Free Republic

On Wednesday, Qusair fell to the Bashar Assad regime in Syria. Qusair is a strategic town that connects Damascus with Assad’s Alawite heartland on the Mediterranean, with its ports and Russian naval base. It’s a major strategic shift. Assad’s forces can now advance on rebel-dominated areas in central and northern Syria, including Aleppo. For the rebels, it’s a devastating loss of territory, morale, and their supply corridor to Lebanon. No one knows if this reversal of fortune will be the last, but everyone knows that Assad now has the upper hand. In 1958, President Eisenhower — venerated by today’s fashionable...

Treachery and betrayal were the Administration's response, as the media gives Obama cover. What more does anyone need to know than that Americans are under attack before ordering a military response to suppress the attack and possibly rescue our people? Even if the initial response isn't exactly what you'd want it to be, even if you don't have every asset available that you might in a perfect world, isn't it your duty -- whether you're a lowly second lieutenant or the Secretary of Defense -- to do everything you can as quickly as you can? Of course it is, at...

To fully understand the implications of what happened in Benghazi on September 11th we need to go back to the 1790s — to the beginnings of our nation. At that time, we paid tribute to the Barbary Pirates: corsairs who raided merchant shipping in the Mediterranean. Most nations, including the new United States, paid tribute. We had no navy and no choice. Thomas Jefferson objected to paying the tribute, saying that paying tribute would encourage more attacks. When he was sworn in as president, Jefferson stopped paying tribute. The feeling of the country at the time was summed up in...

If you don’t get torches-and-pitchforks irate about this, you are not an American: The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Specter gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours — enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces...

Donald Trump has a deal for the President: He'll release his tax returns if Obama releases his birth certificate. The billionaire businessman and aspiring presidential candidate laid out the conditions for his financial records disclosure Tuesday. "Maybe I'm going to do the tax returns when Obama does his birth certificate … I'd love to give my tax returns. I may tie my tax returns into Obama's birth certificate," he told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. Obama revealed Monday that the First Family shelled out $453,770 to the IRS for 2010. Presidents and potential candidates traditionally reveal how much they pay in...

Donald Trump spoke with Neil Cavuto today about a variety of subjects including his stance on nuclear energy, his thoughts about the president's response to the devastation in Japan, as well as Opec's increase of oil prices. "I'm very strongly in favor of nuclear energy... someone was explaining if a plane goes down people keep flying, if you get into an auto crash people keep driving, there are problems in life, not everything is so perfect. You have to look very carefully though at really taking care, have the best, the best people in terms of safeguards for nuclear energy."...

South Korean media reported Sunday that Seoul and Washington have called off plans to hold a major joint naval exercise in the Yellow Sea this month. Yonhap news agency quoted government sources as saying the exercise involving a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier has been postponed to avoid tensions on the Korean peninsula during the upcoming G20 summit in Seoul. There was no official confirmation of the reports. The Chinese government has fiercely opposed the deployment of the U.S. aircraft carrier George Washington in the regional waters.

The U.S. military has refuted South Korean media reports that Seoul and Washington have called off plans to hold a major joint naval exercise in the Yellow Sea this month, because there were no such plans. A spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea told VOA Monday that no such exercise was set for this year. The spokesman said there is no exercise to cancel. The Yonhap news agency quoted South Korean government anonymous sources Sunday as saying an exercise involving a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier had been postponed to avoid tensions on the Korean peninsula during the upcoming G20 summit in...