Free Republic

The great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in two previous articles in the London Review of Books («Whose Sarin?» and «The Red Line and the Rat Line») has reported that the Obama Administration falsely blamed the government of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for the sarin gas attack that Obama was trying to use as an excuse to invade Syria; and Hersh pointed to a report from British intelligence saying that the sarin that was used didn’t come from Assad’s stockpiles. Hersh also said that a secret agreement in 2012 was reached between the Obama Administration and the leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, to set...

<p>Washington -- Foreign ministers from 68 countries meet in Washington on Wednesday to agree on the next steps to defeat Islamic State, the first such gathering of the U.S-led military coalition since the election of President Donald Trump in November.</p>

The EU and US urge "strongman" Khalifa Haftar to return oil ports to the "Libyan people". We're glad that Washington has a sense of humor ___ Libya was the richest, most developed, most educated country in North Africa. It was a model of much-needed stability in the region, with a government that was considerably less terrible than NATO's numerous medieval dictator-allies. Before the "revolution", the Libyan government used oil revenues to subsidize a whole range of social benefits for its citizens. And now that Libya is a moon crater, the U.S. and its European poodles are whining about "returning oil...

What happens when the president who has politicized law-enforcement to a degree unprecedented in American history meets a terrorist responsible for killing Americans he has recklessly failed to protect, decimating his pretensions about “decimating” al-Qaeda? What happens is: You get the most politicized terrorism indictment ever produced by the Justice Department. Behold United States v. Khatallah, Case No. 14 Crim. 141, quietly unsealed in a Washington courtroom last Saturday while the country dozed off into summer-vacation mode. Ahmed Abu Khatallah, of course, is the only suspect apprehended in connection with the Benghazi massacre, a terrorist attack on a still-mysterious U.S....

U.S., Egyptian and diplomatic sources say that Russia has apparently been moving special forces to an airbase in western Egypt near the border with Libya in recent days, according to a report by Reuters. The U.S. is concerned that such a Russian deployment may signify Russian support for Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar, who suffered a setback on March 3 when the Benghazi Defense Brigades (BDB) attacked oil ports controlled by his forces. U.S. officials claimed that their surveillance units had observed Russian special operations forces and unmanned aircraft at Sidi Barrani, which is about 100 km from the Egypt-Libya...

While Congress gears up for an investigation into Donald Trump’s allegations that the Obama administration had tapped lines at Trump Tower before the election, one former member of the House warns not to be too skeptical of the claim. Retired Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) told Bill O’Reilly last night that he discovered that a phone call with one of Moammar Qaddafi’s sons and himself got tapped and recorded, even though that violated the separation-of-powers doctrine. Kucinich even holds up redacted transcripts of the call as evidence that the intelligence community had gone beyond its boundaries on at least this...

It was announced over the weekend that on June 7 John Dickerson will replace Bob Schieffer as the host of CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” CBS News president David Rhodes — whose brother Ben is a top Obama official most famous for editing the truth out of the infamous Benghazi talking points — said of Dickerson, “John is first and foremost a reporter — and that’s what he’ll be as anchor of ‘Face the Nation.’ “His work in the studio will always be informed by what he’s learned in Iowa, in New Hampshire, on Capitol Hill — anywhere there’s news.”...

The latest estimates say that the Assad regime has hundreds of tons of mustard gas, a blister agent, and large stockpiles of sarin and possibly VX, both of which are nerve agents -- all of which can be launched by Scud missiles, artillery, or aircraft, according to Charles Blair, a specialist in chemical and biological weapons at the Federation of American Scientists. "I've heard that Syria has 100 to 200 missiles with nerve agents loaded and ready to go, but that seems extreme," said Blair, noting that the nerve agents are usually stored separately from the weapons and that exact...

April 13, 2015, Monday TurkeyÂ’s Islamists betrayed Uyghurs, damaged ties with China Turkey's relations with China that were upgraded to a strategic partnership in 2010 were dealt a significant blow a year later when increasingly assertive political Islamists in the Turkish government started playing a game of proxies with the Uyghurs of Chinese nationality as part of their short-sighted vision of a regime change in their southern neighbor, Syria. This sudden turn of policy with respect to China's Xinjiang region, shaped at the highest level of the government with chief Islamist Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan setting the bar, has been a...

Buried deep beneath the Michael Flynn hysteria this week was Judicial Watch’s release of newly obtained State Department documents related to the Benghazi terrorist attack on September 11, 2012. One email confirms—again—that the Obama administration knew the day after the attack it was not a random act of violence stemming from an anti-Muslim video. That was the excuse shamefully propagated by top Obama administration officials (including the president himself) and swallowed whole by a media establishment desperate to help Obama win re-election six weeks later.According to the summary of a call on September 12, 2012 between State Department Under-Secretary Patrick...

Three brothers who managed office information technology for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers were abruptly relieved of their duties on suspicion that they accessed congressional computer networks without permission. Brothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives Thursday, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned. Three members of the intelligence panel and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs were among the dozens of members who employed the suspects on a shared basis.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel released a New Year’s message earlier this month calling on Germans to “use love and compassion” to battle the Islamist extremists in their communities. Islamists extremists murdered 22 people in Germany in 2016 in seven different attacks.

Bureaucrats at the State Department brought 500 refugees into the country on Tuesday, one day before President Trump “is expected to order a multi-month ban on allowing refugees into the United States except for religious minorities escaping persecution, until more aggressive vetting is in place,” according to Reuters. The temporary ban on refugees will be one of several executive orders on immigration President Trump will sign on Wednesday, Reuters reports. “Another order will block visas being issued to anyone from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, said the aides and experts, who asked not to be identified.” Two...

CAIRO — Across the Muslim world, the refrain was resounding: President Trump’s freeze on refugee arrivals and visa requests from seven predominantly Muslim countries will have major diplomatic repercussions, worsen perceptions of Americans and offer a propaganda boost to the terrorist groups Mr. Trump says he is targeting. Mr. Trump’s stance has been evident since the early days of his campaign, when he advocated a “complete and total shutdown” of all Muslims entering the United States. President Trump has since softened his language, casting his order on Friday as a way to keep terrorists, not Muslims, out of the United...

We are whistleblowers as eye witnesses to the war crimes committed in Libya by Hillary Clinton. We are the official spokespersons for the tribes of Libya and have given actionable intelligence on the ground in Libya to the DIA who agent (Eric Maddox) was in our home many times. We have also had the FBI and CIA in our home (the CIA was brought into our home by Glenn Becks production company “The Blaze”) The CIA lady told us if we did not shut up about Libya we would have no life, at that point we went public. We brought...

American B-2 stealth bombers and armed drones have attacked two Islamic State military camps in Libya, killing 80 IS militants near their former bastion of Sirte, Pentagon chief Ash Carter said on Thursday. "They certainly are people who were actively plotting operations in Europe and may also have been connected to some attacks that have already occurred in Europe," Carter said on his last day in office. The strike late Wednesday came a month after the United States officially wrapped up military operations in and around Sirte, where it had conducted nearly 500 strikes to help the Libyan unity government...

U.S. B-2 bombers carried out air strikes against Islamic State camps outside of Sirte, Libya, on Wednesday night, killing dozens of militants, U.S. defense officials said on Thursday. Two U.S. defense officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the strikes were carried out 28 miles (45 km) southwest of Sirte against two camps and done in cooperation with Libya's U.N.-backed Government of National Accord. They said there were no women or children in the camps. One of the officials said initial reports showed dozens of militants were killed in the strikes with more than 100 precision guided munitions dropped....

A pair of B-2 "stealth" bombers blasted two ISIS training camps in Libya on Wednesday evening, dropping 108 precision-guided bombs and sending jihadists scattering -- many of whom were then "cleaned up" by drone-launched hellfire missiles, U.S. defense officials told Fox News. The assault killed an estimated 85 terrorists at the camps, which were about 30 miles southwest of the Libyan coastal city of Sirte. President Obama authorized the action. Most of the terrorists targeted had escaped Sirte after extensive military actions there. U.S. drones "cleaned up" the operation by launching hellfire missiles that killed a several of ISIS fighters...

CNN)US B-2 bombers struck ISIS camps in Libya overnight, several US officials told CNN Thursday. The mission, which is expected to be the last, short-notice military operation ordered by President Barack Obama, was approved several days ago by the President, according to sources. US surveillance aircraft had been watching the sites for weeks as fighters fled from Sirte on the coastline into what they perceived to be the safety of remote desert areas. But the isolation of the area gave those surveillance aircraft clear imagery showing military-aged males in several areas, according to officials.

During a panel discussion Thursday at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual conference, CIA Director John Brennan was trying to make the point that just because an individual has an “activist” background, that wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, keep him from working for the federal government in sensitive positions. After all, he said, the CIA hired him even after he admitted voting for a communist in the 1976 presidential elections.In 1980, Brennan was trying to obtain a top security clearance for the Central Intelligence Agency, and part of the process involved taking a lie detector test. He was asked: “Have you ever...