Free Republic

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's Shi'ite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Saturday that he had ordered his air force to halt strikes on civilian areas, addressing a condition set by Sunni Muslim tribal figures to support his campaign against Islamic State fighters. Rights groups say Iraqi government attacks this year, many of them in areas held by the Islamic State which controls one third of the country, have indiscriminately targeted civilians. "I have ordered the Iraqi Air Force to halt shelling of civilian areas even in those towns controlled by ISIS," Abadi said on his official Twitter account, using the...

US airstrikes already making headway, says Israeli official. Israel may play a frontline role in the international coalition forming against Islamic State – the jihadi group sweeping through Iraq and Syria in its bid to reinstate a Middle East caliphate. As world powers unite around a US-led plan for military action to topple the militant group, Jerusalem is signaling that if Islamic State decides to spread out to Jordan – Israel will not hesitate to act. "We will use any means necessary," a senior Israeli official told local television station Channel 2. "Let me make this clear: If Islamic State...

Funding for the conference was provided by Clinton donor and Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury, according to organizers. The wealthy businessman pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2009. Chagoury is also reportedly backer of Lebanese politician Michel Aoun, Hezbollah’s top Christian ally in the country, according to U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks. Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Bechara Raï, who was scheduled to speak during the same keynote slot as Cruz on Wednesday evening, has called Israel an “enemy state that is occupying Lebanese territory” and defended Hezbollah’s right to attack the Jewish state... (Snip) “I decided we should be present and...

President Obama held an Oval Office meeting with Middle Eastern-based Arab Christians on 9/11, one member of whom is a loud and proud supporter of the terrorist group Hezbollah. The day before, members of the same group, holding a conference under the name In Defense of Christians, booed and shouted down keynote speaker Senator Ted Cruz ”It’s surprising White House staffers allowed Maronite Patriarch Bashara Rai to meet with the President in the first place. As the Washington Free Beacon reports, the Lebanon-based Hezbollah supporting cleric isn’t shy about his views. “Everyone says why is Hezbollah carrying arms?” said Rai...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Struggling Syrian rebels that President Barack Obama once derided as "former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth" now form a key pillar of the U.S. leader's strategy to beat back the militant insurgency known as Islamic State. For over three years, Obama has kept the so-called moderate rebels at arm's length. While giving verbal and limited material support, he and his spokesmen often said publicly that adding more weaponry to the civil war would only make things worse. Now Obama is taking a different tack as he sets out his strategy to defeat the Syrian-based Islamic State,...

The parents and children of this Syrian family sleep on the streets of Istanbul in Turkey. They are among the 3 million refugees from Syria, many of whom live in desperate conditions. Photo: UNHCR/S. Baldwin 29 August 2014 – Three million Syrians will have registered as refugees outside of their country today, the UN refugee agency reported, amid accounts of increasingly horrifying conditions inside their homeland – cities where populations are surrounded, people are going hungry and civilians are being targeted or indiscriminately killed. A news release issued by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that a further...

The latest recipients of an Islamic State threat are responding in kind, with Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov vowing that "these bastards" will be "destroyed." Kadyrov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, went on an Instagram rant after Islamic State posted a video threatening Putin over his support for Syria's Bashar al-Assad and vowing to liberate Chechnya. The Muslim strongman, who has fought Islamic militants in his backyard for years, seemed to take special umbrage at a threat aimed at his patron in Moscow. "I state with full responsibility that the one who had the idea to express a...

JNS.org - Several prominent Turkish Jews have written an open letter reprimanding their government for publicly asking the Jewish community to denounce Israel’s operation Protective Edge in Gaza.

President Obama to Address ISIS Strategy in Speech WASHINGTON — Sep 6, 2014 By JONATHAN KARL President Obama will give a speech next week outlining his strategy for taking on the threat posed by ISIS, ABC News has learned. The president will use the speech to outline the nature of the threat -- serious, but not an imminent threat to the homeland -- and the strategy for confronting it. It is not expected that he will make any major new announcements such as a decision on Syria air strikes, but he will describe the efforts he is already taking, including...

Beirut (AFP) - A member of Lebanon's Hezbollah was killed when an Israeli listening device exploded in the south of the country, the Shiite militant group said on Saturday. On Friday, the army said that a "suspicious device" had been found near the town of Adlun, and that "the Israeli enemy blew it up remotely, killing a civilian who was in the area". Hezbollah confirmed that the man killed was in fact one of its own.

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, announced today his intent to file the Expatriate Terrorist Act (E.T.A.) of 2014 as soon as the Senate is called back into session on Monday, September 8th. “Americans who choose to go to Syria or Iraq to fight with vicious ISIS terrorists are party to a terrorist organization committing horrific acts of violence, including beheading innocent American journalists who they have captured,” said Sen. Cruz. “There can be no clearer renunciation of their citizenship in the United States, and we need to do everything we can to preempt any attempt on their part to...

A plane carrying Americans was forced to land in Iran by the Iranian Air Force. It was allowed to leave early Saturday. It isn't known if all are still aboard. Link only.(Excerpt) "A charter airplane carrying military contractors, including Americans, took off early Saturday from Iran, hours after its pilots were ordered to land because the flight plan was out of date, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said."

Islamic State fighters executed a youth in a Syrian town Friday, after hundreds of residents demanded they leave following regime air strikes that targeted the jihadists but killed eight civilians, a monitor said. Residents of Ashara, in the mostly IS-controlled eastern province of Deir Ezzor, protested in front of an IS headquarters Thursday evening, hours after air strikes killed two children, five women and a man, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said. In response, IS gunmen opened fire and seized several young men, the Observatory and an activist said. The air strikes were part of a...

Over the weekend, former President Jimmy Carter attended the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conference in Detroit. There, he assured Muslims that the “principles of Allah” were designed to “bring peace and justice to all.” ISNA’s ties to terror-supporters are quite deep.

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...

The Fly Dubai plane was on its way to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates but apparently took off hours later than scheduled, the officials said. By the time it was over Iran, Iranian authorities said the plane's flight plan was no longer valid and the plane was ordered to land.

Iran’s supreme leader authorized cooperation with the United States to combat the Islamic State in Iraq. According to the BBC, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave his approval for Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards Qods Force to work with the US and other countries battling IS.

<p>A U.S. military charter aircraft flying from Afghanistan has been forced down in Iran by Iranian fighter jets, according to officials familiar with the incident.</p>

Every day around sunset, dozens of residents of this small Lebanese Christian village on the border carry their automatic rifles and deploy on surrounding hills, taking up positions and laying ambushes in case Muslim extremists from neighboring Syria attack. "We all know that if they come, they will slit our throats for no reason," said one villager as he drove through the streets of Qaa, an assault rifle resting next to him. For months, Lebanese Christians have watched with dread as other Christians flee Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq, fearing their turn will come next. Fears multiplied after militants...

QAA, Lebanon (AP) — Every day around sunset, dozens of residents of this small Lebanese Christian village on the border carry their automatic rifles and deploy on surrounding hills, taking up positions and laying ambushes in case Muslim extremists from neighboring Syria attack.