Free Republic

Iran's Supreme Leader has approved co-operation with the US as part of the fight against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, sources have told BBC Persian. Ayatollah Khamenei has authorised his top commander to co-ordinate military operations with the US, Iraqi and Kurdish forces, sources in Tehran say. Iran has traditionally opposed US involvement in Iraq, an Iranian ally. However, Shia Iran sees the extremist Sunni IS group, which views Shias as heretics, as a serious threat.

This piece was written by a Hindu human rights activist who has seen the devastation of jihad in India. Warning: extremely graphic images at the link. “ISIS beheading children and women (after stripping naked) -parallels Hindu Story,” Satya Blog, August 26, 2014: From the advent of Islam, it is the brutality that was used to conquer. Well known US historian Will Durant and other authors have translated Arabs own memoirs on how the Islamic invaders have destroyed cultures and swathes of land with utmost brutality and inhumanity with mountains of Kafir’s heads and rivers of blood. Durant quotes how a...

Tuesday, August 19, 2014 What is Wrong with ISIS, is What is Wrong with Islam Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Know your enemy. To know what ISIS is, we have to clear away the media myths about ISIS. ISIS is not a new phenomenon. Wahhabi armies have been attacking Iraq in order to wipe out Shiites for over two hundred years. One of the more notably brutal attacks took place during the administration of President Thomas Jefferson. That same year the Marine Corps saw action against the Barbary Pirates and West Point opened, but even Noam...

Islamic militants killed 80 members of Iraq's Yazidi minority in a northern village, sources told Fox News on Friday. The latest killings came just a day after President Obama said U.S. air strikes and humanitarian aid drops on Sinjar mountain, where thousands of Yazidi have been stranded in an Islamic State siege had been ended.

MALIKIYA, Syria (AP) — In a dusty camp here, Iraqi refugees have new heroes: Syrian Kurdish fighters who battled militants to carve out an escape route for tens of thousands trapped on a mountaintop. While the U.S. and Iraqi militaries struggle to aid the starving members of Iraq's Yazidi minority with supply drops from the air, the Syrian Kurds took it on themselves to rescue them. ... For the past few days, fighters have been rescuing Yazidis from the mountain, transporting them into Syrian territory to give them first aid, food and water, and returning some to Iraq via a...

resident Barack Obama exhorted Iraqi leaders to come up with a political solution to governing their nation because "if they don't, there won't be a military solution to the problem," he told CNN in an interview Friday. Obama wants to see Iraq create a command structure that includes Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, which are the country's chief groups, he told CNN's Kate Bolduan. "We gave Iraq the chance to have an inclusive democracy," Obama said on the eve of U.S. military advisers arriving in Iraq to help the government besieged by militant extremists.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham's administrative division in Salahaddin proudly displayed photographs of the capture and execution of Iraqi soldiers after it took over a base in the province. The graphic photographs were released today on the Twitter account belonging to Wilayat Salahaddin, or Salahaddin Division. The ISIS has divided its "state" in Iraq and Syria into 16 administrative units, or wilayats. The stream of photographs begins by showing ISIS fighters in dirt-caked pickup trucks with machine guns mounted in the beds traveling to Tasfirat prison in the city of Tikrit, and then launching an assault...