Free Republic

Fifteen years after NATO’s 78-day bombardment of Yugoslavia, memories of the bombing still haunt present-day Serbia. NATO killed over 2,000 people, hundreds were civilians, 88 were children. Serbs ask ‘why?’ above all. Why did NATO smash their cities, kill their children, bomb hospitals and schools? When the NATO bomb campaign began (on March 24th 1999) Jelena Milincic was a student at the University of Belgrade, and just 18 years old. When the first bombs shook Belgrade she cowered under a table with her mother, sister, and best friend. Remembering this 15 years later, they laugh nervously. Jelena takes Anissa Naouai...

Oh, now they’ve done it. They picked on the wrong people this time. The C.I.A. has apparently been spying on Congress. I know. Who would have seen that coming? Spies spying on people? That’s like lawyers legislating or something. Oh wait…. So, Congress is really, really mad at the C.I.A. now. According to a story by the New York Times, the C.I.A. snooped on Senate staffers in order to find out how the Senate got internal C.I.A. documents, some of which were critical of “agency’s detention and interrogation program. Parts of the C.I.A. report cast a particularly harsh light...

BOSTON (AP) — Lawyers for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev say a remark he made to his sister during a prison visit was meant to be funny and wasn't incriminating, as prosecutors have suggested. In court documents filed Wednesday, Tsarnaev's lawyers responded to a claim by prosecutors that Tsarnaev made a remark "to his detriment" while his sister was visiting him. The remark was overheard by an FBI agent who was in the room monitoring the visit because of special prison restrictions placed on Tsarnaev. Neither side has revealed what Tsarnaev said, but are arguing over whether to lift...

An explosion tore through a bus carrying South Korean Christian tourists from Sinai to the Israeli border on Sunday, killing four people and wounding around 15. Excerpt per Reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's federal Anti-Terrorist Committee said on Friday it had detained six men suspected in a bombing in the southern city of Pyatigorsk last month that killed three people and added to security fears in the run-up to the Winter Olympics. Russia is on security alert only weeks before it opens the 2014 Winter Games on February 7 in the southern Black Sea resort of Sochi, some 270 km (170 miles) west of Pyatigorsk where the car bomb went off...

Lynne Stewart, who was convicted of smuggling messages from Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (“the Blind Sheikh” who masterminded the bombing of the World Trade Center) to his terrorist followers in Egypt, has been released early from prison thanks to the Obama administration. She was released on grounds of “compassion” because she is terminally ill. District Judge John Koeltl ordered the release based on a request from the director of the Bureau of Prisons through the office of U.S. Attorney. Judge Koeltl previously had denied Stewart’s request for release because it was not supported by the Bureau of Prisons. In other...

Federal officials say they've arrested a Kansas man who allegedly wanted to set off a suicide bomb at the Wichita airport. Officials were to announce details of the case at a news conference at 2 p.m. ET in Wichita. In advance of the news conference, an official familiar with the case told NBC News that the suspect was "an older white man," who became radicalized after reading extremist Islamic material on the web.

Blasts target Iranian embassy in Beirut, killing 23 By Laila Bassam and Erika Solomon BEIRUT Tue Nov 19, 2013 6:29am EST (Reuters) - Two explosions, at least one caused by a suicide bomber, rocked Iran's embassy in Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 23 people, including an Iranian cultural attaché, and hurling bodies, cars and debris across the street. A Lebanese-based al Qaeda-linked group known as the Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for what it described as a double suicide attack on the Iranian mission in southern Beirut. Lebanon has suffered a series of bomb attacks and clashes linked to...

A small bomb consisting of a camping gas cylinder combined with gunpowder exploded in Zaragoza Basilica in Spain on Wednesday afternoon. No one was injured and left-wing anarchists against the Bourbon monarchy are being blamed. The bomb exploded in the central area of the Zaragoza Basilica of our Lady of the PIllar (Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragoza) at around 13:50 local time. There were no injuries and no damage to the Baroque church was reported. Spanish news agency Efe is reporting that police suspect left-wing anarchists in the placing of the home-made device. Reportedly the bomb bore...

A car bomb tore through a centuries-old market in Peshawar on Sunday, killing at least three dozen people in the third major attack on the city in a week. With the death toll expected to rise, at least 100 people were also injured in the midday explosion at Qissa Khawani Bazaar, known as the market for “story tellers.” The market in Peshawar’s “old city” is located not far from All Saints Church, where 85 people were killed a week ago in what is believed to be the worst attack on Christians in Pakistan’s history. That attack was followed by a...

A suicide bomb attack on a historic church in northwestern Pakistan killed at least 52 people and wounded over 100 Sunday, officials said, in one of the worst assaults on the country's Christian minority in years. The bombing underlines the threat posed by Islamic extremists as the government seeks a peace deal with domestic Taliban militants. It occurred as worshipers were coming out of the church in Peshawar city after services ...

Federal Judge Orders Trial Against F.B.I.

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 2 Cor 10:3 Never let a good crisis go to waste, even if you caused it yourself. We are now witnessing the results of Leading From Your Behind in Syria. This story is not about Syria and some questionable chemical attack or whether one side is worse than another, it is about our criminal mismanagement of our energy resources. Sure we are seeing how ill equipped Obomber is on the world stage when he has to actually lead, but more than anything it underscores...

... Obama's hopes of winning congressional approval for a U.S. military strike on Syria could come down to the persuasion skills of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal who was a leading critic of the war in Iraq. With a nod to the historical irony, she is arguing to her Democratic colleagues that Syria is different from the earlier conflict. She spoke passionately in an interview about the "human rights catastrophe" in Syria, saying a "limited, targeted" attack "that will be over fast" could prevent the future use of weapons of mass destruction. And she called on...

President Obama has released the text of the resolution he will send to Congress, asking them to rubber stamp his already-made decision to bomb Syria. The full text of the resolution is below, but here are the key paragraphs:

With a mere 9% of voters cool with a US attack on Syria... are we going to just stand back and allow Obama to bamboozle the House into a politically-driven war than does nothing to serve the security interests of the United States? An ill-advised adventure -launching the Democrats' 2014 House campaigns with a bang- where we would in-effect become Al Qaeda's air arm?  Thanks- but I think I'll pass And if other patriots feel the same way, they can do what I'm doing right now- call their congresscritter before he goes wobbly on ya. The Obama regime is already...

Let me see if I've got this right. President Barack Obama has decided the Syria government has used unacceptable means of killing Syrians so Obama is considering demonstrating the acceptable way of killing Syrians by using conventional weapons to kill Syrians. The fact that Obama is even considering such an action raises doubts about his sanity. Killing residents of a country because the country's government used chemical weapons to attack another country might be acceptable. However, the United States cannot justify punishing residents of a country because its government has mistreated them. Such an action would compound the original injury....

Was Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, the much-discussed Saudi national once identified as a “person of interest” in the Boston Marathon bombings, at the White House for a 4th of July celebration for military heros and their families?

Chechen lawyer Dagir Khasavov fled Russia after receiving death threats following his calls for Sharia law to be introduced in the country. The Russian Political Immigrants society announced on Friday that he swiftly left the country, BBC reported. The lawyer left for “a European country” after receiving threats. His son, Arlsan Khasavov, wrote in his blog that his father was provoked, possibly by Chechen authorities, to make him a “ritual sacrifice” before the inauguration. Khasanov gave an interview to Ren TV on April 24, where he said that Muslims in Russia do not want to go to secular courts and...

Dead Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and another man — who was killed by the FBI on Wednesday — murdered three people in Massachusetts after a drug deal went wrong in 2011, law enforcement sources tell NBC News. Sources say that what began as a drug ripoff ended in a triple homicide when Tsarnaev and friend Ibragim Todashev realized their victims would later be able to identify them. Todashev was killed by a federal agent while giving a statement on his role on Wednesday in Orlando, Fla. The man who was shot, Todashev, 27, allegedly attacked an agent with a...