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WASHINGTON — The United States killed a top Islamic State commander in Syria who was believed to be in line to lead the terrorist group, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said on Friday. The killing of a top commander, Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, who is also known by other names, comes as the United States is having increased success targeting the Islamic State’s leadership. Last week, Defense Department officials concluded that American strikes had killed the group’s minister of war, Omar al-Shishani. “We are systematically eliminating ISIL’s cabinet,” Mr. Carter said at a news conference, using an acronym for the...

Attack in subway likely also known in advance by Belgian and Western agencies; attack plan was formulated at de-facto ISIS capital of Raqqa, in Syria. Belgium ignored Turkish warning about Brussels attacker, Erdogan says Brussels awakens to a new reality: Soldiers on the streets, heavy security on metro Belgium prosecutor confirms brothers were suicide bombers After Brussels, will Europe finally crack down on terror Israel-style?

IRBIL, Iraq — A U.S. Marine was killed near the front line with the Islamic State in northern Iraq on Saturday, becoming the second combat casualty of the war against the militants, according to the U.S. military and Iraqi officials. The Marine died when Islamic State militants fired rockets into a small U.S. base in Makhmour, a front-line town controlled by Kurdish peshmerga forces on the outskirts of the region of Kurdistan, U.S. officials said. “Several” other Marines also were injured in the rocket attack, according to a Pentagon statement. An earlier statement had not specified which branch of the...

Belgian security forces are hunting for at least two men after shots were fired at police during a counter-terrorism raid in the capital, Brussels. Three officers were reportedly hurt, one of them seriously. Streets in the suburb of Forest have been sealed off . A BBC reporter at the scene says there has been more gunfire subsequently. The raid is linked to the Paris attacks which killed 130 people last November. Islamic State (IS) militants have claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Donald Trump, who denies that his provocative and sometimes profane rhetoric (particularly against Muslims_ has anything to do with violence and protests at his University of Illinois-Chicago rally, once blamed conservative activist Pamela Geller for provoking an attempted armed assault by – wait for it – unnecessarily provoking Muslims. As Gideon Resnick noted last December in the Daily Beast, pre-candidate Trump was not as passionately concerned with Pamela Geller’s First Amendment free speech rights as he now is about his own:

ISIS' minister of war may have been killed by a U.S.-led airstrike in Syria. A vehicle believed to be carrying Abu Omar al-Shishani was targeted by a coalition bombing raid near the town of al-Shadadi on Friday, but his fate is not yet known, U.S. officials revealed today. Red-bearded Shishani - known as 'Omar the Chechen' - is among the most wanted terrorists in the world and the U.S. had offered a $5million reward for information leading to his capture

Have you no shame, Hillary Clinton? In a stunning display of callous indifference to the casualties of her incompetent foreign policy as Secretary of State, the woman who claimed to have dodged sniper fire in Bosnia, in Wednesday’s CNN debate in effect called Patricia Smith, mother of Benghazi casualty Sean Smith, a liar. As Breitbart News reported the exchange: RAMOS:  Secretary Clinton, on the night of the attacks in Benghazi, you sent an e-mail to your daughter Chelsea saying that al qaeda was responsible for the killing of the Americans, however some of the families claim you lied to...

Before political correctness, our soldiers were free to fight back. Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. A century before American soldiers fought Muslim terrorism in the Middle East, they fought it in the Philippines. Their attackers were Moro Muslims whose savage fanaticism appeared inexplicable. A formerly friendly Muslim might suddenly attack American soldiers, local Muslim rulers promised friendship while secretly aiding the terrorists and the yellow left-wing press at home seized on every report of an atrocity to denounce American soldiers as murderers whose honor was forever...

A video published online by a Syrian rebel group shows what appears to be a direct hit by a US-made BGM-71 TOW on the turret of a Russia-supplied T-90 tank of the Syrian Army. The video is one of a multitude of instances of the use of TOW missiles by rebels in Syria, but it may be the first time the anti-tank weapon was used against the advanced T-90 main battle tank. The clip shows the optically-guided missile approaching the partially-covered tank, followed by a bright explosion and a cloud of smoke. Moments later one of the tank crew members...

When the notorious Islamic terrorist group, Boko Haram, kidnapped 278 school girls [1] from the town of Chibok in northeastern Nigeria last year, Michelle Obama began a Twitter hashtag campaign [2], #BringBackOurGirls. But behind the scenes, the Obama administration was undermining Nigeria’s efforts to take the battle to the terrorists. Obama refused to sell Nigeria arms and supplies critical to the fight, and stepped in to block other Western allies from doing so. The administration also denied Nigeria intelligence [3] on Boko Haram from drones operating in the area. While Boko Haram was kidnapping school girls, the U.S. cut petroleum...

The devastating toll of terror attacks is laid bare today with a shocking study revealing the number of people slaughtered worldwide has risen by 80 per cent in a year. A total of 32,658 people were killed by terrorists around the world in 2014 - an 80 per cent increase on the previous year, according to the Global Terrorism Index. Researchers said that while Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria bore the brunt of deaths last year, the attacks in Paris on Friday mark a 'watershed within Europe'.

Donald Trump on Friday cited an apocryphal story about a U.S. general who purportedly dipped bullets in pigs' blood to execute Muslim prisoners a century ago in an effort to deter Islamic terrorism. Speaking at a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, Trump reiterated his claim that the U.S. should "go much further" than waterboarding suspected terrorists, telling the story of Gen. John Pershing in the Philippines, who Trump said captured 50 Muslim prisoners a century ago and dipped 50 bullets in blood. "And he lined up the 50 people and they shot 49 of those 50 people, and he...

US Soldiers Pose with the Bodies of Moro (Muslim) Insurgents, Philippines; circa 1906 On March 7, 1906, US troops under the command of Major General Leonard Wood massacred as many as 1,000 Filipino Muslims, known as Moros, who were taking refuge at Bud Dajo, a volcanic crater on the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines. The First Battle of Bud Dajo, also known as the Bud Dajo Massacre, was a counter insurgency action fought by the United States Army against Moros in March 1906, during the Moro Rebellion phase of the Philippine - American War. After the United States...

Presidential candidate Donald Trump's continued condemnations of former President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 have irritated many of his political opponents, including Bush's younger brother and Trump's rival for the Republican nomination, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. During the recent Republican candidates' debate in Greenville, South Carolina, Trump, in addition to calling the invasion of Iraq "a big fat mistake," responded to Jeb Bush's defense of his brother's record by reminding listeners that the 9/11 attacks had occurred while George W. was president.The heated exchange was prompted by a question posed to Trump by moderator John...

A private intelligence report from Hillary Clinton's confidant, Sid Blumenthal, claimed that Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist organization, had set up shop in Cuba, according to an email released by the State Department over the weekend. The group was actively "casing" facilities related to U.S. interests, the intelligence report also says. The dispatch read: During the week of September 5, 2011 extremely sensitive sources reported in confidence that the Israeli Intelligence and Security Service (Mossad) has informed the leadership of the Israeli Government that Hezbollah is establishing an operational base in Cuba, designed to support terrorist attacks throughout Latin America.The confidential...

According to a Wednesday night post on the website Long War Journal by Thomas Joscelyn, a former detainee held at Guantanamo Bay named Ibrahim Qosi has rejoined the world of Islamic terrorism and ascended to a leadership post in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) following his release in July 2012. With this shocking story coming as the Obama administration still hopes to close the prison, the question going forward from a media standpoint is this: Will the media show any interest in this threat to national security and failure on the part of the adminstration? According to Joscelyn, Qoosi...

Today we celebrate President's Day, a day in which Americans are expected to look back and honor our founding fathers and their contributions to our Nation's proud history. The words and writings of our founding fathers offer us wisdom and insight that stretches across the ages. The ideas about freedom and liberty that they wrote about and fought for are still serving America today. The system of government that they envisioned and set up for us continues to persevere, has brought great prosperity to the people residing in the United States. Through the centuries, millions of brave troops have risked...

A British SAS sniper took an Islamic State (Isis) commander's head clean off as he taught jihadi recruits how to behead captives, according to reports. The marksman fired from over a kilometre away (1,000 metres) to land the shot. The IS (Daesh) fighter was reported to be in the middle of a drill teaching new soldiers how to execute captives, according to the Daily Express. Some 20 new terror recruits were watching as the fatal bullet struck. The soldier was operating in the northern Syria a fortnight ago and was using a .338 rifle with tumbling ammo that can cause...

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." President Clinton , Feb. 4, 1998. "If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." President Clinton , Feb. 17, 1998. "Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear,...

A music video titled "The Roof of the Bus Goes Flying" was posted on the Internet on February 7. Dancing against the backdrop of a burnt-out Israeli bus, the singers of the Al-Wa'ed Band praise Hamas terrorist mastermind Yahya Ayyash with the words "You did not let a single bus drive through a neighborhood without having chunks of the bus and body parts go flying," and call on "bearers of good tidings" to "wrap the explosive belt around their waists." The song includes lyrics such as: "We want the dead to fill the streets and the blood to intensify the...