Free Republic

If there’s one thing that will generate bipartisan consensus on the Hill, it’s that the United States needs to get serious about confronting the Islamic State (ISIS) militarily. The National Journal recently posted a piece by James Kitfield, a senior fellow at Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress, argued that it’s time the U.S. declares war on the Islamic State–and have a debate on the U.S. interests at stake: Washington is overdue for a serious debate about what U.S. national interests are threatened by the Iraq crisis. … Most importantly, ISIS today represents a direct and growing threat...

Two days before Mosul fell to the Islamic insurgent group Isis (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), Iraqi commanders stood eyeballing its most trusted messenger. The man, known within the extremist group as Abu Hajjar, had finally cracked after a fortnight of interrogation and given up the head of Isis's military council. "He said to us, 'you don't realise what you have done'," an intelligence official recalled. "Then he said: 'Mosul will be an inferno this week'.' Several hours later, the man he had served as a courier and been attempting to protect, Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, lay dead in...

Westboro Baptist Church, the hate group that masquerades as a religious organization, is known for their publicity stunts, but they may have bit off more than they can chew with this one. After a comedian offered to pay for them to fly to Iraq so they can protest real Christian persecution at the hands of Islamic militants, the group tweeted that they have accepted his offer. They want to take their picket signs and head over to a country currently occupied by a group that beheads Christian children without hesitation – this ought to go well. To bring you up...

A family of Christian refugees in Iraq who are taking shelter at the Syriac Catholic Mrtshmony Shrine in Erbil. Credit: Aid to the Church in Need-USA. Erbil, Iraq, Aug 22, 2014 / 04:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Iraqi Christians' faith is not diminished, even as they face exile from their homes and profound suffering, an official with a Catholic pastoral charity has said after visiting Kurdistan, where many have taken refuge. “The faith is the reason for their lives. And despite the persecution, children wear rosaries around their necks and the people do not hide their tattoos of crosses or their...

POLLY MOSENDZ, The WireAugust 22, 2014isis Vice News Abu Mosa, the press officer of ISIL (ISIS), has been killed in an attack on a Syrian airbase. ISIL is currently fighting against Syrian government forces, in addition to its campaign in Iraq, that has been met by United States airstrikes. He was killed by members of the Syrian army who are loyal to the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. Department of State confirmed Mosa's death in a tweet: (snip)

...I can’t imagine the US would risk their bombers and drones being shot down by Syrian fighter aircraft or ground-to-air missiles. To avoid that, US strikes would need to be done in co-ordination with Assad. This in turn would require a political somersault of truly dramatic proportions. In the face of Isil, a common enemy, the US and probably the UK would be working with a regime we have been trying to unseat for the better part of three years. But the harsh truth is that events in what used to be called the Levant and Mesopotamia demand an accommodation...

(CNN) -- Kurdish and Iraqi armed forces made gains against ISIS fighters in northeastern Iraq on Friday, taking back several villages as they surrounded the large ISIS-held town of Jalawla, a spokesman for Kurdish forces said. And the U.S. military said its aircraft continued attacking ISIS forces Friday near Mosul Dam, where Iraqi forces are expanding control of the area after retaking the dam this month. Those are some of the latest developments in the push by Iraqi and Kurdish forces -- in some cases boosted by U.S. air support and airstrikes since August 8 -- to push back the...

WASHINGTON - There can be only one response to the barbaric beheading of American journalist James Foley by Islamic State terrorists. We must hunt them down and kill them. President Obama said as much in his brief remarks in the wake of the terrorists' grisly video that showed Foley's execution by a masked jihadist who spoke with a British accent and is believed to be a British citizen. The United States will "do what we must to protect our people," Obama said Wednesday. "We will be vigilant and we will be relentless" in bringing them to justice. No sooner had...

Iraqi Kurds have welcomed the German government’s expressed willingness to supply weapons in the fight against violent Islamists. Speaking on Deutschlandfunk radio on Thursday (21 August), Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq Rodsch Schawais said arms assistance should come as quickly as possible. The Kurdish leader addressed fears that German weapons could end up in the wrong hands or later be used in a possible conflict for an independent Kurdistan. This question is not relevant right now, he said. At the moment it is important to stop the advance of the extremist Islamic State (IS), Schawais explained. […] But the government’s...

... The question for President Barack Obama and other Western leaders isn't whether to fight the Islamic State, but when. Should it be now, when the group is not yet entrenched in Iraq, and when Assad finally has begun to move against it in Syria? Or will it be once its fighters have established themselves in Iraq and Syria and move on to Jordan, as they moved on the Kurds? If they were to succeed in Jordan, why not the Gulf states, where they already recruit and solicit donations? In Iraq and beyond, the nightmare prospect is of an al-Qaida...

Erbil (Agenzia Fides) - The defense of the attacked is an absolute right. But only "the forces of the State should take charge of this defense", while the creation of differentiated militia on ethno-religious basis "can destroy Iraq". This is how - according to Lebanese sources - the Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans Louis Raphael I expressed himself during his participation in the initiatives and meetings organized by the Delegation of the Patriarchs of the Eastern Churches that arrived on Wednesday, August 20 in Erbil, capital of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, to express their closeness to refugees...

Kurdish forces have started a major assault to try to retake the northeast Iraqi towns of Jalula and Sa'dya from Islamic State (IS) militants. It comes as US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the threat posed by IS extremists, who have seized control of large parts of Syria and Iraq, was "beyond anything we've seen". .... Sky's Alex Crawford, reporting from the outskirts of Jalula, said the operation was being carried out by the Kurdish military's elite counter-terrorism unit, backed up by peshmerga forces. .... She said the towns, near the Iranian border and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, had been...

Pentagon warns new effort will require taking the fight beyond Iraq and into neighboring Syria.The beheading of journalist James Foley has prompted American officials to begin working to knit together a broader international campaign to combat the extremists of the Islamic State, an effort that the Pentagon warned will require taking the fight beyond Iraq and into neighboring Syria.The Obama administration has indicated it is prepared to continue selective airstrikes against the extremists inside Iraq, where they have seized significant swaths of territory. But Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that the Islamic...

Gen. Allen: Destroy the Islamic State Now By Gen. John Allen (Ret.) August 20, 2014 The brutal murder of the brave American journalist James Foley is meant to directly terrorize the world’s media, the international community, and the United States. If all the actions of the Islamic State, or IS, to date weren’t sufficiently reprehensible, this act and the potential for other similar acts will snap American attention with laser-like focus onto the real danger IS poses to the existence of Iraq, the order of the region and to the homelands of Europe and America. Make no mistake, the abomination of...

Vatican City, Aug 21, 2014 / 03:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has reportedly called the family of U.S. journalist James Foley, who was beheaded by ISIS militants earlier this week. According to NBC News, a Vatican spokesperson said Thursday that the Pope called Foley’s family, who was grateful and moved by the gesture. On Aug. 19, the Islamic State (ISIS), a militant group that controls territory in Syria and Iraq, released a graphic video titled “A Message to America” which shows the beheading of Foley, who had gone missing in Syria in 2012. U.S. officials have now confirmed the...

Arizona Sen. John McCain on Thursday called President Obama's remarks on the execution of American journalist James Foley "moving" -- but also said his policy on the Islamic State terror group is failing. "He said we have to contain ISIS. We don't have to contain ISIS. We have to defeat ISIS, and we have to do whatever is necessary," the Republican lawmaker said on Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "Failures of policies have consequences, and we're paying [for] those consequences in enormous cost of human blood. It's a debacle, and he still doesn't get it."

Assisted by US airstrikes, forces of the autonomous Iraqi region of Kurdistan have retaken the historically Christian towns of Tel Isqof (or Telskuf) and Batnaya from the Sunni jihadist forces. Christian residents who returned to Tel Isqof were “shocked” by the level of destruction committed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Assyrian International News Agency reported. They restored crosses to their churches before beginning the task of cleaning up their town. Additional sources for this storySome links will take you to other sites, in a new window. Interactive Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Los Angeles...

The Islamic State’s Press Officer Abu Mosa became a figure of international notoriety overnight when he took on a starring role in a captivating Vice News documentary about ISIS in Syria. “Don’t be cowards and attack us with drones,” he said. “Instead, send us your soldiers, the ones we humiliated in Iraq. We will humiliate them everywhere, God willing, and we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House.”CLICK ABOVELINK FOR THE VIDEO Instead of doing that, according to the U.S. State Department, he’s just going to be dead. An #ISIS leader and press officer both killed...

The announcement by American officials that a raid into Syria aimed at liberating Americans in ISIS custody, including one who was later beheaded on camera by Islamic State terrorists, failed to achieve its objectives is dispiriting. While the American air campaign over Iraq appears to be successfully rolling back ISIS in Iraq, the U.S. lacks a comprehensive strategy to deal with the group in Iraq’s Sunni regions or in their Syrian stronghold. Moreover, some Democrats are now openly fretting that the latest escalation of tensions between ISIS and America will goad the U.S. into a new ground war in Iraq....

Before Islamic extremists brutally beheaded an American journalist on camera, they demanded $132 million in ransom from his family and his employer. Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists began sending messages to James Foley's family and the GlobalPost last fall, Philip Balboni, the news agency's head, told CNN. At first the messages made political and financial demands. "The captors never messaged a lot. There was a very limited number with a very specific purpose," he said. Then, last week, the fighters sent an email saying Foley would be killed. "The message was vitriolic and filled with rage against the United States. It...