Free Republic

Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists reportedly tied nine young men to iron poles in Mosul before hacking them in half with a chainsaw. The young men, identified as teens by the Daily Star, were sentenced to death by an ISIS sharia for allegedly being involved in a resistance movement. U.S.-backed Iraqi forces are getting ready to launch an offensive to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the terrorist group’s last major stronghold in the country. The young men were executed in public.

ISIS thugs have a chainsawed nine youths in half in front of a crowd after they were accused of belonging to a “resistance faction”. The young men were lashed to iron poles in Tal Afar Square, Mosul, and then bisected with an electric cutter. All nine had been sentenced to death by a sharia court for their supposed involvement in a resistance movement. An anonymous source told Iraqi News: “ISIS fighters have executed nine youths of Mosul. The outfit accused these youths of belonging to an anti-ISIS resistance faction. “The death sentence pronounced by ISIS sharia court stated that the...

As the Islamic State continues its genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq, human rights activist and lawyer Jacqueline Isaac testified at the United Nations about some of the atrocities, including parents in Syria who were shown a video of their kidnapped daughters being raped and tortured by ISIS, and then given the dismembered body parts of their daughters in plastic bags. Although Isaac, vice president of the humanitarian group Roads of Success, testified on April 28, her remarks – at the United Nations in New York City -- about the atrocities against women captured...

Nation-building has become a very controversial term. And with good reason. Our conviction that we can reconstruct any society into another America is unrealistic. It ignores our own exceptionalism and overlooks the cultural causes of many conflicts. It assumes that a change of government and open elections can transform a tribal Islamic society into America. They can’t and won’t. But it’s also important to recognize that what we have been doing isn’t nation-building, but Islam- building. Nation-building in Germany and Japan meant identifying a totalitarian ideology, isolating its proponents from political power and recreating a formerly totalitarian state as an...

I caught up with this story last week but didn’t bring it up before now, mostly because it was just too sad. The tale in question revolves around a court case featuring Darryl Lee Wright. Darryl volunteered to serve his country in the National Guard and was deployed to Iraq in 2005. While there, his vehicle was struck by an enemy rocket, injuring Mr. Wright physically and leaving him with severe PTSD to the point where he was completely crippled in terms of interacting with normal society. He was eventually awarded the Purple Heart and Combat Action Badge. Returning home...

Iraqi media are reporting that ISIS militants have opened the taps of an oil pipeline in the town of Qayyarah, in northern Iraq. Crude is flowing in the streets, as images from Qayyarah show, and people are worried about what will happen if someone decides to set the crude on fire. Iraqi News notes that this is not the first time that the ISIS militants have resorted to this response: before Qayyarah was liberated by the Iraqi army and the U.S.-led coalition forces, the terrorist group spilled crude from the local pipeline into the Tigris River, which runs through the...

The News: A Letter to President Barack Obama and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of August 19, 2016 was signed by a bipartisan group of 36 former national security officials, e.g., Democratic Party luminaries like Ed Rendell, Gov. & DNC Chair, Howard Dean Gov. & DNC Chair; and prominent Republicans, e.g., Mayor Rudy Giuliani, DHS Secretary Tom Ridge, & UN Amb John Bolton. The letter stated, “We fear that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS), and its Quds Force will attack the remaining residents [of Camp Liberty Iraq].” On Aug. 2, the MOIS website stated its opposition to the...

Back in April 2016, the New York Times published an article highlighting a number of Facebook pages in the Middle East being used to sell U.S. military equipment. A terrorist hoping to buy an antiaircraft weapon in recent years needed to look no further than Facebook, which has been hosting sprawling online arms bazaars, offering weapons ranging from handguns and grenades to heavy machine guns and guided missiles. The Facebook posts suggest evidence of large-scale efforts to sell military weapons coveted by terrorists and militants. The weapons include many distributed by the United States to security forces and their proxies...

ISIS hurled several gay men from the op of Mosul’s tallest building recently. Of course, the kids were brought out to witness the gory execution. via Religion of Peace: Four men were thrown to their deaths after being found guilty of homosexuality and sodomy in the Nineveh province in Iraq. Two of the men were allegedly part of the ISIS organisation. The men were thrown from the top floor of a former insurance company’s offices in Mosul. The location is apparently used often for such executions. A local source told IraqiNews.com that “ISIS members executed four people, including two of...

Frightening footage has emerged purporting to show Kurdish security forces removing an explosive belt from an alleged Islamic State teenage suicide bomber moments before it was about to be detonated in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Sunday. The chilling scene, caught on camera and uploaded to YouTube by Kurdish channel Kurdistan24, shows the boy’s hands being held by two law enforcement officers as another member of the security establishment attempts to disarm the device. Wearing a Barcelona football shirt before it was cut off, the boy, believed to be 12 or 13 years old, according to Kurdish media...

(CNN)Dramatic video has emerged of Iraqi police stripping an explosive belt from a child suspected in a suicide bombing attempt for ISIS. The footage appears to show security personnel restrain a visibly upset boy while they carefully cut the belt from the youth's torso in Kirkuk. Once the belt has been removed, the boy is scooped up and taken away. Kurdistan 24, a broadcast news station based out of Irbil, Iraq, aired Sunday's capture. Authorities said they believe the 15-year-old came to Kirkuk a week ago from Mosul, ISIS' most significant stronghold outside Syria. "He was captured before he reached...

Greetings Readers, Friends, and Other Visitors: The Time Traveler appeared suddenly in my study on New Year’s Eve, 2004. He was a stolid, grizzled man in a gray tunic and looked to be in his late-sixties or older. He also appeared to be the veteran of wars or of some terrible accident since he had livid scars on his face and neck and hands, some even visible in his scalp beneath a fuzz of gray hair cropped short in a military cut. One eye was covered by a black eyepatch. Before I could finish dialing 911 he announced in a...

In the most direct public warning to Moscow and Damascus to date, the new US commander of American troops in Iraq and Syria is vowing to defend US special operations forces in northern Syria if regime warplanes and artillery again attack in areas where troops are located.

Integration into the job market for migrants has become a major ongoing task for the German government but in one town migrants are refusing to work entirely. One of the major issues of the migrant crisis is Germany and elsewhere has been the economic impact the massive wave of migrants will have in Europe. While some experts initially were optimistic about a potential vast new source of skilled labour, most economists have come to the conclusion that the migrants who have arrived are for the most part unskilled and poorly educated. Yet in own Saxon town, they have moved...

POLICE have arrested nine Iraqi migrants on suspicion of gang raping a 28-year-old German woman, who was subjected to a horrifying four hour assault. The nine men, who are all seeking asylum in Austria, had travelled to Vienna for New Year’s Eve celebrations where the assault took place. There they allegedly drugged the woman and dragged her to nearby apartment block before carrying out the brutal attack. The arrests were made in Austria after DNA evidence and CCTV footage was used to successfully build a case against the alleged rapists. It comes as Austria’s anti-immigrant Freedom Party desperately attempts to...

A former brigadier general revealed on Fox News Monday some new information about the White House's role in U.S. Central Command's skewing of intelligence to downplay the threats of ISIS and Al Qaeda. Last week, a House Republican task force concluded in a 15-page report that U.S. military leaders altered intelligence reports "to paint a rosier picture" of the U.S.-led fight against ISIS than intelligence analysts believed was warranted. The report blamed “structural and management changes” at the intelligence directorate for the distortions, but stopped short of explaining WHY the changes were made. According to Defense News, "the problems followed...

Myriam, ISIS may have weapons and financial power, while you don't even have a house. But you are much stronger because of the power of forgiveness and love that Jesus has planted in your little heart. "By their fruit you will recognize them" - Matthew 7:16. And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces launched a fresh attack on Islamic State (IS) forces early on Sunday as part of a campaign to capture Mosul, the militants' de facto capital in Iraq, Kurdish officials said. The advance began after heavy shelling and air strikes by a United States-led coalition against IS forces, a Reuters correspondent reported from Wardak, 30 km (19 miles) southeast of Mosul. The militants fought back, firing mortars at the advancing troops and detonating at least two car bombs. A Peshmerga commander said a dozen villages had been taken from the ultra-hardline Sunni militants as Kurdish forces headed toward...

Martha Raddatz, who was hosting ABC's This Week this morning, had a chance to score a major scoop but she blew it by failing to ask a very obvious followup question to former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. You can see the original question posed by Radddatz at the 3:32 mark of the video below about Panetta having supported a small number of American troops remaining in Iraq and where then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood on this. This was followed by Panetta completely dodging the question on Clinton's position. However, instead of pressing Panetta on this, Raddatz avoided the...

One of the earliest major setbacks in the war against ISIS came last June when the U.S.-backed Iraqi army was routed by Islamic militants in the northern Iraq city of Mosul. Government forces retreated from the Islamic jihadists’ assault. They left behind a trove of costly military hardware, including U.S.-made armored Humvees, trucks, rockets, machine guns and even a helicopter. Last weekend, the new Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, gave Iraqi state television the first detailed accounting of those lost weapons. Some were old or barely functioning, but others were in good shape and of great value to the ISIS...