Free Republic

After the pro-Western government of China was forced to flee to the island of Taiwan in 1949, when the Communists took over mainland China, bitter recriminations in Washington led to the question: “Who lost China?” China was, of course, never ours to lose, though it might be legitimate to ask if a different American policy toward China could have led to a different outcome. In more recent years, however, Iraq was in fact ours to lose, after U.S. troops vanquished Saddam Hussein’s army and took over the country. Today, we seem to be in the process of losing Iraq, if...

Two weeks ago, courtesy of the investigative work of Nafeez Ahmed whose deep dig through a recently declassified and formertly Pentagon documents released earlier by Judicial Watch FOIA, we learned that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad. In his words: "According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of the strategy, but described this outcome as a strategic opportunity to “isolate the Syrian regime.” Now, in a follow up piece to his stunning original investigative report...

A lot can happen between now and Election Day -- and with no GOP adult in the room, that's a frightening thought.There was a time when the well-worn “clown car” description of the Republican presidential primary field wasn’t so on-the-nose. But as of right now, not even a few months into the process, it’s impossible to avoid daily news items in which one GOP candidate or another is self-immolating with ludicrous remarks or unforced errors. Frankly, it’d be really fun to observe if it weren’t for a nagging sense of danger. We’ll circle back to that. Meanwhile, Sen. Marco Rubio,...

resident Obama took heat Monday for admitting he doesn't yet have a "complete strategy" in hand for training Iraqis to fight the Islamic State -- months into the coordinated campaign to defeat the deadly terrorist network. "When a finalized plan is presented to me by the Pentagon, then I will share it with the American people," Obama said, adding, "We don't yet have a complete strategy." House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said in a statement: "It is no surprise this administration does not have a 'complete strategy' for training Iraqis to fight ISIS. What is surprising is that...

At a press conference in Germany, President Obama admitted that he does not have a "complete strategy" to defeat ISIS: "When a finalized plan is presented to me by the Pentagon, then I will share it with the American people," said Obama. "We don't yet have a complete strategy because it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis as well about how recruitment takes place, how that training takes place. So the details of that are not yet worked out. Obama met with Iraqi prime minister just before today's press conference in Krun, Germany.

After the pro-Western government of China was forced to flee to the island of Taiwan in 1949, when the Communists took over mainland China, bitter recriminations in Washington led to the question: "Who lost China?" China was, of course, never ours to lose, though it might be legitimate to ask if a different American policy toward China could have led to a different outcome. In more recent years, however, Iraq was in fact ours to lose, after U.S. troops vanquished Saddam Hussein's army and took over the country. Today, we seem to be in the process of losing Iraq, if...

[SNIP]......"KARL:Okay,you've been very critical about how the president handled ISIS. Some are out there like Lindsey Graham saying we should send 10,000 U.S. ground troops right now to Iraq to help with this fight. Do you favor that?WALKER:I think we shouldn't rule anything out. It's a big mistake this president has made here and elsewhere about saying how long we would go or how much we would invest.KARL:I'm not talking about ruling it out,I'm saying would you do that,would you send...WALKER:No, I'm not arguing that's the first approach. But I'll tell you three specific things I think we should do...

BESMAYA BASE, Iraq—Sgt. Abbas Adwani is helping to train a brigade of fellow soldiers for what promises to be one of the toughest battles yet against Islamic State: an offensive on the city of Mosul—the extremist group’s stronghold in Iraq. But he and many of his trainees say they still can’t shake the bitter aftertaste of previous fights—some in northern Mosul a year ago, others in Anbar province, where they said they were left without ammunition or altogether abandoned by their commanders.

Thousands of Iranian, Afghan and Iraqi fighters have arrived in Syria to defend Damascus and its suburbs against Islamic State (IS), which has said it will mount an offensive against the capital following recent battlefield successes in Deir al-Zor and Palmyra. So far, 7,000 have reportedly been positioned around the city. They are expected to go on the offensive to retake from fundamentalist militiamen the suburb of Jobar from which they can easily access the eastern gates of the city. The total number of reinforcements sent by Iran could rise to 15,000 when fighters reach the northern port of Latakia...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is drawing a contrast with one of his 2016 competitors, arguing that U.S. combat troops are not needed now in Iraq. On ABC News’s “This Week,” Walker was asked whether he would send U.S. combat troops to Iraq now if he were commander in chief. “No, I believe right now we have a capacity to reclaim Iraq with the Iraqi forces that are there as long as we unleash the power that is already there of the American armed forces,” he said in an interview airing Sunday. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who announced his presidential...

Seth Moulton had earned two medals in Iraq for his valor. He’d witnessed brutal combat in four tours with the Marines. But none of that mattered when he showed up at the Veterans Health Administration hospital in Washington, D.C., where staff could not find records. “We’ll consider taking you as a humanitarian case,” a hospital staffer told Moulton, unaware that the would-be hernia patient was also a newly elected Massachusetts congressman. Thus began Moulton’s frustrating experience with the Veterans Affairs health system, a personal sampling of a chronically troubled medical bureaucracy that has drawn complaints from veterans, demands for improvements...

Iraqi troops and Shiite militias recaptured key parts of the refinery town of Beiji from ISIS Sunday, a general said. The victory comes a day after Iraqi forces were able to withstand two attacks from ISIS in the hotly contested Anbar province Saturday. The commander of the Interior Ministry's Quick Reaction Forces, Brig. Gen. Nassir al-Fartousi, told state TV that the Iraqi flag was raised on a local government building in Beiji and that troops were advancing to other areas, without elaborating. The spokesman of Joint Operations Command, Brig. Gen. Saad Maan Ibrahim, said the security forces "are now controlling"...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says he wouldn’t rule out a full-blown re-invasion of Iraq if he were to become the next commander-in-chief. The likely Republican presidential candidate and early frontrunner in several polls said he would consider a re-invasion if it were deemed necessary to protect American national security at home and abroad. "It would not be limited to anything out there," Walker told ABC's Jonathan Karl in an exclusive interview with for “This Week.” "Once we start saying how far we're willing to go or how many troops we're willing to invest, we send a horrible message, particularly to...

AMMAN (Reuters) - Sunni Islamist groups have overrun Syrian army outposts and villages in the Idlib province, closing on coastal strongholds of President Bashar al Assad's government, rebels and a monitor said on Saturday. The Syrian army said its troops had abandoned the town of Muhambal in the western part of Idlib and were regrouping for a counter-offensive. Social media videos showed army trucks and large caches of weaponry abandoned. The Islamist alliance, including al Qaeda's Nusra Front, calls its operation the "Army of Fatah", a reference to conquests that spread Islam across the Middle East from the seventh century....

Islamic State (ISIS) has conquered large parts of Syria and Iraq and set up 'branches' as far away as Libya and the Sinai Desert - but now, it has set its sights on Algeria. Months after successfully conquering the Libyan coastal city of Sirte, Algerian authorities say that ISIS has attempted to expand westward to conquer the largely-desert border region between the two countries. On Thursday, the Algerian army raised its alert level to the highest level and has drafted some 50,000 troops to ward off ISIS ahead of an anticipated invasion...

The comments follow allegations by Iraqi Kurdish authorities that they have evidence that ISIS used chlorine gas against their peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq. PERTH - Islamic State militants have used chlorine as a weapon and are recruiting highly trained technicians in a serious bid to develop chemical weapons, Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop warned. In a speech to an international forum of nations that works to fight the spread of such weapons, Bishop said the rise of militant groups such as ISIS, also known as Daish, posed “one of the gravest security threats we face today.” “Apart from some...

Iraq’s Ministry of Transportation announced that an Iraqi young woman has become the country’s first female commercial airline pilot, according to Arab media reports on Friday. The ministry’s media office said in a press release on its website is that “Dalia, an Iraqi woman, has received a pass after completing her qualifying courses to become the first Iraqi woman to fly a civilian aircraft,” also adding that “this makes her an accepted and welcomed member of Iraqi Airways.” The British educated woman will be the first Iraqi female to hold the title of “flight captain”. The Iraqi minister of transport...

President Obama's stunning declaration that the global image of the United States has greatly improved under his administration is another example of his ideology and narcissism's blinding him to his many policy failures. During a White House event with the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, he managed to turn the subject to himself, saying, "People don't remember -- when I came into office, the United States in world opinion ranked below China and just barely above Russia. And today, once again, the United States is the most respected country on earth." As evidence, the White House cited a Gallup poll,...

In an ironic twist of fate, more than two-thirds of the Humvees that the US government supplied to Iraq to fight terrorists have ended up in the hands of Islamic State militants. And the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has not wasted any time in converting those vehicles into one of its deadliest and most nightmarish tools: suicide car bombs.

Iran has sent 15,000 fighters to Syria to reverse recent battlefield setbacks for Syrian government troops and wants to achieve results by the end of the month, a Lebanese political source has told The Daily Star. The militia force, made up of Iranians, Iraqis and Afghanis, the source said, have arrived in the Damascus region and in the coastal province of Latakia. The source said the fighters are expected to spearhead an effort to seize areas of Idlib province, where the regime has suffered a string of defeats at the hands of a rebel-jihadi coalition. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander...