Free Republic

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday called the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates to clarify that he did not mean to imply in his remarks last week that the Gulf ally was supporting al-Qaida fighters in Syria. Biden spoke with Prince Mohamed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and a key Emirati leader, the White House said. It was the second time in two days that Biden had to call a key partner in President Barack Obama's coalition to walk back comments he made on Thursday, when he said that...

Secretary of State John Kerry, the world's top diplomat, is warning that global warming climate change poses as much of a threat to the world as ISIS. More from The Hill: Secretary of State John Kerry said the threats posed by climate change should be addressed with as much "immediacy" as confronting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and the Ebola outbreak. During a meeting with foreign ministers on Sunday, Kerry said global warming is creating "climate refugees." "We see people fighting over water in some places. There are huge challenges to food security and challenges to the...

Secretary of State John Kerry's speech at the groundbreaking ceremony for the U.S. Diplomacy Center in Washington, D.C. Wednesday included an intriguing aside that appeared to reference the upcoming 2016 presidential election. Kerry spoke after remarks by each of the five former secretaries of state in attendance: Henry Kissinger, James Baker, III, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, and Hillary Clinton (Condoleezza Rice and George Shultz were not present.) After extolling the accomplishments of each of the five former top diplomats, Kerry said, "Join me, all of you, in thanking five of our six living former secretaries of state... They all look...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry paid a visit Wednesday to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, where he met the tiny nation’s leaders and commemorated the ferocious World War II battles fought on Guadalcanal. Kerry met with Solomon’s Prime Minister Gordon Lilo and Governor General Frank Kabui to discuss sustainable development, ocean preservation and how the islands’ 600,000 residents are coping with the effects of climate change. …

'Stamp Out This Disease': Kerry Calls on the World to Help Defeat ISIS Secretary of State John Kerry is calling for a "much fuller response" to fight against brutal Islamist militants in Iraq, and suggested that "airstrikes alone won't defeat this enemy." Kerry — in an op-ed published in The New York Times on Friday — wrote that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) isn't satisfied wreaking havoc in Syria and Iraq, and "poses a threat well beyond that region" that could include strikes in the U.S. as well as "anywhere they could manage to travel undetected."

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday called for “a world coalition” to defeat the Islamic State (Isis) militant group which has seized control of large parts of Iraq and Syria and was cited by the British prime minister, David Cameron, when he raised the UK’s terror threat level to “severe” on Friday. In an op-ed for the New York Times that was released online on Friday night and in print on Saturday, Kerry wrote: “In a polarised region and a complicated world, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria presents a unifying threat to a broad array of...

Well, this sounds a bit like a strategy, does it not? John Kerry’s essay in the New York Times this weekend (in one of the more sleepy news cycles of the year) raises echoes from both Bush administrations in dealing with a clear threat to global security, and in fact explicitly cites the first Bush coalition to repel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. That has its own irony, but we’ll get back to that in a moment. Kerry prefaces this call for a global coalition on the imminent and clear threat from ISIS, which Kerry argues exceeds that of any...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Wednesday denounced the beheading of journalist Steven Sotloff as an act of “medieval savagery,” and said the militants who killed him were not the true face of Islam. “The real face of Islam is not what we saw yesterday, when the world bore witness again to the unfathomable brutality of ISIL terrorist murders,” Kerry said at a ceremony to honor the new special U.S. envoy to Muslim communities. Kerry called the 31-year-old Sotloff “a driven and courageous journalist,” saying he was killed by a “coward hiding behind a mask” from the Islamic State of...

One day after the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) released a video showing the brutal beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff--the second American journalist ISIS has decapitated on video--Secretary of State John Kerry gave a speech saying that Islam is a “peaceful religion based on the dignity of all human beings,” and that ISIS is not “the real face of Islam.” “I want to take advantage of this podium and of this moment to underscore as powerfully as I know how, that the face of Islam is not the butchers who killed Steven Sotloff.

One day after the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) released a video showing the brutal beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff--the second American journalist ISIS has decapitated on video--Secretary of State John Kerry gave a speech saying that Islam is a “peaceful religion based on the dignity of all human beings,” and that ISIS is not “the real face of Islam.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry predicted that the Islamic State (also known as ISIS and ISIL) would be destroyed within three years. The means: "massive wrongful death lawsuits." "These thugs might think they're cute filming the decapitation of their victims," Kerry said. "But by putting their torts on record they have opened themselves to legal liability that will cost them billions in damages." "No country on Earth has better or more expensive lawyers than we do," the Secretary boasted. "With skills honed from decades of tormenting corporate defendants in the courtroom, the plaintiffs' bar will eviscerate ISIS's defenses and...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday said a growing international coalition was ready and able to defeat the group calling itself the Islamic State (also ISIS or ISIL) within three years. "We're convinced that in the days ahead we have the ability to destroy ISIL," Kerry said Friday in Wales, where he was attending a NATO summit along with U.S. President Barack Obama. "It may take a year, it may take two years, it may take three years. But we’re determined it has to happen." Kerry's remarks came at the top of a meeting to build an anti-ISIS...

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: ISIL claims to be fighting on behalf of Islam but the fact is that its hateful ideology has nothing do with Islam. ISIL a manifestation of evil, a vicious terrorist organization and it is an organization that achieves its goals only through violence, repression and destruction. Fed by illicit funding and a stream of foreign fighters, it has seized territory and terrorized the people who live there regardless of their sect or ethnicity. There is literally no place for their barbarity in the modern world. This is a fight that the Iraqi people must win...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday would not say the United States is at war with ISIS, telling CNN in an interview that the administration's strategy includes "many different things that one doesn't think of normally in context of war." "What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counter-terrorism operation," Kerry told CNN's Elise Labott in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. "It's going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with ISIL, they can do so, but the fact is it's a major counterterrorism operation that...

The U.S. is not at war with ISIS, Secretary of State John Kerry insisted today. Kerry was asked today whether the U.S. was at war with ISIS. "No. Look, we’re engaged in a counterterrorism operation of a significant order," the secretary responded. "And counterterrorism operations can take a long time, they go on. I think 'war' is the wrong reference term with respect to that, but obviously it involves kinetic military action."

ANKARA--U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday played down chances of an imminent broad coalition against Islamic State militants, illustrating the difficulty Washington faces winning commitment for a military campaign in the heart of the Middle East. Kerry met Turkish leaders to try to secure support for U.S.-led action against Islamic State, but Ankara's reluctance to play a frontline role highlighted the challenges of building a willing coalition to wage what will likely be a tough offensive. Kerry has been touring the Middle East to build support for President Barack Obama's plan, announced on Wednesday, to strike both sides...

U.S Secretary of State John Kerry has stated that airstrikes alone will not be effective in defeating the genocidal ISIS militants. In an op-ed which appeared in the New York Times, Kerry suggested a global coalition using political, humanitarian, economic, law enforcement and intelligence tools to support military force in order to tackle ISIS, reported the Guardian. The U.S Secretary of State also added that he and defense secretary Chuck Hagel would be using Nato summit-scheduled for next week at Celtic Manor in Wales- to meet European ministers and to seek to "enlist the broadest possible assistance."

The United States is at war with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL), the White House and Pentagon said Friday, a day after Secretary of State John Kerry repeatedly declined to use that phrase. “In the same way that we are at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates around the globe, we are at war with ISIL,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at the White House. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby echoed that sentiment, telling reporters that while the effort was "not the Iraq war," they should "make no mistake, we know we...

US Secretary of State John Kerry challenged ISIL’s definition of itself and insisted that the self-proclaimed Islamic State is not, in fact, Islamic. “I studied Islam in college,” Kerry asserted. “None of the books I read or classes I took mentioned anything about beheading unbelievers or raping women. I’ll stack this up against the mutterings of an uneducated terrorist any day of the week.” Palestinian-Jordanian politician Muhammad Bayoudh Al-Tamimi disagreed with Kerry and maintained that ISIL’s “actions and words stem directly from the Quran and Sunna—two of Islam’s most sacred texts.” A spokesman for ISIL suggested that “perhaps this chattering...

Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that to counter the ideology of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its claim of a "religious foundation" for its actions, part of the strategy of the international coalition he is attempting to assemble must be to "begin to put real Islam out there." Kerry, in Paris for talks with various world leaders to build that coalition, further said that all of the Arab leaders he had spoken with earlier concurred about their focus on "real Islam and how important the Friday sermons are." The secretary of state recently...