Free Republic

Soon after the military police came looking for the 25-year-old computer engineer at his family's home, he fled Syria. He bribed a security officer to briefly remove his name from the list of men wanted for mandatory military service and paid a taxi driver $1,000 to drive him across the border into Lebanon. Like many young men living in government-controlled parts of Syria, he had been putting off conscription by paying $2,000 a year, hoping to avoid becoming cannon fodder for a military that has been hemorrhaging soldiers, either by death or defection, after more than four years of war......

They have plotted deadly missions from secret bases in the badlands of Somalia. In Afghanistan, they have engaged in combat so intimate that they have emerged soaked in blood that was not their own. On clandestine raids in the dead of the night, their weapons of choice have ranged from customized carbines to primeval tomahawks. Around the world, they have run spying stations disguised as commercial boats, posed as civilian employees of front companies and operated undercover at embassies as male-female pairs, tracking those the United States wants to kill or capture. Those operations are part of the hidden history...

President Obama's stunning declaration that the global image of the United States has greatly improved under his administration is another example of his ideology and narcissism's blinding him to his many policy failures. During a White House event with the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, he managed to turn the subject to himself, saying, "People don't remember -- when I came into office, the United States in world opinion ranked below China and just barely above Russia. And today, once again, the United States is the most respected country on earth." As evidence, the White House cited a Gallup poll,...

Iran has sent 15,000 fighters to Syria to reverse recent battlefield setbacks for Syrian government troops and wants to achieve results by the end of the month, a Lebanese political source has told The Daily Star. The militia force, made up of Iranians, Iraqis and Afghanis, the source said, have arrived in the Damascus region and in the coastal province of Latakia. The source said the fighters are expected to spearhead an effort to seize areas of Idlib province, where the regime has suffered a string of defeats at the hands of a rebel-jihadi coalition. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander...

U.S. Army soldier Austin Arledge was supposed to return from Afghanistan in August but decided to arrive early and keep it a surprise from his mom. Austin snuck around from a neighbor's house and ducked on the side of the house waiting to for his mom to come outside. Someone ran into the house and asked her to come outside and she was shocked beyond belief to see her son standing there and immediately began crying and screaming.

UNITED NATIONS - The United States has by far the largest number of publicly owned firearms in the world and is approaching the point where there is one gun for every American, according to the Small Arms Survey 2003 released Tuesday. But in surprise findings, the survey found that Europeans are more heavily armed than commonly believed while there are far fewer small arms in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and sub-Saharan Africa than previously estimated. According to the independent survey, the crackdown on terrorism after Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States "had little effect on the size...

Iran is offering thousands of dollars to Shia mercenaries from Afghanistan and Pakistan to join the fight to keep President Assad of Syria in power. According to Shia community leaders in Kabul, the recruitment drive is co-ordinated by the Iranian embassy in the Afghan capital. It provides visas to “hundreds” of Shia men each month willing to fight in Syria. Online Urdu- language recruitment is also taking place in Pakistan, with fighters offered $3,000 each to join up.

Kristen Martin recalls her time as an intern for Bernie Sanders, in a contribution to the left's discussion of Sanders' campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.TO THOSE who have spent any significant amount of time in Vermont, it is clear that Bernie Sanders is widely beloved by his constituents. The support for "Bernie," as his supporters fondly call him, was clear on May 26 as thousands flocked to Sanders' presidential campaign kickoff rally on the edge of Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont. The "People's Assembly," organized by a group including former Occupy Wall Street activists and environmentalists, spoke to a...

Photographs of British visitors to Kos walking, eyes averted, past asylum seekers who recently staggered off overloaded dinghies, have gone around the world, along with quotes underlining the revulsion felt by both tourists and sympathetic British journalists for the kind of “riff-raff” happy to ruin another person’s package holiday. “The harbourside has become an unofficial washing line, with clothes and grubby looking-scarves laid out along the shoreline”, according to the Daily Mail. Given the trouble that the holidaying British have traditionally taken, since Byron’s day, to embrace the local culture, perhaps their dismay is understandable. Maybe, if the migrants were...

<p>Come Monday, the five senior Taliban officials sprung from Guantanamo in the trade for accused Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl, could all be walking free.</p> <p>Free to rejoin their terrorist comrades in jihad against America — as at least three of them reportedly have already tried to do.</p>

As election fever sweeps the most socially conservative regions of Pakistan ahead of this weekend’s local government polls, one crucial group is feeling excluded. Following deals between local politicians and elders, women will have no say in the district and village council contests. The Guardian reports that the affected districts sit in the north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), sitting on the border with Afghanistan. In marginally less conservative

According to a new report from Fox News' Catherine Herridge, teammates of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements years ago after discussing his desertion with the Joint Chiefs Chairman in Afghanistan. According to Herridge's reporting and General Bob Scales, asking soldiers to sign non-disclosure agreements is unprecedented. "I can't remember, ever, have an enlisted soldier sign a non-disclosure agreement for anything. This is completely unprecedented," Scales said. "These non-disclosure agreements have got nothing to do with military justice." Further, new information shows Bergdahl not only deserted, but started planning for his departure by sleeping on the...

[1]This isn’t really news. It’s just a reminder that the air strikes on ISIS are being run in the same disastrous fashion as those in Afghanistan. And it didn’t begin with Obama. Lest we forget, on the day before 9/11, Bill Clinton was boasting that he had let Osama bin Laden go to avoid collateral damage.Obama Inc. talks about how the Iraqis don’t want to fight. It neglects to mention that it isn’t letting the military fight [2]. U.S. military pilots carrying out the air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are voicing growing discontent over...

<p>Summer break a 'nightmare' for British holidaymakers, who 'won’t be coming back if it's a refugee camp next year'</p> <p>Boat people from Syria and Afghanistan and British holidaymakers have clashed on Kos – as migrants have turned the Greek island, popular with cheap package deals, into a 'disgusting' hellhole. As families – enjoying some summer sun with their kids during the half term break – relax on sun loungers on the beach, just a yards away scores of migrants have set up camp, sleeping on cardboard boxes with rubbish strewn everywhere. Anne Servante, a nurse from Manchester, had come to Kos expecting a relaxing break with her husband Tony, a retired plumber. Instead her summer break has turned into a nightmare as penniless migrants who are in Greece to claim asylum sit outside their restaurant and watch them eat.</p>

Foreign fighters who claim allegiance to Islamic State are gathering dozens of recruits in eastern Afghanistan, luring would-be jihadis with generous resources and the group’s powerful brand, according to a Taliban fighter who has met several of their commanders. The rapid and dramatic victories clocked up by Isis in Iraq, Syria and Libya have attracted some young men with specific grievances against government or foreign forces, who simply want the strongest possible allies. Others seem drawn by the novelty of an upstart force, the Taliban veteran said, or by the apparently deep pockets of a group that boasts laptops, benevolent...

It didn’t take long for a return salvo to be fired over Rand Paul’s contention this morning that Republican hawks “created” ISIS. Bobby Jindal blasted Paul as “unsuited to be Commander in Chief,” accusing him of “taking the “weakest Democratic position” while Americans are fighting ISIS. Jindal slammed Paul as a superficial, “cocktail party” thinker, and that the real origin of ISIS is the metastasizing cancer of radical Islam: “This is a perfect example of why Senator Paul is unsuited to be Commander-in-Chief,” Jindal said in a statement. “We have men and women in the military who are in...

BRITAIN'S top soldier spoke out against the government's handling of the campaign in Iraq because he feared Britain was being "held hostage" by US policy in the region, friends claimed last night. General Sir Richard Dannatt sparked a furious row over Tony Blair's foreign policy last week when he warned that British troops should leave Iraq soon because they were "exacerbating the security problems" there. Allies of Sir Richard last night claimed he had been expressing deep concerns shared by colleagues in the highest ranks of the military - and that the real target of his attack was Washington, not...

Johnny Michael Spann 1969-2001 Never Forgive, Never Forget... RIP

Many of his foreign fighters come from Afghanistan -- men like Murad, who is now being held in Aleppo as a prisoner-of-war... All he had wanted was an Iranian residence permit, he says... he found himself fighting as a mercenary in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Bashar Assad regime... When a violent explosion caused the house he was in to collapse, he found himself thinking about his daughters, he says. "I screamed and thought I was suffocating. And then, everything around me was quiet." Men arrived and pulled Murad, who was still screaming, out of the...

This video is a moving tribute to honor an outstanding young Marine Officer by his father, Dr. Bill Kristoff. At the age of 61, Dr. Bill Kristoff of Truckee, CA joined the U.S. Navy Medical Corps in order to honor the memory of his oldest son by serving as a surgeon in Afghanistan to treat wounded Marines. While doing some further research on this amazing family, I found this: The outdoor activities were a joy shared by Nathan, his father, and his younger brother, Austin, 24, who joined the Marines shortly before Nathan died.The family kept word of Nathan's death...