Free Republic

Nearly fifty senior commanders of a major coalition of Islamic 'moderates' opposed to ISIS in Syria have been killed by an explosion at their secret command bunker as they met to discuss strategy against the the Islamic State. The blast in the Northwest region of Idlib, Syria on Tuesday killed senior members of rebel group the Ahrar-al-Sham brigade (AaS), including leader Hassan Abboud and 45 others including senior members from other rebel alliance groups, reports The Times. The Idlib region stands in AaS territory, but it is close to the front-line with ISIS in neighbouring Aleppo.

As part of his “strategy” to eliminate ISIS, also known as ISIL, President Obama wants to “equip Syrian opposition fighters,” and while not mentioning the Free Syrian Army, or FSA, by name, that group, the group in which American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were embedded before they were captured by ISIS and beheaded, likely would be a recipient. It was the same FSA that ultimately turned Foley and Sotloff over to ISIS.

Politicians from the left, right and even reporters on MSNBC are deriding President Obama’s just-minted strategy to confront the Mideast terrorist army called Islamic State, or ISIS. Coming under particular scrutiny from both left and right has been a key part of Obama’s plan: supporting so-called moderate rebels in Syria. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, appeared to express the bewilderment of many across the political spectrum, saying, “One of the more incoherent aspects of the president’s speech tonight was when he suggested the answer here is to arm rebels in Syria now.” He explained, “For more than a year, the president...

Obama is sending Defense Secretary Hagel to Turkey to ratchet its efforts to tame ISIS while knowingly is aware that Turkey is a supporter of ISIS! The efforts as they claim is to build what the administration termed Coalition of the Willing.As has been predicted by Shoebat.com, The United States will plead to Turkey to end ISIS.Now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is being sent by Obama preparing to visit Turkey to intensify the push for an international campaign against ISIS.In his remarks during a briefing on Friday, Pentagon Press Secretary Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby said that Hagel will start...

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” Samuel Johnson said. A few centuries later his fellow Englishman, Winston Churchill, quipped, “The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.” It’s not true of the United States, but it is true of Barack Obama who, having exhausted every alternative that involved appeasement or pretending that ISIS wasn’t a threat, has decided to do the right thing. As long as he gets enough applause for doing it. With his approval ratings, particularly on American leadership and national security, lower than Assad’s, he decided to exploit September...

President Obama just announced that he is bringing a counter-terrorism strategy to an insurgency fight. He was at pains to repeat the phrase “counter-terror” four times in a short speech. Noting that ISIL is not a state (partly because the international community thankfully does not recognize it), he declared, “ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.” Neither of those sentences, unfortunately, is true. ISIL is an insurgent group that controls enormous territory in Iraq and Syria that it governs. It maneuvers conventional light...

As President Obama laid out his “strategy” last night for dealing with ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and as bipartisan leadership in Congress push to approve as much as $4 billion to arm the Syrian “rebels,” it should be noted that the keystone to his anti-Assad policy — the “vetted moderate” Free Syrian Army (FSA) — is now admitting that they, too, are working with the Islamic State.This confirms our reporting about the FSA’s alliances with Syrian terrorist groups here at PJ Media last week.On Monday, the Daily Star in Lebanon quoted a FSA brigade commander saying that his...

Islamic State extremists are pushing to secure the border between Turkey and north-western Syria as the main gateway for recruits to join the caliphate they have imposed across much of eastern Syria and western Iraq. Large numbers of jihadists from Islamic State (formerly Isis) are moving this weekend towards the Turkish border area, about 60 miles north of Aleppo, in columns of armoured trucks that they looted from abandoned Iraqi military bases. The area is now one of the most active front lines in the group's attempt to redraw the borders of the Levant, a campaign that will have huge...

With reports indicating that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad are gaining ground in that country’s brutal civil war, moderate Syrian rebels have told a visiting journalist that the United States is arranging their training in Qatar. In a documentary to be aired Tuesday night, the rebels describe their clandestine journey from the Syrian battlefield to meet with their American handlers in Turkey and then travel on to Qatar, where they say they received training in the use of sophisticated weapons and fighting techniques, including, one rebel said, “how to finish off soldiers still alive after an ambush.” The...

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Far from being depleted by its recent sweep into Iraq, the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is pressing deeper into Syria, regaining territory it had lost to the mainstream Syrian insurgents just as the Syrian Army has come within five miles of encircling the insurgent-held section of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. The dual advance is on the verge of dealing a potentially fatal blow to the mainstream insurgents, leaving them besieged in the city while ISIS, a group deemed too extreme even by Al Qaeda, faces the Syrian government across a crucial front line at...

Don't believe everything you read in the media: The moderate rebels of Syria are not finished. They have gained ground in different parts of the country and have broken publicly with both the al Qaeda affiliate operating there and the jihadists of the Islamic State. Meanwhile, President Bashar al-Assad's regime is showing new signs of weakness. The death of moderate armed opposition elements has been greatly exaggerated. These groups -- whom I define as fighters who are not seeking to impose an Islamic state, but rather leaving that to a popular decision after the war ends -- have recently gained...

James Wright Foley’s brutal public murder should serve as a cautionary tale to all progressive “infidels” who decry others as “Islamophobes.” According to Daniel Greenfield, writing for Front Page Magazine, “Foley came to Syria to support the Sunni Islamist rebels against the Syrian government. He cheered on the Sunni Muslim terrorists fighting to ethnically cleanse the Christians of Aleppo. In the conflict between Israel and Hamas, his tweets and retweets were chock full of pro-terrorist propaganda. Hm, rather unfortunate choice of words for this idealistic man in that tweet. “But Foley ran afoul of at least some of the Sunni...

Then he was turned over to the Islamic State as a token of this Free Syrian Army group’s allegiance to the new caliphate. The Free Syrian Army are the “moderates” to whom the Obama Administration has given weapons in Syria. Thus the incoherence of the Obama foreign policy is laid bare: he is funding what he considers to be heroic freedom fighters in Syria who, when they cross over into Iraq, become bloodthirsty terrorists.“James Foley Allegedly Used As Token Of Allegiance By Group That Joined ISIS,” by Erin Banco, International Business Times, August 20, 2014: According to Syrian sources who...

“When you get farmers, dentists and folks who have never fought before going up against a ruthless opposition in Assad, the notion that they were in a position to suddenly overturn not only Assad but also ruthless, highly trained jihadists if we just sent a few arms is a fantasy.” - Barack Obama to CBS on June 22 Editor's note: Obama reiterated the statement to Tom Friedman of The New York Times in an interview published on August 9. In one sentence, U.S. President Barack Obama disregarded the thousands of soldiers who defected from the Syrian Army since the uprising...

Walid Shoebat says that quagmire that is going on in Iraq is just going to increase and there isn’t much America can do about it at this point. But when it comes to what started this quagmire in Iraq, Walid blames the US for ‘aiding and abetting’ the Free Syrian Army in Syria, which we all know is a terrorist group: We’re indirectly aiding and abetting an Al-Qaeda like operation, when it comes to Syria, and that’s what started the quagmire. Our aiding and abetting the Free Syrian Army — which is a terrorist group and we’ve been showing this...

Obama waited too long to help the Syrian FSA against the monstrous Assad regime. When some sort of intervention was talked about: (bombing, indirect support, arms, etc) it was TOO late to help, and it would most likely have helped (either directly or indirectly) terroristic elements and possibly Al Qaeda elements which had taken the lead in Syria against Assad. NO WAY ON DOING THAT. PERIOD. And, once again, it is too late to help the Ukrainians against the thug Putin. (strike one against helping them). And as long as the Ukrainian gov't hasn't ran Svoboda and Right Sector and...

The U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army — those are the “moderates,” you know. How moderate? This moderate: in July 2013, Free Syrian Army fighters entered the Christian village of Oum Sharshouh and began burning down houses and terrorizing the population, forcing 250 Christian families to flee the area. Worthy News reported that just two days later, Free Syrian Army rebels “targeted the residents of al-Duwayr/Douar, a Christian village close to the city of Homs and near Syria’s border with Lebanon….Around 350 armed militants forcefully entered the homes of Christian families who were all rounded-up in the main square of the village...

Though it’s been well documented that opposition forces in Syria are mostly run by Islamic terrorists—mainly Al Qaeda—Congress has secretly approved U.S. weapons flow to what officials describe as “moderate” Syrian rebel factions. The problem with this is that there are no “moderate” rebel forces in Syria, according to a number of reputable news reports, both domestic and international. In fact, the New York Times published a piece last spring that confirms Islamist rebels—including the most extreme groups in the notorious Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda-aligned force—are running the show in Syria. “The Islamist character of the opposition reflects...

The United States and Gulf countries have been secretly backing efforts by opposition rebels to destroy al-Qaeda’s most extreme wing in Syria, diplomats and rebels involved in the plan have told The Telegraph. As Western leaders publicly push the Syrian regime and the opposition to the Geneva II peace conference that begins Wednesday Washington has also been quietly supporting moves by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to give weapons and cash to rebel groups to fight al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS) in Syria. One source said the US was itself handing out millions of dollars to rebel groups...

A video recently appeared of an Islamic Sunni cleric in Syria inciting Muslim schoolboys, most of whom appear to be between the ages of five-twelve, to hate and kill Christians and others. According to a report in Arabic (scroll down for video), among other things, the sheikh calls on the children to “slaughter all Christians for being infidels” and that he boasted that “the Christians of Syria are under continuous attack and their churches and monasteries subject to violence.” In the video, the sheikh first talks of Islam’s egalitarianism—that it does not consider the race, nationality, or language of people,...