Free Republic

Iran's supreme leader vowed Wednesday he will not allow international inspection of Iran's military sites or access to Iranian scientists under any nuclear agreement with world powers. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told military commanders Wednesday that Iran will resist "coercion and excessive demands" from America and other world powers. Negotiators from Iran and a six nation group — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — have launched a new round of talks in Vienna focused on reaching a final deal that curbs Iran's nuclear program in return for lifting economic sanctions. The two sides reached a framework agreement in...

The White House description of the fall of Ramadi to ISIS forces we have supposedly been busy degrading and destroying as a “setback” is like the British calling Dunkirk in World War II a strategic withdrawal. Ramadi is a defeat, the result of the precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by President Obama against the advice of military minds who know better about these things than the former community organizer from Illinois. It is a defeat for President Obama’s foreign policy, a rebuke of his fundamental transformation of America’s role in the world from a leader who shaped events...

Potential candidate for president and former Governor of Florida JEB Bush told FOX News’ Megyn Kelly that “unlike some other GOP presidential contenders, I would not move to immediately undo President Obama’s executive action granting special privileges to illegal immigrants. Instead, I would refuse to revoke it until Congress passed appropriate enabling legislation. In any case, the American voter can count on me to see that legalizing those in this country illegally will go forward with or without legislation.” Bush acknowledged the shaky legality of Obama’s executive action, but averred that “doing the right thing is more important than confining...

Full title: Judicial Watch: Defense, State Department Documents Reveal Obama Administration Knew that al Qaeda Terrorists Had Planned Benghazi Attack 10 Days in Advance Administration knew three months before the November 2012 presidential election of ISIS plans to establish a caliphate in Iraq Administration knew of arms being shipped from Benghazi to Syria (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by...

BEAUMONT — Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz hit some of his main stump points while meeting with local leaders here Tuesday afternoon — promising to defend the Constitution, step back from the Obama administration's foreign policy and promote economic growth. Then Texas' junior Republican U.S. senator, visiting Beaumont to meet privately with county officials and others, got in a light sparring round with reporters, mainly working on his attacks on Hillary Clinton and defending his views on same-sex marriage. "Is there something about the left — and I am going to put the media in this category — that is obsessed...

I was born in Baghdad, but all my ancestors before me, including my parents, where born in Mosul and neighboring cities in Northern Iraq. Even now when I speak Arabic it is still with a Moslouy dialect. For many years, no matter where I was living or what I was doing, the answer to “Where are you from?” was one of identity: “Ana Maslouy.” I am a Mosulian. And I am, all the way down, in spite of my thoroughly Americanized personality—such is the deep and dual identity of immigrants.Born to a Chaldean Catholic mother and a Syriac Orthodox...

First Published: 2015-05-19 Fresh doubts about US-led war strategy on IS group Fall of Ramadi deals a blow to US-led war against jihadists, is major setback for Baghdad, Washington Iraq's military strength questioned WASHINGTON - The Islamic State group's seizure of Ramadi represents a painful blow to the US-led war against the jihadists, raising fresh doubts about Washington's war strategy and the military strength of its partners in Iraq. The defeat of Iraqi security forces in the capital of Anbar province came despite more than 160 air strikes by US and coalition warplanes over the past month, and after an...

The Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, and its allies in the Jaysh al Fateh coalition are claiming to have completely overrun the Assad regime’s forces at the Al Mastoumah military camp in Idlib. The camp was one of the last remaining regime strongholds in the northwestern province. The jihadists have been promoting the victory on Twitter and other social media. On Al Nusrah’s official Twitter feed for its Idlib operations, the jihadist group said that it and its Jaysh al Fateh allies have fully “liberated” the camp. In other tweets, it said that the regime forces...

Iraqi troops abandoned dozens of U.S military vehicles, including tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery pieces when they fled Islamic State fighters in Ramadi on Sunday, the Pentagon said Tuesday. A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, estimated that a half dozen tanks were abandoned, a similar number of artillery pieces, a larger number of armored personnel carriers and about 100 wheeled vehicles like Humvees. He said some of the vehicles were in working condition; others were not because they had not been moved for months. This repeats a pattern in which defeated Iraq security forces have, over the past year,...

Shiite militias have surged into Iraq's Anbar province, a largely Sunni region, in a government-sanctioned bid to recapture the provincial capital Ramadi, which was seized in its entirety by the jihadists of the Islamic State at the end of last week. Thousands have fled the city, which is about 80 miles west of Baghdad. Ramadi's fall poses a problem for U.S. officials, who have sought to paint a picture of a weakening Islamic State. One Pentagon spokesman told reporters that the city's capture was part of "complex, bloody fight" in which "there are going to be ebbs and flows." The...

PARIS -- Pentagon officials are touting the success of a Delta Force special operations commando raid in Syria last weekend that resulted in the dispatch of about a dozen Islamic State riffraff. Not to take anything away from Delta Force, which is comprised of America's most elite warriors, but this kind of straightforward, direct-action job sounds like a waste of their immense talents and skills, and nothing that a few Rangers or Marines couldn't handle. It smacks of little more than a publicity stunt. And if, as speculated, the target was a big fish who wasn't there when the raid...

The seizure of Ramadi on Sunday leaves President Obama’s strategy against the Islamic State in ruins not only in Iraq but also throughout the Muslim world. It means that the Iraqi security forces will almost certainly not be able to recapture Mosul this year and, therefore, that the Islamic State will retain its largest city in Iraq. Worse, it gives the group momentum again in Iraq even as it gains ground in Syria and expands in the Sinai, Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere. This defeat was avoidable. Neither the Islamic State nor any other al-Qaeda offshoot has ever taken a major...

Of all of the questions Hillary Clinton will evade on the campaign trail this week, none are more important than those she will not answer on Iraq. Clinton holds the unique distinction in the 2016 field of having supported the unpopular Iraq policies of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. She supported Bush’s invasion and Obama’s withdrawal, and in both cases was tracking with public opinion when she started. After Bush’s war got unpopular, Clinton recanted. And one supposes that as Obama’s policy for that woe-begotten nation and its region continues to displease voters, Clinton will be tempted to...

Hell-ooo Camden! I’m listening! (h/t Frazier Crane)Having successfully demilitarized the military in order to hand over the surplus equipment to local police forces in order to help them keep the peace in our cities… Unfortunately this well-intended action resulted in accusations of police aggression against young black men Big Guy’s well integrated administration has now decided  that they need to demilitarize the police as well by introducing “softer” uniforms: A large part of rebuilding that trust between police and the community comes through “demilitarizing” law enforcement agencies. The task force, for example, suggests that police departments: …minimize confrontation by using...

<p>Probable Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush got himself into trouble by sort of, sort of not, answering the question whether he would have supported going into Iraq in 2003 — had he known then what we know now.</p> <p>Republican candidates vied in attacking Bush’s initial confusion about answering the question. Most reiterated that they most certainly would not have invaded Iraq, regardless of what they know now or thought they knew then. Politically, it appears to be wiser to damn the decision to invade Iraq and to forget the circumstances that prompted the war — and the later political environment that ended the American presence.</p>

The decision by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is a Shi'ite, to send in the militias to try to retake the predominantly Sunni city could add to sectarian hostility in one of the most violent parts of Iraq. Washington, which is leading a campaign of air strikes to roll back Islamic State advances and struggling to rebuild Baghdad's shattered army, played down the significance of the loss of Ramadi, the capital of the vast western Anbar province. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said it was a "target of opportunity," that could be retaken in a matter of days, and...

Via Islamic World News, this was Ramadi on Friday. The red represents Iraqi forces, the dark gray ISIS, and the magenta areas, including bridges, were contested. On Thursday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey was asked about Ramadi’s imminent fall. “The city itself is — it’s not symbolic in any way. It’s not been declared, you know, part of the caliphate, on the one hand, or central to the future of Iraq. But we want to get it back. I mean, the issue here is not — is not brick and mortar. It’s about defeating ISIL....

RUSH: It's Josh in Williamsburg, Virginia. Great to have you, sir. Hello. Appreciate your patience. CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. So I want to do two things. The first is to say that Jeb Bush's answer to Megyn Kelly's initial question was not necessarily wrong. He could validly have that answer to her question. The second is to -- RUSH: Wait a minute, Josh. What -- CALLER: Yeah. RUSH: Just refresh people's -- what did he say? What was his answer to that first question? He would do it all over again, right? CALLER: Yeah. So the...

ISIS held a massive parade in West Anbar province celebrating victory in Ramadi.

The Obama administration Monday called the fall of the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province to the Islamic State a temporary setback that Iraqi forces would reverse with U.S. support. Experts dismissed that assessment as ludicrous. “Delusional, really, is the better word,” Ali Khedery, a former U.S. official who served as an adviser to five U.S. ambassadors to Iraq and three heads of U.S. Central Command, said of the administration’s statement. “It’s unbelievable, frankly. I now know what it’s like to have lived through Vietnam, I guess.” Experts called the loss a stunning blow to the Iraqi government and U.S. strategy....