Free Republic

The Republicans are once again investigating how al Qaeda won a major victory by destroying the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and killing American Ambassador Chris Stevens. Hopefully, this time they will abandon conspiracy theories and consider the possibility that American stupidity allowed the massacre to occur.

I ran across this heavily edited article at USA Today written by Susan Page.  In it, she reports a new book coming out by a man she describes as having a "33-year career with the CIA."  This man is Michael Morell who praises Barack Obama as "extremely thorough" but claims that Governor Palin had "no understanding of national security issues" back when he claims to have met her in 2008. Everything from the headline to the image Susan Page uses indicates who the USA Today writer was interested in spotlighting.  (Yep, Governor Palin remains the left’s ultimate bogeyman).  Furthermore, when one digs a tad...

A US air strike in Yemen has killed the senior Al-Qaeda official who appeared in a video claiming the deadly January attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, who was killed in the April strike along with his eldest son and other fighters in the port city of Mukalla, also appeared in Al-Qaeda videos claiming the holding and death of US hostage Luke Somers, SITE Intelligence Group said. The announcement of his death came in a video posted on Thursday on Twitter by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - which Washington considers the international terror network's deadliest...

Interior Minister Prince Nayef of Saudi Arabia and his son, Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, have many enemies. For decades, the powerful and unaccountable elder Prince Nayef has “overseen” the Saudi police force; Nayef once boasted that his law enforcement agency solves 100 percent of the kingdom’s annual crimes. Al-Qaeda was quick to take credit for the suicide bombing (according to SITE). After all, it was a major public relations coup. For starters, the royals had been tricked — promised surrender and instead given a Trojan horse. Saudi’s princes pride themselves on having impenetrable personal security systems. Instead,...

...Any serious evaluation of the war on terror must gauge the balance of power between the U.S. and its enemies, not the level of American popularity with the Arab public. It is a fatal miscalculation to treat the war as a zero-sum game, with every mistake by the Bush administration somehow translating into a victory for Osama bin Laden. In order to win the war, America need not be popular. In fact, it can afford to be hated. What it cannot tolerate is a global balance of power that favors al Qaeda, kindred groups, and rogue regimes that might be...

Betrayal: Another Obama amnesty program is well underway — at Guantanamo, where three dangerous al-Qaida operatives have quietly been OK´d for release in three months. And now a close aide to the 9/11 mastermind is also on tap for release. After already freeing an al-Qaida bomb maker last month — over the objections of U.S. intelligence, which warned, "He would be capable of re-engaging as an explosives expert or trainer" — the parole board that Obama set up to clear out Gitmo is now poised to rubber-stamp for release a close associate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Gitmo´s so-called Periodic Review

Italian police raided several locations today throughout the country, arresting eighteen people in an effort to shut down a “very well-structured” al-Qaeda finance and operations network. The ring had targeted the Vatican in 2010 and again just recently, and had also worked to raise money through human-trafficking operations. Even with that, though, the ring predates the post-Qaddafi surge in refugees, and was comprised mainly of Pakistanis, not North Africans.Two of the men arrested had worked at one time as bodyguards for Osama bin Laden: NBC News has video of the raids:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Mario Carta said counterterrorism...

Every American should join President Obama in his expression of condolences to the families of two hostages killed in January during a counterterrorism operation in Pakistan. Our prayers properly go to the loved ones of American doctor Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni LoPorto. But no one should sign on to the painful exercise of hand-wringing self-flagellation that the President felt compelled to attach in his Thursday morning revelation of the details. For about sixty seconds, his remarks looked like a rare example of an occasion free of political agendas. Even as he mused about the families’ pain “as...

Adam Gadahn, the Al-Qaeda spokesman believed killed in a US operation, was a teenage rock music fan who grew up on a Californian goat farm before he was drawn into radical Islam. The White House announced Thursday that US intelligence thinks Gadahn died in January in a "counterterrorism operation" in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. The 36-year-old was apparently not deliberately targeted in the raid, but he has long been one of the most wanted jihadist figures on the US hit list, with a $1 million bounty on his head. As an English speaker and senior Al-Qaeda propagandist, he was one...

Heartbreaking news, and a demonstration of the limit of remote-control warfare. The US drone program in Pakistan inadvertently killed two Western hostages being held by al-Qaeda, including an American whose family had repeatedly appealed for his release based on his age and health: A U.S. drone strike in January targeting a suspected al Qaeda compound in Pakistan inadvertently killed an American and Italian being held hostage by the group, senior Obama administration officials said.The killing of American development expert Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto is the first known instance in which the U.S. has accidentally...

Dr. Warren Weinstein, an American aid worker held hostage by al Qaeda, was accidentally killed in a U.S. counter-terrorism operation, as was an Italian hostage, Giovanni Lo Porto, and another American who was an al Qaeda leader, the White House announced on Thursday. Officials also announced that a separate operation killed Adam Gadahn, another American who became a prominent al Qaeda member. The White House said it was unaware the four were present at the sites. President Obama was set to make a statement after 10 a.m. ET. "The operation targeted an al-Qa'ida-associated compound, where we had no reason to...

American hostage Warren Weinstein says in a video released late Sunday by al Qaeda that he will be killed unless U.S. President Barack Obama agrees to the militant group's demands. "My life is in your hands, Mr. President," Mr. Weinstein said in the video. "If you accept the demands, I live; if you don't accept the demands, then I die."

ISLAMABAD — A 72-year-old American development worker who was kidnapped in Pakistan by al-Qaeda more than two years ago appealed to President Obama in a video released Thursday to negotiate his release, saying he feels “totally abandoned and forgotten.” The video of Warren Weinstein was the first since two videos released in September 2012. Weinstein, the country director in Pakistan for J.E. Austin Associates, a U.S.-based firm that advises a range of Pakistani business and government sectors, was abducted from his house in the eastern city of Lahore in August 2011. **SNIP** “Nine years ago I came to Pakistan to...

According to a report by al-Jazeera, several American generals are skeptical that Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen will succeed.  A “senior commander at CENTCOM” claimed the Saudis did not keep the operation secret from American authorities because they feared the Obama Administration inform Iran, but rather because the Saudis feared the Pentagon would dismiss their battle plan as a “bad idea” and try to talk them out of it. “Military sources said that a number of regional special forces officers and officers at U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) argued strenuously against supporting the Saudi-led intervention because the target of the intervention, the Shia...

There are few elected officials in the United States that are further to the left than Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Although technically listed as an Independent, he caucuses with the Democrats and his failure to register as one of them is due to the fact that even they are not socialist enough for him. That said, unlike sycophantic and pandering Democrats, he is true to his beliefs (misguided as they may be) and takes his stance based on his desire to help people live a better life. Due to this honesty and transparency, even this right of center news outlet...

Senior Republican Sen. John McCain blasted Pentagon officials on Friday for dramatically downplaying the role of Ramadi as the key Iraqi city stood on the brink of being taken over by ISIS. "Disregarding the strategic importance of Ramadi is a denial of reality and an insult to the families of hundreds of brave young Americans who were killed and wounded during the Surge fighting to free Ramadi from the grip of Al-Qaeda," McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a written statement released by his office, which was later joined onto by Repbulican Sen. Lindsey Graham. McCain,...

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Military officials and residents say al-Qaida has taken control of a major airport, a sea port and an oil terminal in southern Yemen after brief clashes with troops. The officials said al-Qaida fighters clashed Thursday with members of one of Yemen’s largest infantry brigades outside Mukalla, a city the militants overran earlier this month. The officials, speaking from Sanaa on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press, said the leaders of the brigade fled.

The Islamic State’s lightning offensive through Iraq and Syria last year has dominated the headlines, but the jihadist group that has won the most territory in the Arab world over the past six months is Al Qaeda. On balance, the Islamic State has lost territory during this period—though it still controls more overall than Al Qaeda—most prominently, Tikrit and the southern half of the Salah al-Din province. What we are likely to see now is a titanic war of ideology and tactics between two vicious, radical groups that together probably command more prestige among Arab peoples than the weak, often...

At the Summit of the Americas where he met with Raul Castro, the 83-year-old younger brother of Fidel, President Obama provided an insight into where he is taking us, and why: "The United States will not be imprisoned by the past -- we're looking to the future. I'm not interested in having battles that frankly started before I was born." Obama was not yet born when Fidel rolled into Havana, Jan. 1, 1959. He was 1 year old during the missile crisis. His mother belonged to a 1960s generation that welcomed the Cuban Revolution. His father came from an African...

ADEN, Yemen, April 13 (Xinhua) -- At least 15 were killed and 10 others wounded as army troops loyal to the Shiite Houthi group were hit by bombs in Yemen's southern province of Lahj on Monday evening, a government official told Xinhua. "Suspected al-Qaida terrorists planted explosive device on a bicycle and the device exploded at a military site manned by pro-Houthi forces in Houta city, Lahj's provincial capital, killing 15 soldiers and injuring 10 others including five civilians," the local government official based in Lahj said on condition of anonymity. A military intelligence source in Lahj confirmed to Xinhua...