Free Republic

Turkish tanks on their way to Syria as part of the Euphrates Shield Operation launched in August 2016. Turkey is planning three cross-border military operations into Iraq and Syria as a follow-up to the Euphrates Shield Operation, a pro-government newspaper has claimed.The headline of the Yeni Safak daily on Thursday read, “Turkey to hit button” and said the Turkish government was going to initiate an operation into Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) bases in the Zap-Avashin and Shingal areas of the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq.According to the pro-government paper, another operation will be launched into the Karakozak area in northern Syria, where the Suleyman Shah...

WASHINGTON -- An Iraqi unit with U.S. and Australian advisers was hit by an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) mustard agent, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports. Twenty-five Iraqis required treatment but none of the advisers were injured Sunday, Martin reports. Brigadier General Yahya Rasool told the Associated Press that six soldiers suffered breathing problems from Sunday’s attack and were treated in a field clinic. An investigation was then launched to determine what type of gas was used. The attack marked the second chemical attack of its kind in several days. It occurred one day after...

An Iraqi military officer says Islamic State militants have launched a gas attack in a newly-liberated area in western Mosul.

He never made it to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban, but Kwon -- a Northern Virginia engineer who fled the United States nine days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks said it wasn't for lack of effort. Kwon, 29, a South Korea-born graduate of Virginia Tech who is serving an 11-year prison sentence as a result of his guilty plea last year on federal conspiracy and weapons charges. He has emerged as the prosecution's star witness in the case against Ali Al-Timimi, an American Islamic scholar charged with recruiting soldiers for the Taliban just five days after Sept....

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)” Those are among Jesus’ last words on the Cross that first Good Friday. It was a cry of agony, but not despair. The dying Christ, to rise again in three days, was repeating the first words of the 22nd Psalm. And today, in lands where Christ lived and taught and beyond where the Christian faith was born and nourished, the words echo. For it is in the birthplace of Christianity that Christians face the greatest of persecutions and martyrdoms since the time of Vladimir Lenin and Josef...

A State Department employee pleaded not guilty in court on Wednesday after being charged in an FBI investigation, the Department of Justice announced. Candace Claiborne, who worked in the Caucasus Affairs office of the State Department, is being charged for two felony offenses. Claiborne is being charged with “obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements to the FBI, both felony offenses, for allegedly concealing numerous contacts that she had over a period of years with foreign intelligence agents,” a Department of Justice release said. Claiborne, who has a Top Secret security clearance, failed to disclose her foreign contacts abroad...

"Iraqi security forces continue to progress as they liberate the western side of Mosul," U.S. Army Major General Joseph Martin, head of ground forces for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State, said

George W Bush, the former US president, is promoting a book of paintings, entitled Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief's Tribute to America's Warriors, depicting American soldiers - veterans from the ongoing "war on terror". The George W Bush Presidential Center tells us that the book "brings together sixty-six full-color portraits and a four-panel mural painted by President Bush of members of the United States military who have served our Nation with honour since 9/11 - and whom he has come to know personally". The hardcover edition costs an affordable $35; the deluxe, signed and personalised edition sets you...

Being Christian in Iraq after ISIS In biblical lands of Iraq, Christianity in peril after ISIS By Moni Basu, CNN Updated 11:37 AM ET, Mon November 21, 2016 Bartella, Iraq (CNN)Behnam Lalo crunches over jagged glass and tiptoes around a fallen altar, burned Bibles and a decapitated porcelain Virgin Mary. He picks up a cross from a heap of rubble and wipes away ashes with his priest's robes. He recognizes the cross immediately; he used it at confirmation ceremonies of so many boys and girls here at St. George Church. He no longer knows where some of them are. Or,...

ere on the 10-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I wonder how long it will be before we can discuss the war free from the contamination of myths. It may be sooner than many myth-purveyors expect. Just listen to this lecture by Mel Leffler, one of the leading historians of American diplomacy. He has been a harsh critic of Bush-era diplomacy and his speech does accept some of the conventional critique (specifically about the "hubris" of the Bush administration), but his analysis is far more balanced than the conventional wisdom on the topic. All in all, Leffler’s analysis is a...

the Iraqi military will slow an offensive pushing into the crowded old district of the city to try to minimize civilian casualties. The new tactics will mean fewer U.S. and Iraqi air strikes.

Accolades from both sides of the aisle and from foreign policy experts continue to flow to Donald Trump for his surgical strike in Syria. Christopher Kozak, a Syria analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, agreed the strike was a necessary development toward reestablishing U.S. deterrence, but stressed that the administration needs to persist in deterrent measures to reap lasting results. "The key point is that outside actors are going to be perceiving that this is a world where the U.S. and the White House will be willing to use military force in order to assert itself in...

Let’s do a quick re-cap on the past 27yrs of America’s War in Iraq (1990-2017):1990-Iraq had the 4th largest army in the world (about the size of Spain, Italy, France, and Britain combined).  They had chemical, biological, and were working on making an atomic bomb (even had the bomb ready, but not the radioactive material).  1991-Iraq was invaded by a United Nations Coalition of forces, driven from Kuwait, and forced to agree to terms of surrender; terms which included getting rid of WMD.What’s WMD?  WMD stands for Weapon of Mass Destruction.   It’s a term often used to describe chemical weapons,...

Jennifer Higgins, the recently named associate director of the Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations Directorate (RAIO) of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), is another Obama holdover at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) President Trump can remove. Higgins is a protege of Lori Scialabba, the former acting director of the USCIS. Prior to her sudden resignation in March, Breitbart News identified Scialabba as the number one Obama holdover at DHS President Trump could “fire or remove” because of her open defiance of his first travel ban order and her long record of intervening down the chain to personally assist refugees from Iraq,...

Last night Donald Trump ordered an attack on Syria. In less than 100 days, Trump has taken more action against Assad than obama did in eight years. The attack was appropriate, measured and proportional. It sent a message. To Assad and to North Korea. Trump did not have to set a red line and then walk away from it. President Obama’s decision to hold off on military action against the Assad regime after signaling that it was on the cards in response to last summer’s chemical weapons attack made the U.S. “appear weak,” former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said...

Three boys from Iraq and Sudan who were invited into the country via refugee programs pled guilty to charges of sexually brutalizing a five-year-old American child in Twin Falls, Idaho, last year. A seven-year-old Iraqi boy, plus 14-year-old and 10-year-old Sudanese boys, reportedly cornered the tiny victim in a laundry room at the Fawnbrook Apartments in Twin Falls, Idaho, on June 2. They stripped her naked, sexually assaulted her, urinated all over her body and in her mouth, and videotaped the attack... The attack sparked another national uproar among Americans — but only dismissive responses from managers in resident Barack...

The director of a top American spy agency said Tuesday that he believed that material from Iraq's illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war.The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material ''unquestionably'' had been moved out of Iraq.''I think people below the Saddam Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what...

The Syrian Air Force has destroyed a warehouse in Idlib province where chemical weapons were being produced and stockpiled before being shipped to Iraq, Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman said. The strike, which was launched midday Tuesday, targeted a major rebel ammunition depot east of the town of Khan Sheikhoun, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. The warehouse was used to both produce and store shells containing toxic gas, Konashenkov said. The shells were delivered to Iraq and repeatedly used there, he added, pointing out that both Iraq and international organizations have confirmed the use of...

The idea can no longer be shrugged off as a mere pipe dream -- the hope of the thousands of Iraqi Christians who were evicted from their villages three years ago by the criminal incursions of Islamic State (ISIS) -- that they might one day be able to return to their homes on the Plains of Nineveh. With the March 27th signing ceremony in the offices of the archdiocese of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Erbil, an agreement was reached between three Christian churches in Iraq -- the Syriac Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Chaldean Catholic Church...

The Islamic State has derided United States President Donald Trump as a "stupid idiot" and said his rise to power was a sign of America's bankruptcy. Targeting Trump directly for the first time since he took office, the Islamic State terror group in the 36-minute audio released by its spokesperson Abu Hasan al-Muhajir yesterday called him an Arabic term that means an "idiot", saying the US President does not know anything about Islam, NBC News reported. Terming the US as "bankrupt", it said, "the sign of your elimination are now clearer to everyone, as the most clear of signs is...