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A U.S. Navy SEAL killed by Islamic State militants during an "extremely heavy, extremely intense" firefight with U.S. forces and Kurdish Peshmerga troops in northern Iraq Tuesday was identified Tuesday evening by Arizona's governor. He was identified Tuesday evening by Gov. Doug Ducey as Charlie Keating IV. Ducey ordered all state flags be lowered to half-staff from sunrise to sunset Wednesday in honor of Keating, who was a graduate of Phoenix's Arcadia High School. The 31-year-old Keating attended the Naval Academy before becoming a Navy Seal based out of Coronado, California Keating was the grandson of Charles Keating, Jr., the...

The 31-year-old Keating attended the Naval Academy before becoming a Navy Seal based out of Coronado, California Keating was the grandson of Charles Keating, Jr., the Arizona financier at the center of the 1989 savings and loan scandal, which led to five U.S. Senators being accused of corruption. The senators allegedly involved were dubbed 'The Keating Five.' Keating was advising Peshmerga forces but was less than 2 miles behind the front lines in the town of Tel Askuf, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement. A defense official told Fox News the he was killed by small arms...

A U.S. Navy SEAL killed in combat in Iraq was based in Coronado, California, NBC 7 San Diego has confirmed. "It is a combat death," Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters in Germany Tuesday. Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said the SEAL was killed near Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city that has been in the hands of ISIS militants since 2014, according to The Associated Press.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State broke through a line of Kurdish forces in Iraq and killed a U.S. service member Tuesday who were there to advise them, a U.S. defense official told the Daily Beast. U.S. advisers had arrived on Monday morning to assist the Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, in the northern city of Mosul, checking on “their morale and defenses,” the official said. The U.S. forces were as many as 3 miles from the frontlines when the ISIS fighters attacked, the official said. ISIS fighters “appeared to penetrate the forward line” and began attacking the peshmerga. A U.S. service...

The radical Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, which has pursued an Islamic Caliphate since 1953, held a massive conference in Ramallah on Saturday, calling upon the armies of Jordan and Egypt to intervene directly and “free Palestine." Thousands participated in the event, which was billed as “Tent of Believers: the Caliphate Through the Path of the Prophet, and the Tent of Hypocrites, Heretics, and Imperialists." Black-and-white flags bearing the pledge of allegiance to Allah and Mohammed were waved while participants chanted slogans calling for the “liberation” of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. “Officers and soldiers, break down the borders [of Israel],"...

Supporters of the powerful Shia cleric stormed Baghdad’s parliament, leaving legislators quivering in the basement and Iraq on the edge of political chaos. Hussain Jassim refused to leave the Green Zone, once considered the impenetrable citadel at the heart of Baghdad, until his leader Muqtada al-Sadr ordered him to do so. “We have entered parliament and we have broken it’s prestige in front of people because they are thieves, they deserve for that to happen to them,” Jassim told The Daily Beast. He was one of thousands of angry protestors who on Saturday raided the Iraqi legislature, chasing MPs out...

“Palestinian” is a euphemism for Islamic Jew hatred. Previously I published the actual flag of Palestine before 1948. (above.) What follows is an “aha moment” in Muslims’ war on Israel. Now here is further proof of the lie (as if we needed any more) of the vicious historical revisionism by the Muslim world to erase the Jewish State and create a mythical Islamic narrative surrounding five thousand years of Jewish history. 9,000 Photos from 1800’s British Mandate of Palestine – with no trace of ‘Palestinians’ By Palestine/Israel Conflict, February 13, 2013 (thanks to Dan F): Where ARE all those Palestinians,...

again another country moves their troops into Syria without Syrian approval. Norway will send some 60 troops, including special forces soldiers, to train, advise and give operational support to Syrian fighters battling Islamic State militants, the country's prime minister said on Monday. The troops will be based in Jordan. The Norwegian Parliament will need to be consulted if the troops are to operate within Syria, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said. Norway had previously sent 120 soldiers to Iraq to help to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State in northern Iraq. Those troops are still in Iraq. Norway's decision...

The weapons were thereWe are rerunning this piece from our October 29, 2003 issue. It was originally published by The Washington Times.Iraqi military officers destroyed or hid chemical, biological and nuclear weapons goods in the weeks before the war, the nation's top satellite spy director said yesterday. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria. Other goods probably were sent throughout Iraq in small quantities and documents probably were stashed in...

It was only a matter of time before ordinary Iraqis stormed the walled-in palaces of their corrupt politicians. hile the United States has been fixated on the Islamic State and the liberation of Mosul, the attention of ordinary Iraqis has been on the political unraveling of their own country. This culminated on Saturday when hundreds of protesters breached the U.S.-installed “Green Zone” at the heart of Baghdad for the first time and stormed the Iraqi parliament while Iraqi security forces stood back and watched. The demonstrators, supporters of radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, toppled blast walls, sat in the vacated...

Hundreds of supporters of a powerful Shia Muslim cleric camped outside parliament in Baghdad overnight a day after thousands stormed the Green Zone and entered the parliament building, prompting the declaration of a state of emergency. Hundreds of people gathered in protest at the failure of Iraqi MPs to convene for a vote to approve new ministers. The unrest comes after weeks of political turmoil in Baghdad over efforts by the prime minister Haider al-Abadi, to replace party-affiliated ministers with technocrats. MPs failed to reach a quorum to approve the measures on Saturday. On Saturday the protesters broke into the...

Hundreds of supporters of Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stormed into Baghdad's Green Zone and broke into the Iraqi parliament building. The protesters, who had gathered outside the heavily fortified district, known as the Green Zone, crossed a bridge over the Tigris River chanting: 'The cowards ran away!' in apparent reference to departing lawmakers before breaking into the parliament building. The staggering scenes came after Sadr denounced Iraq's politicians' for their failure to reform a political quota system blamed for rampant corruption.

As can be seen in the photo (and live webcast below), hundreds of demonstrators occupied the country's parliament. Video from inside the building showed jubilant crowds waving Iraqi flags and shouting "peaceful, peaceful." Supporters of Sadr, whose fighters once controlled swaths of Baghdad and helped defend the capital from ISIS, have been demonstrating for weeks at the gates of the Green Zone, responding to their leader's call to pressure the government to reform.

A Russian official has criticized Washington's lack of authorization from Syria to deploy troops. The UN warned Damascus and Moscow of increased violence against civilians after a hospital was bombed, leaving 30 dead. Moscow sees the deployment of an additional 250 US military personnel in Syria as an affront to Damascus' territorial sovereignty, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russia's state-owned TASS news agency on Friday. "If we are talking from the position of the foreign minister, we - of course - cannot not be concerned over the fact that the US carries out such actions without coordination with...

Iraqi officials have reportedly revoked the broadcaster's license, marking the third time Al Jazeera has been banned in Iraq. The news organization says it was told it had violated codes of conduct and other rules. The Qatar-based news organization on Wednesday said its bureau in Baghdad had been shut down after the government accused it of violating laws. According to the pan-Arab broadcaster, Iraq's Communications and Media Commission (CMC) accused the company of "violations of the official codes of conduct and broadcasting rules and regulations." Those rules and regulations were issued in 2014 to regulate media coverage of the "war...

The United States will soon surround the Islamic State on three sides with rocket artillery batteries. The plans follow months of aerial bombardment, but the ground-launched rockets represent an expanding and less-publicized element to the war. On April 26, the Pentagon announced it will send U.S. Army troops and the rocket launchers to southern Turkey. The ground combat branch already has similar units in Iraq and Jordan — and the use of the launchers are by no means exclusive to these three countries.

...These residents depicted a bleak picture of conditions inside the city, with prices soaring for some basic staples while other items have completely run out. A 100-kilogram (220 pound) bag of flour now costs nearly 2 million Iraqi dinars ($1,550), compared to around 51,600 dinars ($40) in the past. Vegetable prices have risen by 500 percent and a 450-gram (16-ounce) can of powdered baby formula has jumped from 3,870 dinars ($3) to 144,000 dinars ($112). Items like sugar and tea are simply not available at any price. Some residents, however, pointed out that families connected to IS members appear to...

Dozens of IT experts, media workers desert ISIS in Mosul April 30, 2016 Middle East & World ARA News ERBIL – Dozens of foreign IT experts from the radical group of Islamic State (ISIS) have deserted the group’s ranks in Iraq’s northwestern city of Mosul over the past few days, leaving a remarkable vacuum in the ISIS-linked media centers in the region, local sources reported on Wednesday. Local sources confirmed that hundreds of foreign jihadis have recently left ISIS ranks and returned to their home countries, including technical support experts. This has put a pressure on the group’s media centers,...

... If Syria’s largest city is surrounded by government troops, the strategic situation in Syria could change very rapidly for the worse, not only for Syrians, but also for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—and for the Obama Administration, which has banked heavily on the crumbling peace talks to end five years of civil war and an expanding presence for ISIS amid the chaos. The encirclement would also be a major strategic advance for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has drawn his forces in Syria, but has also been helping the Assad regime conduct more focused military operations under a two-month...

The overwhelming majority of young Palestinians believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be resolved through negotiations. A poll of Palestinian youth, defined as ages 16-30, published Monday by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center depicts a community that is socially conservative, supports violence against Israel, is skeptical about its leadership and opposes the Islamic State. It also shows significantly greater support for violence among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip than among those in Judea and Samaria While 47.4 percent of youths in Judea and Samaria oppose stabbing attacks, 78.6 percent of Gaza youths support them, according to the poll. In addition,...