Free Republic

Syrian air defenses responded to a missile attack over Homs targeting Shayat air base late Monday night, Syria's official news agency SANA reported. Hezbollah's media unit said six missiles were fired towards Shayat and three missiles toward Dumair military airport near Damascus. The SANA report said the missiles targeting the air base were shot down by Syrian air defenses, and Hezbollah's media unit said all nine missiles were intercepted. Later that night, a false alarm was reported near Aleppo........

Western countries accused Moscow on Monday of preventing inspectors from reaching the site of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground. The United States, Britain and France launched air strikes on Saturday against what they described as three Syrian chemical weapons targets in retaliation for a suspected gas attack that killed scores of people in the Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7. Syria and its ally Russia deny using poison gas during their offensive this month, in which they seized the town that had been the...

Government forces and Russian troops have been deployed in Douma, which is now controlled by the Syrian government. Opposition activists have said the troops might have removed any evidence of chemical weapons' use...In London, British Prime Minister Theresa May accused Syria and Russia of trying to cover up evidence. She said Syrian officials have been searching evacuees from Douma to ensure samples are not smuggled out. "A wider operation to conceal the facts of the attack is underway, supported by the Russians," she told lawmakers.

GENEVA - Talks between the United States and Iran on Tehran's disputed nuclear programme have made "some progress" and managed to "sharpen up some of the tough issues" that need resolving, a senior U.S. administration official said on Monday. Political directors from Iran and the six major powers have agreed to resume talks next week at a venue to be decided, the official said, speaking after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif held two-day talks in Geneva.

snip Distressingly, one of the key parties blocking U.S. efforts to curb Iranian capabilities in all areas is one of America’s closest allies: Germany. Although Germany is a member of NATO and is perceived as a loyal U.S. ally, in practice, Germany is one of Iran’s most powerful protectors and promoters. For the past several weeks, administration officials have told reporters that Germany is selling Iran technology that Iran is using to help the Assad regime replenish its chemical weapons stocks. Last week, the Jerusalem Post reported that the Germany’s Krempel Group provided components found on the Iranian rockets used...

Who Was Tamerlane? Timur was a 14th Century Turko-Mongol military leader who conquered most of the Muslim world, central Asia, and parts of India. His Timurid Empire rivaled the size and power of the Mongolian domain forged by Genghis Khan a century earlier.Known by his nickname, Tamerlane, it's unclear why many people in the Western world have never heard of this brutal and ingenious warlord. To rectify this neglect, the following is a list of interesting facts about Tamerlane. The list includes notable events in his life; analyzes his acerbic personality, and remarks on current impressions of this fascinating...

When the United States — along with France and Britain — launched military strikes on sites designed to destroy Assad’s chemical weapons program in Syria on Friday, critics blamed Bolton. The liberal group People’s Action described him as “John ‘Bomb ‘em all’ Bolton” in a fundraising appeal to supporters Saturday.

“QUEEN ELIZABETH must claim her right to rule Muslims.” So ran a recent headline on the Arab Atheist Network, a web forum. It was only partly in jest. According to reports from Casablanca to Karachi, the British monarch is descended from the Prophet Muhammad, making her a cousin of the kings of Morocco and Jordan, not to mention of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader.

United States' Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Sunday the Trump administration will announce more sanctions against Russia on Monday. On CBS's "Face the Nation," Haley said the Treasury Department will announce the new sanctions and insisted the US has sent "a strong message" about the use of chemical weapons.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Sunday voiced alarm over the growing “alienation” between Russia and the West, stressing the need for dialogue as post-Cold War tensions peak. Speaking to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Steinmeier said last month’s poisoning of a former Russian spy in England, which Britain and its allies blame on Moscow, was “a very serious incident”. “But we should be at least as worried about the galloping alienation between Russia and the West, the consequences of which stretch far beyond this case,” the former foreign minister said. Moscow vehemently denies involvement in the nerve agent poisoning of...

Jordan's decision should be a no-brainer The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)—refusing to bow to pressure by President Trump to cease payments to terrorists and their families currently exceeding US$400 million annually—is looming as a potential threat to end 96 years of unbroken Hashemite rule in Jordan. PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas - addressing the ninth annual Islamic Beit al-Maqdes International Conference in Ramallah last week—has sent a veiled message of the PLO’s intention to challenge Jordan’s ruling Hashemite family if PLO demands for a State in the West Bank with Jerusalem as its capital are not met.

Why do so many people in politics and the media want to start wars? Since I toured a sordid hospital full of wounded people in Bucharest at Christmas 1989, and even more after I saw for the first time (in Vilnius in 1991) what a human head looks like after a bullet has passed through it, I have seen it as an absolute duty to warn against armed conflict.... No doubt there are times when we must fight. But there are plenty more when we should not..... Yet I look around me and see the mouths of intelligent people opened...

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan welcomed U.S., British and French forces’ airstrikes on Syria, saying that the operation sent a message to Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad. “With the joint operation by U.S., U.K. and France on Saturday, the Syrian regime received the message that its massacres wouldn’t be left unanswered,” Erdogan told his ruling AK Party supporters in an Istanbul meeting. “The innocent Syrian people should have been defended long ago,” Erdogan added.

Globalism is as harmless as recycling and as sinister as enforced belief in gay rights. It is as pervasive as seat belts, and as cultish as watching Stephen Colbert in the belief that he is always right. What is globalism? We use the term a lot, but what makes a person a globalist? The shortest answer I can formulate is that it has replaced communism as the doctrine of the far left, and become the creed of political correctness. There are seven main distinguishing characteristics of globalism as compared to the politics of the democratic right (and these divides are...

Whether of not DJT has a private channel of communication to the Russian leadership remains an open question for me. Those who love to think of history as an endless series of conspiratorial meetings favor the idea that DJT and VP agreed on the level of damage that would be acceptable given the fury of the gas hysteria of the last week. There well may be such a link though US Embassy Moscow. I hope there is such a link. In any event, Trump obviously chose one of the more inoffensive options offered to him by the JCS and James...

News reports and the Israeli "DEBKAfile" website reported explosions near Aleppo late Saturday evening. "DEBKAfile" reported the explosions at an Iranian base. Reuters quoted the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights", a British based monitoring group supporting opposition forces in Syria, reporting a single "huge blast" in a rural area south of Aleppo. Turkish TV channel CNN Turk reported that a single huge explosion shook an "Iranian training camp" and that a source there spoke of 20 dead in the blast. "DEBKAfile" also published the notion of unconfirmed reports of "unknown aircraft" in the area. Another Israeli operation in the mix...

Pence also said. “It’s time for Russia to get the message President Trump delivered last night. You're known by the company you keep.” He also said the United State will mount a “sustained effort” against the regime if the attacks continue, echoing what U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said in an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Saturday. Pence also said leaders at the summit, which is focused on the collapse of democracy in Venezuela, saoid they support the missile strikes in Syria.

The coalition hit the Barzah Research and Development Center outside Damascus with 76 missiles, destroying the facility... The second and third targets were part of what the U.S. military described as the Him Shinshar chemical weapons complex outside the city of Homs. The military said the strikes “completely destroyed” the complex’s chemical weapons storage facility and “successfully hit and sustained damage” to the installation’s chemical weapons bunker.

The Air Force plans to start fixing the problem by 2021, according to Bloomberg. It will probably cost a fortune, so if you have the means, it may be good to check out some Lockheed stock. The F-35 Lightning II jet can’t communicate all that well with its little brother the F-22 Raptor. Because of course it can’t. Just like a government-built round peg that’s supposed to go into a square hole, the F-22’s communications systems can’t send its “most sensitive data” to other planes besides other F-22s since they are different from everything else, including the F-35, according to...

"Russia strongly condemns the attack on Syria where Russian servicemen are helping the legitimate government in the war on terrorism" Russian President Vladimir Putin 4/14/2018 Russia is calling for a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the attacks in Syria last night...... Israel, meanwhile, apparently fearing Iranian retaliation, has declared a No Fly Zone in the Golan region......