Free Republic

Islamic State militants capture key Syrian air base - giving them open road to the sea and massive store of weapons and ammunition. Islamic State militants have seized a major Syrian air base, wiping out the last government stronghold in a province dominated by jihadists. The extremists won a week-long battle today to capture the sprawling Tabqa base 25 miles from their stronghold in Raqqa, reportedly killing dozens of soldiers in the process. The base was reportedly one of the military's largest facilities in the region, with several warplane squadrons, helicopters, tanks, artillery and ammunition. Its capture is a huge...

Arizona Sen. John McCain on Thursday called President Obama's remarks on the execution of American journalist James Foley "moving" -- but also said his policy on the Islamic State terror group is failing. "He said we have to contain ISIS. We don't have to contain ISIS. We have to defeat ISIS, and we have to do whatever is necessary," the Republican lawmaker said on Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "Failures of policies have consequences, and we're paying [for] those consequences in enormous cost of human blood. It's a debacle, and he still doesn't get it."

As Congress hurtled toward a government shutdown in the fall of 2013, Rep. Paul Ryan looked around at fellow Republicans who were agitating to shutter national parks, federal agencies and Head Start programs. "This can't be the full measure of our party and our movement," Ryan writes of that moment in his new book, released Tuesday. "If it is, we're dead and the country is lost." Such moments of raw frustration pepper Ryan's "The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea," a book as much about his front-row seat as Republicans' favorite budget wonk as it is about his political future....

ALONG with a billion Muslims across the globe, I turn to Mecca in Saudi Arabia every day to say my prayers. But when I visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the resting place of the Prophet Muhammad, I am forced to leave overwhelmed with anguish at the power of extremism running amok in Islam’s birthplace. Let’s be clear: Al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram, the Shabab and others are all violent Sunni Salafi groupings. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has been the official sponsor of Sunni Salafism across the globe. What is religious...

Buried in the New Yorker and yet uncovered by Paul Joseph Watson is an item by George Packer about "instructions" handed-down from on-high by Cheney's office -- call it Neocon Central -- to sell the attack of Iran to the American people. Packer quotes Barnett Rubin, described as having "connections to someone at a neoconservative institution in Washington," and this institution, likely the American Enterprise Institute, has instructed the complaisant corporate media to sell the attack. "They [the source's institution] have "instructions" from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week...