Free Republic

Shia populist cleric and Iraqi nationalist Moqtada al Sadr won the May 12 Iraqi elections to the surprise of Iran, Turkey, the United States and many Iraq experts. Sadr is against Israel, the United States and Iran, and also opposes the presence of Turkish troops on Iraqi territory. Now he is the kingmaker of Iraq’s elections, winning 54 out of 329 seats in the Iraqi parliament. Washington was hoping Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al Abadi would win as a result of his defeat of Islamic State (ISIS), while Iran backed the Conquest alliance headed by the leader of the paramilitary...

One of the greatest political challenges Islam faces is the relationship between religion and state, a political construct that dominates and tolerates no rival. The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria highlighted this crisis, as the Muslim world continues to produce political bankruptcy through failed states, authoritarianism, and the ugly miscegenation of state and religion. Muslim scholars and civil society unanimously condemned ISIS as being neither Islamic nor a state, and decried it as being outside the Islamic tradition, as a literal group of Khawarij. Though well intentioned, the belief that ISIS was not a state is...

A radical cleric who led militia into bloody battles with coalition forces in Iraq is on course to win the country's election. Firebrand Iraqi Moqtada al-Sadr formed the Mahdi Army in 2003 which was responsible for bloodshed on the streets of Basra and the shooting down of coalition planes.

During my time in Mosul as a member of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division, a remarkably accessible and affordable device arrived on the battlefield. As my battalion helped Iraqi forces retake the city, we encountered some of the first small drones employed in modern conflict... Two events abruptly altered the way Iraq’s most elite ground unit perceived these devices. The first was after the Counter-Terrorism Service escorted advisors from the 82nd Airborne Division to a meeting with an Iraqi Army unit in Mosul proper. During the return to their outpost, the convoy spotted an unidentified...

Donald Trump said on Thursday that five “most wanted” leaders of the Islamic State militant group had been captured, an apparent reference to the capture of five commanders of the militant group by Iraq. Iraq had described the capture of the Isis commanders as “some of the most wanted” leaders of the group. The list did not include Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The US-led coalition said that Iraqi forces working with US-backed Syrian rebels had captured five senior Isis leaders.

Al Qaeda's Hidden Roots By Laurie Mylroie The American Spectator | September 25, 2006 Cyrus Nowrasteh, scriptwriter for ABC's docudrama The Path to 9/11, defends the film's controversial, invented scenes, noting that the first attack on the World Trade Center occurred one month after Bill Clinton took office, and eight years passed in which Clinton did little to thwart the growing menace. Nowrasteh makes a crucial point, but it is not necessary to resort to fiction. Our understanding of the terrorist attacks -- going back to the 1993 Trade Center bombing -- has become loaded with errors obscuring Clinton's fecklessness....

The Christian population in Iraq has been decimated, dropping from 1.4 million in 2003 to just 275,000, according to a report released this month (2016). The report, compiled by the Knights of Columbus/IDC, tells a horrific story of religious/ethnic purge in the Middle East that has produced the systematic eradication of Christians... Christianity’s roots in Iraq date to the first century and has fallen prey to Islamist militants committed to their extermination. The Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil testified for many centuries Christians of Iraq experienced hardships and persecutions “but what we have now experienced are the worst acts of genocide...

The United States, the Global Coalition, and local partners, including the Syrian Democratic Forces, are launching operations to liberate the final ISIS strongholds in Syria. The fighting will be difficult, but we and our partners will prevail. We will defend United States, Coalition, and partner forces if attacked. The days of ISIS controlling territory and terrorizing the people of Syria are coming to an end. We will work with our NATO ally Turkey and our partners Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon to secure their borders from ISIS. We will seek further fair share contributions in forces, material, and resources from...

Not all scholars agree that the artifacts should be returned right away. "If these tablets are returned and if they are from Irisagrig, it will be a great tragedy for scholarship that they will not be published before they are returned," said David Owen, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. Owen has published a number of scientific papers describing tablets from Irisagrig, but has not worked with Hobby Lobby and has not studied the seized texts. "Once they enter the bowels of the Iraq Museum, it is unlikely scholars will ever have acccess to them, nor are...

Jean Duley testified that she was "scared to death" of Bruce Ivins after he left her a string of harassing phone messages, according to an audio recording taken during a July 24 peace order hearing. Duley, 45, told Judge Milnor Roberts that Ivins planned to "go out in a blaze of glory," had bought a bulletproof vest and a gun and planned to kill his co-workers. The audio recording was obtained by The Frederick News-Post on Monday. Duley told the court she got to know Ivins while running group and individual counseling sessions at the Comprehensive Counseling Associates in Frederick...

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has evidence that Iranian officials were "brazenly lying" when they said Iran wasn't pursuing nuclear weapons and that the Islamic republic is keeping an "atomic archive" at a secret compound. "Tonight I'm here to tell you one thing: Iran lied -- big time," Netanyahu said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday revealed a cache of files he claims were obtained from Iran and prove Tehran ran a secret program to build nuclear weapons. Iranian leaders have long said their nuclear program was only for peaceful purposes. But Netanyahu on Monday revealed tens of thousands of pages of documents, which he said were copied from a "highly secret location" in Iran. He said the evidence provided "new and conclusive proof of the secret nuclear weapons program that Iran has been hiding for years from the international community in its secret atomic archive." His remarks come...

If Israel and Iran want to set new rules for the game played on the Syrian front, and if they would rather avoid all-out war, they should look back at the understandings reached between Israel and former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad in Lebanon back in 1976. Both parties could stand to learn from what happened there.After the events of “Black September” in 1970, the PLO was expelled from Jordan, taking up residence in Lebanon. This led to a conflict with the Christian population, which appealed to the Syrian army for help. Long seeing themselves as the patrons of Lebanon, responsible...

Senior members of the Israeli security establishment are predicting that the month of May will be one of the most volatile periods in the current era. Maj. Gen. (Res.) Amos Yadlin, the former head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Military Intelligence Directorate, said in an interview published April 22, “I have not seen a May this dangerous since May 1967.”Of particular note, two of the five military fronts concerning Israel have rapidly escalated in recent months. In the campaign against Iran being waged in Syria, the two sides have inched closer to an unprecedented tipping point. The situation in...

Jimmy Carter’s unstinting hatred for Israel paved the way. The Washington Free Beacon reported Monday that the Zionist Advocacy Center is alleging in a suit that former President Jimmy Carter’s nonprofit organization, the Carter Center, “has used taxpayer funding to provide material support to international terrorist groups, including Hamas.” Given Carter’s longstanding and abundantly established hatred for the Jewish state, this allegation is no great shock. Nonetheless, the specter of an American President’s foundation funding a jihad terrorist group demonstrates how far we have fallen. The Zionist Advocacy Center further alleges that the Carter Center “received more than $30 million...

Dr. Thos. Sowell interviewed by Ben Shapiro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FQUUGt9JhA shows how the policies of the private establishments that regulate so many populations, like minorities, are purely self-interested. What is there about welfare that requires that it destroy the Black family by shutting out fathers? Because it helps ensure the self-perpetuation of the social welfare establishment since LBJ's Great Society. As Sowell in research & writing shines a light on the Emperor's nakedness, Trump is cutting out the old Anglo-American foreign policy establishment. (Anglo American Establishment Carroll Quigley http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/the_anglo-american_establishment.pdf ). The old African mineral wealth, S. African gold & diamonds, Cecil Rhodes...

The US will relocate its military operations to Iraq and the Mediterranean, after drawing down its troops in Syria, Defense Secretary James Mattis disclosed to Congress on Thursday, April 26. His comments were enigmatic: “Right now we are not withdrawing US troops from Syria,” Mattis said. “You’ll see increased operations on the Iraqi side of the border and the French just reinforced us in Syria with special forces here in the last two weeks. This is an ongoing fight right now,” he said. But what did he mean? US sources explain that while Washington is committed to fighting Islamic State...

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sat down on Sunday, April 29 in Tel Aviv to discuss the Iranian threat, a Russian-backed Syrian force struck across the Euphrates to capture a string of US-backed fortified Kurdish SDF villages. This incursion of a key US area of influence region in eastern Syria, if confirmed, would rip up a key element of the US-Russian de-confliction zones accord and provide Iran with a springboard for a leap up to the Iraqi border. Pompeo, on his first Middle East Trip as Secretary of State, reiterated in Tel Aviv –...

US coalition jets hit attacking forces believed to include Iranian-backed militias operating in Deir Ezzor area: Diplomat US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said they expelled Syrian troops who briefly took control of a string of villages in oil rich areas east of the Euphrates River near the Iraqi border on Sunday.SDF forces led by the Kurdish YPG militia said they launched a counter-attack against Syrian troops backed by Russian forces, adding they were driven "far away" from four villages they had seized earlier in the day."Our forces regained the initiative," they said in a statement.It did not say if the...

The head of Baghdad's Central Criminal Court sentenced the women on Sunday The court said the women were found guilty of 'joining and supporting ISIS' Six women from Azerbaijan and four from Tajikistan were also given life in prison Iraq on Sunday sentenced 19 Russian women to life in prison for joining the Islamic State group, the latest in a series of heavy verdicts against foreign women linked to the jihadists. The head of Baghdad's Central Criminal Court, which deals with terrorism cases, said the women were found guilty of 'joining and supporting IS', according to an AFP journalist...