Free Republic

Will the case of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl — who was captured by the Taliban in 2009 and released in a prisoner exchange last summer — go to court-martial on a charge of desertion? That was the subject of this column last week, and I’ve heard some interesting comments since. Most notably, I spoke with Greg Rinckey, a former Army captain and judge advocate general officer. “It would surprise me if it was referred to a court-martial,” Rinckey said of Bergdahl’s case. First off, Rinckey pointed out, the White House and the military have put forth a lot of effort...

A U.S.-funded power plant and fueling station at an Afghan military complex in Kabul were barely functioning nearly two years after contractors finished building them, a watchdog report said. Another U.S.-backed project, a dining hall for soldiers at the Afghan National Army’s Camp Commando, was serving more than five times the number of people it was built to handle. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction encountered difficulty in inspecting the three facilities due to lost records that would have shown when they were tested and commissioned in its report on the camp. Together, the power plant, fueling station and...

Fifty-five U.S. servicemen were killed in Afghanistan in 2014, bringing the total number of American fatalities in the 13-year war to 2,232, according to a CNSNews.com database. Of those 2,232 deaths, 1,663—74.5 percent—occurred since President Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009. The deadliest years for U.S. personnel were 2010, when 495 were killed; 2011, when there were 404 casualties; and 2009 when the death toll was 306. Those three years combined accounted for more than half, or 54 percent, of the total U.S. casualties in the war. In 2014, 42 fatalities (76.4 percent) were combat related, attributed to small...

The Big Lie principle, as elaborated by Hitler and Goebbels, is that if you tell a small lie, you’ll be caught on it, but if you tell a really big, even outrageous whopper, people will tend to believe it. It’s an insight into human psychology which helps explain how those two second-stringers wound up seizing the levers of the most advanced nation in 20th Century Europe and running it into the ground, to the detriment of scores of millions worldwide. But right now, it’s making the rounds in our little world, as hired shills for foreign manufacturers lie about one...

In the latest of many scandals involving U.S. aid for Afghan social issues, tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars have been wasted on programs to supposedly assist women in the Islamic country escape repression yet we have no idea if it’s made a difference because there’s no accountability or follow up. During a two-year period from 2011 to 2013 the U.S. blew $64.8 million on 652 projects, programs and initiatives to support Afghan women though details of how the money was spent and the effectiveness of the costly experiments aren’t available, according to a federal audit. The cash flowed...

Ancient Buddhist sculptures have been found in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province during an excavation work, a media report said Saturday. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa archaeology and museum director Abdul Samad said the sculptures and heads, dating back to second to fifth century BC, had been discovered during excavation at Bhamala Buddhist Complex in Haripur district, Dawn online reported. He said during excavation, precious coins of Kushana period were also found around the stupa. The official said the Bhamala archaeological site had been declared national and world heritage site located near Khanpur dam, located on the Haro river. "The ruins are situated near...

Thousands of American lives squandered as the Radical-in-Chief oversees the triumph of the enemy. On Christmas Day at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, followed by a White House press release on Dec. 28, President Obama announced the end of the war in Afghanistan. “We’ve been in continuous war now for almost thirteen years—over 13 years,” he said, “and next week we will be ending our combat mission in Afghanistan. Obviously, because of the extraordinary service of the men and women in the American armed forces, Afghanistan has a chance to rebuild its own country. We are safer. It’s not going to...

Bush originally announced that the invasion of Afghanistan was intended primarily “to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations.” He argued that “[b]y destroying camps and disrupting communications, we will make it more difficult for the terror network to train new recruits and coordinate their evil plans.” For a time, that worked, but America's interest in Afghanistan all but disappeared in 2014 with the rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and its spin-offs need no longer depend upon sympathetic regimes such as the Taliban for safe harbor. They now...

"We, at no point in time, have imposed our will against the Taliban. We have not vanquished the enemy from the battlefield," former U.S. Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) told Fox News Monday night. West, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was deployed to Afghanistan, spoke to Fox News Monday night, one day after the 13-year war in Afghanistan came to a formal end. The war may be over, but the fighting hasn't stopped. Four Afghan soliders were killed while repelling a Taliban attack on an army checkpoint in southern Helmand Province late Sunday, the Associated Press reported. Afghan government forces...

... The U.S.-led coalition invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the Taliban and stayed on, in part, to build a western-style democracy, including legal safeguards for women. A quota was mandated for women in public offices, such as parliament and provincial councils. Earlier this year, however, conservative lawmakers rolled back the quota reserved for women in provincial councils to 20 per cent from 25 per cent. Last Sunday marked the formal end to the international combat mission in Afghanistan. And while huge progress has been made getting millions of girls in school and putting women in positions of formal authority,...

On the weekend, The New York Times ran an interesting story about how U.S. Army Major General Michael Nagata, the commander of our Special Operations Forces (SOF) in the Middle East, has been reaching out to experts far beyond the Pentagon, the Intelligence Community (IC), and the U.S. Government altogether, to better understand what drives the Islamic State. Since that war is clearly not going very well, and MG Nagata’s elite forces form the point of the spear there, listening to alternative voices is always commendable. As NYT noted: Business professors, for example, are examining the Islamic State’s marketing and...

Since June, the U.S. military has been slowly stockpiling massive amounts of its gear coming out of Afghanistan at a depot in Kuwait adjacent to a bustling commercial port, in preparation for ultimately shipping it across the border into Iraq for an allied offensive against the Islamic State group, US News reports. Air Force Maj. Gen. Rowayne “Wayne” Schatz admitted, "from June to December, we’ve worked a lot on moving items into Kuwait," including 3,100 vehicles, most of them MRAPs. While the military stands by President Barack Obama’s repeated pledge that he will not put U.S. combat forces on the...

President Barack Obama says the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion. Obama is welcoming the end of U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan. The war came to a formal end Sunday with a ceremony in Kabul.

Several of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s former colleagues claimed that he abandoned his unit and his post on June 30th, 2009 leaving behind his weapon and body armor. Several hundred regular and Special forces troops joined the search for the missing private; a search during which at least six Americans were killed. Six soldiers and possibly more known to have been lost looking for an alleged deserter, but the Pentagon is too cowardly to admit it as the search has often been added to non-related missions. The early cover story of Bergdahl’s disappearance suggested he was captured when he fell behind...

President declares combat missions in Afghanistan are over. Jennifer Griffin reports on Obama's bold prediction [VIDEO]

"We were just going to fire on them when we saw they had no rifles ... in about two minutes the ground between the two lines of trenches was swarming with men and officers of both sides, shaking hands and wishing each other a happy Christmas." British and German soldiers gathered in a dusty field in Afghanistan on Wednesday to play a game of soccer in memory of a Christmas truce spontaneously called between their armies a century ago during World War One. That moment in 1914 - when troops along Europe's Flanders front met after four months killing each...

Seasons greetings from CAAT 1, WPNS CO, 2nd Battalion 2nd Marines. (filmed on site at Alpha 1) (As it pans across the platoon halfway through, please excuse them looking like they're watching a crucifixion; by this point they've heard the song several hundred times :) Merry Christmas! [See the lyrics on the YouTube webpage]

In my view, his presence on these shows alone should disqualify him, but Sarah Palin thinks he’s just wonderful because Sarah Palin doesn’t think. She’s a dummy, and it’s time her blind worshipers woke up to that, but they refuse to awaken from their slumber. Does it not bother her that, as the Sultan points out, Rand Paul compared the U.S. military to Hitler? Hellooooo . . . ? Either Sarah Palin supports Rand Paul’s nutty views against torturing terrorists and siding with Iran against America or she’s just ignorant and uninformed beyond belief. I vote for both, which is...

Iraq’s Grand Mufti accuses IRGC, Iraqi government, Shiite militias of genocide and rape of Sunnis they 'liberated' from ISIS In an explosive TV interview aired last week, Iraq’s Grand Mufti Rafi Al-Rifa’i, the highest Sunni authority in the country, accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Iraqi government, and Iraqi Shiite militias of mass genocidal killings and rape of Sunni men and women from Iraqi towns and villages “liberated” from ISIS (Islamic State). Mufti Al-Rifa’i posed the unanswerable question, “Why should we fight ISIS? So the Iranian IRGC can take over? The same Iranian IRGC that is running operations...

Men repatriated at request of President Ashraf Ghani; camp census now 132. The four Afghan detainees whose release from Guantanamo was announced on Saturday. Clockwise from top right: Abdul Ghani, Khi Ali Gul, Shawali Khan, Mohammed Zahir. Four Afghan detainees have been released from Guantanamo Bay and repatriated at the request of President Ashraf Ghani, the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed Saturday. Shawali Khan, Khi Ali Gul, Abdul Ghani and Mohammed Zahir were flown to Afghanistan after what the Pentagon called a “comprehensive review” of their case. Lawyers for Khan and Ghani said their clients were already back with their...