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Arbil (AFP) -- Western support has helped Iraq's Kurdish troops regain ground and momentum against the Islamic State group, but retaking the northern jihadist hub of Mosul remains too big an ask for now. When federal forces buckled as jihadists advanced, the Kurds seized long-coveted territory around Mosul. But in August, they suffered setbacks of their own when IS surged again. Air support from the United States and France, arms deliveries and improved ties with Baghdad have allowed the Kurdish peshmerga fighters to regroup and take the initiative. Speaking at an international conference in Paris last week, Foreign Minister Ibrahim...

The number of Europeans joining Islamist fighters in Syria and Iraq has surged to about 3,000 from 2,000 only months ago, the EU counter-terrorism chief said Tuesday. (snip) The European fighters, he said, come mainly from France, Britain, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark but a few come from Spain, Italy, Ireland and now Austria.

Six Dutch F-16 fighter bombers and six Belgian ones are to join the U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq, officials said on Wednesday. "The Netherlands will make six F-16s available for the first phase of the campaign, for one year," Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Asscher told reporters after an emergency cabinet meeting in The Hague. Earlier in the day, the Belgian government said it plans to send six F-16 fighter jets to join the anti-IS coalition but will limit their use to Iraq. The Belgian parliament must still approve the move, which follows a formal...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)SEN. TED CRUZ: Now, the president has been advocating arming the so-called moderate Syrian rebels for some time. And throughout the course of the discussion, what I have endeavored to ask, repeatedly, both publicly and in classified situations, is how do you distinguish the good guys from the bad guys? Last summer, when the president was urging a unilateral attack on Syria, at the time in June of last summer, out of the 9 major rebel groups, 7 of them had significant alliances or connections to al Qaeda or al Nusra or to other radical Islamic groups like ISIS. Consistently...

Via Mediaite, indeed they have — and this isn’t the first time that point has been made by a reporter to a State Department mouthpiece. Shep is correct in the precision of his terms, too. Although lazy people like me refer to the Bush/Cheney approach as “preemptive” war, preemption really describes a case where you have reason to believe your enemy’s about to land a punch on you. You’re preempting the blow by hitting him first; the imminence of his attack is key. The Bush/Cheney approach vis-a-vis Saddam was really one of preventive war. It wasn’t a matter of Saddam...

Thomas EscrittSeptember 24, 2014  THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The Dutch government said on Wednesday it would deploy six F-16 fighter jets, which could be operational in a week, to support the U.S.-led strikes against Islamic State insurgents in Iraq. The Netherlands, a member of NATO and a close U.S. ally, will target the ultra-radical Islamist militants in Iraq and provide training and advice to Iraqi and Kurdish regional military forces for a period of up to one year, Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Asschertold journalists. "We regard IS as a grave threat, not just for the region it is destabilising,...

No U.S. lawmaker has better learned the lessons of both the Obama and Bush failures. Reaganesque? America has been screwing up on the foreign policy front for a long time. George W. Bush's efforts to spread democracy were laudable — but quixotic and ill-fated. And Barack Obama's "leading from behind" and"don't do stupid stuff" strategies, which supposedly learned all the right lessons from Bush-era misadventures? These also did not work. So as we head toward a critical presidential election in 2016, what should we be looking for when it comes to foreign policy? The answer is Ted Cruz. Don't laugh...

President Obama on Wednesday delivered a speech at the United Nations filled with his usual soaring rhetoric of global collectivism and the importance of “international norms.” But the president also displayed a shocking naivete about global affairs, religion, Islam — a Pollyannaish interpretation on the state of the world and America’s role in it. Although Mr. Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize just eight months into office, the president made his annual trip to the ineffectual world council to deliver a call to war. “Ladies and gentlemen, we come together at a crossroads between war and peace, between disorder and...

This is really scary...unless you're a Muslim.This is worth taking a few minutes to understand. Decoding Obama’s speech reveals some startling revelations “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Genesis 12:3 In one press conference after another, when referring to the Muslim terror super-group ISIS, United States President Barack Obama will use the term ISIL instead of their former name ISIS or current name Islamic State. Have you ever wondered about that? We have. ISIL stands for the Islamic State of...

Parliament is to be recalled on Friday to discuss the UK's possible involvement in air strikes against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq. Prime Minister David Cameron said MPs should respond to the Iraqi government's request for help. He added that the UK "should not turn away from what needs to be done". The Liberal Democrats are backing air strikes in Iraq and Labour leader Ed Miliband has confirmed his support, saying the UK cannot "opt out". Meanwhile, the Foreign Office has said it is "aware" of reports that a British national has died in Syria, but it has "no further...

Way back in 2002, then-Senator Barack Obama had a lot to say about the Iraq war. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics....

WASHINGTON - A federal judge has arranged for two jurors to get legal help to ensure they are paid by their employers during a lengthy criminal trial of Blackwater security guards. Four former Blackwater guards have been on trial since June 17 in the shootings of more than 30 Iraqi citizens seven years ago in Baghdad. Jury deliberations began Sept. 2 and are continuing. In a court proceeding with lawyers from both sides, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said he had learned that one juror hasn't been paid by her employer since the first two weeks of the trial. In...

Why do they only go as far as girls who are nine years old? Why not eight? Because Muhammad’s child bride Aisha was nine when he consummated his “marriage” with her.

Tuesday's climate summit at the U.N. may well mark a turning point in the long-running talks as the reality sinks in that they are heading nowhere. For sure, the rhetoric is unchanged. Recently appointed U.N. peace messenger Leonardo DiCaprio is the show’s newest star, telling the meeting that it was "humankind’s greatest challenge." But the older acts sounded stale. Former Vice President Al Gore demonstrated his green credentials when he said that political will was "a renewable resource," recycling a line he’d first used at the 2007 Bali climate conference. For small countries, the U.N. climate change talks provide an...

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s new prime minister scrapped a top military office and ordered two senior commanders into retirement, in a major move aimed at restructuring a failed army that is having to fight the Islamic State (IS) forces. The changes follow another defeat by the Iraqi army against IS forces. Haidar al-Abadi discarded the office of the Adjutant General of the Armed Forces, set up by his predecessor Nouri al-Maliki, who was accused of trying to concentrate power in his own hands. The premier “canceled” the position, which was inside the prime minister’s own office, said a statement posted...

Austin in April 2013, during his tenure as the commander of U.S. Central Command. Hunter WalkerSeptember 23, 2014 A man who was once described as an "invisible general" who holds master's degrees in both education and business management is in charge of the military operations against the jihadist group Islamic State and the al-Qaeda franchise Khorasan in Syria and Iraq. A Department of Defense spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider in an email Tuesday that General Lloyd J. Austin III is the "combatant commander" of the operations in both countries through his role as the Commander of US Central Command. As...

John Kerry once referred to the nations who George Bush built into Coalition partners for Operation Iraqi Freedom as the "Coalition of the coerced and the bribed" and "window dressing". Marc Thiessen in yesterday's WaPo on "I was against it before I was for it" John "Global Test" Kerry: When John Kerry ran for president in 2004, he dismissed the allies fighting alongside the United States in Iraq as a “trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted.” Now, as secretary of state, Kerry is going hat-in-hand to many of the same nations he insulted,...

Islam has no central or definitive body or figure authorized to define what exactly it is. Opinions about its essence and scope vary widely according to the political or philosophic background of its own interpreters. The current effort to establish an Islamic State, with a designated Caliph, again to take up the mission assigned to Islam, brings to our attention the question: “What is Islam?”The issue of “terror” is a further aspect of this same understanding. Many outside Islam seek to separate “terror” and “Islam” as if they were, in their usage, independent or even opposed ideas. This latter...

ISIS needs more trained fighters – Obama and Congress to the rescueThere was an expression I heard somewhat frequently growing up – particularly when working with my father. “Don't just stand around, do something, even if it's wrong!” I recognized this for the negative and facetious comment that it was, and filed it in the mental '86' compartment where it belonged, because I knew that screwing something up just to appear busy, would really get me in hot water with the old man. Whatever nasty, venomous edge that lurks beneath my ordinarily good nature, is from the paternal side. I...

Hollywood has been called the greatest propaganda machine in human history, because the power of film is so compelling and persuasive. Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan once wrote that “movies are hard-wired into our psyche, shaping how we view the world… It’s when politics infiltrates entertainment that it is most subversive – and most effective.” That’s why Communist Russia’s Lenin said, “For us, the cinema is the most important of all the arts.” Hitler too certainly understood its usefulness in conveying Nazi propaganda. Now the savage fanatics of ISIS show that they recognize the power of film too.