can listen into his house even when he is not on the phone. He said he has received harassing phone calls over and over and that a pre-taped, un-aired phone interview he had just recorded was played back to him on his phone just after he had finished...

ore than 5,400 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began in March. The number of dead in Homs alone is now over over 200 and climbing. The Assad regime says terrorists acting out a foreign conspiracy to destabilize the country are behind the uprising, not people seeking to transform the authoritarian regime. He’s right, it was Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood that claimed responsibility in December 2011 for two suicide bombings in Damascus that killed 44 people. Yet, you have Israeli politicians like Moshe (Boge) Ya’alon telling Army Radio that the end of Assad’s regime could bring ‘relatively moderate’...

U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today released the following statement on the U.S.-Russian agreement on Syria: “What concerns us most is that our friends and enemies will take the same lessons from this agreement – they see it as an act of provocative weakness on America's part. We cannot imagine a worse signal to send to Iran as it continues its push for a nuclear weapon. “Without a U.N. Security Council Resolution under Chapter 7 authority, which threatens the use of force for non-compliance by the Assad regime, this framework agreement is meaningless. Assad will use...

Leading Kuwaiti newspaper Alrai has reported that the U.S. administration will demand that any agreement made with Syria should commit President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, and commit the remaining parties to working towards a cease-fire agreement. Reportedly, the new U.S. demand has been met with fury in Syria, where regime officials claim such a move would ride roughshod over the "democratic rights" of the Syrian people to elect their own leader. Sources close to the Syrian President were quoted as saying: "Not Iran, Russia and not the United State can decide who the Syrian President will be, " adding,...

Elizabeth O'Bagy, who was paid by the British and US government to provide propaganda favorable to the Islamists fighting in Syria has apparently committed perjury in the trial of American Eric Harroun, who was accused of fighting alongside al-Nusra in Syria., an Al Qaeda linked group. O'Bagy submitted an affidavit that his group was not Islamist.Until recently, their web site included a picture of the US Capitol in flames. Click here to see affidavit.