Free Republic

President Obama has refused to commit American soldiers to the fight against the brutal Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), saying “we don’t have a strategy” to defeat the terrorists. Network newscasts have praised the president’s statements against ISIL, labeling them “tough.” They also praised the expediency of his “fighting words.” Newsbusters reports: After President Obama admitted on Thursday that he had “no strategy” for dealing with the ISIS terrorist network, on Wednesday, the network morning shows rushed to portray the aimless commander-in-chief as a tough-talking leader ready to “destroy” the radical killers. At the top...

What do Syrian President Bashar Assad and the U.S. Congress have in common? President Obama is unlikely to ask either for a formal green light to expand the American air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from Iraq into Syria. White House aides underline that the debate remains academic for now because the president has yet to decide whether he will order strikes on the brutal Islamist movement’s strongholds in Syria. “We have not speculated about what sort of authority would be required from Congress if the president were to make a decision to authorize...

<p>Military types say his big goal and his puny tools are a mismatch, which could mean he has been too clever by half. It’s likely he is ­underestimating the terrorists’ lust for blood and overestimating his ability to fool voters into thinking he is resolute.</p>

President Barack Obama favorably quoted and praised on Wednesday in his speech before the United Nations a controversial Muslim cleric whose organization has reportedly endorsed the terror group Hamas and supported a fatwa condoning the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Obama in his remarks offered praise to controversial cleric Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah and referred to him as a moderate Muslim leader who can help combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL or ISIS) radical ideology. However, Bin Bayyah himself has long been engulfed in controversy for many of his views, including the reported backing of...

Is it ISIL, ISIS or Islamic State? Whatever you call the jihadist group known for killing dozens of people at a time, carrying out public executions, beheadings, crucifixions and other brutal acts, there is no denying they have captured the world's attention. On the eve of President Barack Obama's speech outlining Washington's strategy against the group, in which he will likely refer to it as ISIL, we ask: What's in a name?

To most Americans, Obama’s use of the term ISIL instead of ISIS is a bit curious. It is widely acknowledged that ISIS stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria while ISIL stands for the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant. But is the difference in the acronyms harmless or do they represent a hidden and sinister message? Arguably America has two enemies today: one foreign and one domestic. The foreign enemy can easily be identified as ISIS while the domestic one is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Understanding your enemy is always a smart thing to do,...

ISIS or ISIL? There is a BIG difference! By Thomas Madison I posted this peculiarity last week. It has become increasingly conspicuous, annoying even, that while the rest of the world refers to the cockroaches beheading innocent people, including children, across Syria and Iraq, as ISIS, or IS, King Hussein, and the rest of his administration insist on referring to the lice-ridden scumbags as ISIL. “Tomaytoes/tomahtoes?” Hmmmmmm, I don’t think so. If you look closely at the literal, geographical difference between the two acronyms, it appears that there is much more to the story. ISIS is an acronym for the...

So Hussein (Obama) Decides to Call ISIS ISIL and the Media is Unquestioningly Complicit? Ainsley Earhardt: “They changed the name in the middle of all this to ISIL. They don’t have the right to do that. We’re going to continue to call them ISIS.” Harris Faulkner: “So our president is tipping his hat to them.” Earhardt: “They changed the name…” Faulkner: “So, it’s the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Levant is a bigger territory. That’s why they want to embrace that name and it includes many, many more countries than just Syria.” Jesse Watters: “And I think the...

Some conservatives have tried to make something of the fact that President Barack Obama routinely refers to the organization that seized the Iraqi city of Mosul and declared a caliphate not as the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” or ISIS, but as the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” or ISIL. In his televised address about the group on September 10, for example, he used the acronym ISIL twenty times. The ISIS vs. ISIL controversy first emerged, as far as I can tell, when FoxNews.com published “Obama’s Use of ISIL, not ISIS, Tells Another Story” on August 24,...

In one press conference after another, when referring to the Muslim terror super-group ISIS, United States President Barack Obama will use the term ISIL instead of their former name ISIS or current name Islamic State. Have you ever wondered about that? We have. ISIL stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. Now, to us Westerners we don’t really make much of a distinction, do we? No, honestly from our perspective its all about the same. But how would a Muslim living in the Middle East view it? Just what is the Levant anyway? Let’s take a look. The...

The Al Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant, al Qaeda in Iraq's affiliate in Syria, led an assault today that resulted in the takeover of a major dam on the Euphrates River in northern Syria. Additionally, the terror group claimed credit for a suicide assault on an intelligence headquarters in the city of Palmyra. The Al Nusrah Front spearheaded today's assault on the "strategic" dam in Thawra in Raqqa province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Nusrah Front led "other factions" of the insurgency to take control of Thawra, which "is considered one of the...

President Obama on Wednesday delivered a speech at the United Nations filled with his usual soaring rhetoric of global collectivism and the importance of “international norms.” But the president also displayed a shocking naivete about global affairs, religion, Islam — a Pollyannaish interpretation on the state of the world and America’s role in it. Although Mr. Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize just eight months into office, the president made his annual trip to the ineffectual world council to deliver a call to war. “Ladies and gentlemen, we come together at a crossroads between war and peace, between disorder and...

What if Iraq is not a country of people with common cultures and interests and generally accepted borders, but rather an amalgam of warring groups cobbled together by British and American diplomats? What if only a strongman like Hussein — however evil and ill suited for government by Western standards — can keep peace and stability in an artificial country like Iraq?

This is really scary...unless you're a Muslim.This is worth taking a few minutes to understand. Decoding Obama’s speech reveals some startling revelations “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Genesis 12:3 In one press conference after another, when referring to the Muslim terror super-group ISIS, United States President Barack Obama will use the term ISIL instead of their former name ISIS or current name Islamic State. Have you ever wondered about that? We have. ISIL stands for the Islamic State of...

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demanded Friday an end to Israeli occupation, telling the United Nations that the time for Palestinian independence had come. Abbas also vowed to seek war crimes prosecutions against Israel over what he called the 50-day “war of genocide” in Gaza that killed 2,140 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and left the enclave in ruins. “There is an occupation that must end now. There is a people that must be freed immediately,” Abbas said in an address to the U.N. General Assembly in New York. “The hour of independence of the state of Palestine has arrived.” Abbas, however, did...

NEW YORK (AP) — Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel on Friday of conducting a "war of genocide" and a "series of absolute war crimes" during the 50-day summer conflict in Gaza, but stopped short of saying he will pursue war crime charges against the Jewish state at the International Criminal Court...

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Friday that six-power talks with Iran being held at the United Nations had failed to yield progress on curbing Tehran’s nuclear program. “At this time as I speak, there is no significant progress,” Fabius told journalists on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. “We were due to have a meeting this morning of the P5+1 on one side and the Iranians on the other but because of a lack of progress, this meeting (had) to be called off,” Reuters quoted him saying. Israel, meanwhile, voiced vociferous objections to a reported American proposal to...

An El-Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv was turned into an “11-hour nightmare” after hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jewish passengers refused to sit next to women. According to those on board the flight descended into chaos because of their demands. The flight was full with Israelis, secular, orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews – known as Haredim – flying home to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. Even though the passengers had been pre-assigned seats before boarding, the ultra-Orthodox Jews refused to accept the arrangements because their beliefs required that men and women were segregated. As the aircraft prepared to take off, the haredi...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Thursday sought to leverage the crisis in the Middle East to ease sanctions on his country as part of nuclear talks, suggesting during a United Nations address that security cooperation between Iran and other nations could only occur if they struck a favorable nuclear deal. The Iranian president, meanwhile, sought to lay the blame for raging violence in the Middle East at the feet of western nations. He strongly condemned terrorism and described it as a serious threat, but also said the West’s “blunders” in the region have created a “haven for terrorists and extremists.”...

An El-Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv was turned into an “11-hour nightmare” after hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jewish passengers refused to sit next to women. According to those on board the flight descended into chaos because of their demands. The flight was full with Israelis, secular, orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews – known as Haredim – flying home to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. Even though the passengers had been pre-assigned seats before boarding, the ultra-Orthodox Jews refused to accept the arrangements because their beliefs required that men and women were segregated