Free Republic

While Obama desperately tries to stick to his now crushed "Nobel peace prize winner" image, by not succumbing to an all-out land war in the one nation where his progressive "pacifism" brought him fame (and according to some, the presidency), namely Iraq, the rest of militant, "interventionist" US foreign policy is rapidly starting to resemble that waged by the most brutally rabid, neo-con Republican leader. Case in point an absolute stunner reported minutes ago by the WSJ, according to which the White House has decided to provide pickup trucks equipped with mounted machine guns and radios for calling in U.S....

Given that the “moderates” are our allies, you would think this problem could be avoided by coordinating with them on where to attack and where not to. But there’s a hitch: We … don’t trust them enough to rely on the intelligence they give us.You’d trust a group that’s fighting so closely alongside Al Qaeda (a.k.a. the Nusra Front) that bombing the latter means collateral damage for the former, wouldn’t you? Since U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Syria began on Sept. 22, there has been no coordination between the U.S. military and its alleged partners on the ground, according...

The White House says it wants to work with Syria’s moderate rebels. But warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition came awfully close to striking one of their HQs. Last week, an airstrike from the American-led coalition nearly hit a command-and-control facility affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the moderate rebels the Obama administration says are America’s “boots on the ground,” according to two opposition leaders. They are asking the Obama administration to please coordinate with them in the future before America bombs its only allies in Syria. Since U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Syria began on Sept. 22, there has been...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)A documentary filmmaker who spent time with the Free Syrian Army said that moderate rebels are “laughing” at President Obama’s plan to arm them against the Islamic State, claiming they simply “don’t take this seriously.” Matthew VanDyke, an American filmmaker and a friend of executed journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, spoke with Fox News’s Shepard Smith about the White House’s plan to arm and train thousands of rebels affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, a more moderate rebel group that’s friendly with the West, in order to encourage them to fight the Islamic State. VanDyke warned that removing the...

"But, may I add, the training also will service these troops in the same struggle that they've been in since the beginning of this conflict against the Assad regime"

Gen. Michael Nagata is promising to build a new force to destroy ISIS, but lawmakers worry he has been given an impossible mission. As lawmakers prepared to take a risky and fateful vote on Obama’s plan to train and equip the Syrian rebels, the man who assured them it could be done was Gen. Michael Nagata, Obama’s point man for the mission to build an ISIS-killing army in Syria. There are skeptics both inside and outside the government who doubt Obama’s new plan to arm the Syrian rebels can work. First of all, the administration has said for years that...

(CNSNews.com) - House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) joined forces early Wednesday evening as the House passed a continuing resolution that will fund the government after the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, and that will permit funding for Planned Parenthood (the nation's largest abortion provider), the entirety of Obamacare, and an amendment requested by President Barack Obama "to train and equip appropriately vetted elements of the Syrian opposition." The bill passed 319 to 108 with four members not voting. But there were not enough Republican members to pass the bill without...

Washington (AFP) - Training and equipping moderate Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State extremists will take months, the White House warned Friday a day after Congress approved the plan. "We will move out as rapidly as can be done, in partnership with the countries that will host the training facilities," said Susan Rice, national security advisor to President Barack Obama. "This will be a process that takes months," she said, adding it will not "happen overnight." "This is a serious training program, and we are serious about vetting those that we will be training and equipping," Rice emphasized. "It is...

The Free Syrian Army is on the wrong side. Here's its bloody track record and disturbing alliances. Video House approves Obama's plan to combat Islamic State in a 273 to 156 vote Demonstrating yet again that we do not have an effective opposition party in the United States right now, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted Wednesday in favor of Barack Obama’s plan to arm and train “vetted” members of the Free Syrian Army. As expected,the Senate went along on Thursday. The Hill noted about the House vote that “vocal opposition” came from “both war-weary liberals and defense hawks who...

The supposed “moderate” rebels fighting Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad — self-styled jihadists whom the Obama administration and Congress plan to supply with even more support under the guise of battling the Islamic State (ISIS) — recently signed a non-aggression pact with ISIS (also known as ISIL), according to reports from human-rights groups and French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP). Lawmakers on Capitol Hill pointed to the news as yet another reason why supplying U.S. arms and support to Islamic forces to battle Islamic forces was a dangerous idea. The foreign-policy establishment, however, plans to proceed with arming and training jihadists...

One of the key components of the strategy President Obama outlined in his speech earlier this week to fight ISIS was to arm and train Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. Obama and others like Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) assure us that the Syrian rebels are “vetted moderates” who only want to bring freedom to Syria.Well, this component of the Obama strategy appears to be falling apart. ISIS and some of the “moderate” rebel factions have signed a non-aggression pact pledging to concentrate on fighting the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.The Huffington Post has more: According to Agence France-Presse, ISIS and...

As President Obama laid out his “strategy” last night for dealing with ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and as bipartisan leadership in Congress push to approve as much as $4 billion to arm the Syrian “rebels,” it should be noted that the keystone to his anti-Assad policy — the “vetted moderate” Free Syrian Army (FSA) — is now admitting that they, too, are working with the Islamic State.This confirms our reporting about the FSA’s alliances with Syrian terrorist groups here at PJ Media last week.On Monday, the Daily Star in Lebanon quoted a FSA brigade commander saying that his...

It appears that, in a rush to get his strategy out the door, President Obama overlooked his key "do nothing stupid" foreign policy plan. OBAMA SAID TO SEEK CONGRESS AUTHORITY TO ARM SYRIAN REBELS So - to be clear - the strategy to defeat ISIS is to arm more of the same "rebels" that ultimately split off and became, well, ISIS? Perhaps it's better if Obama sticks to his original "no strategy" plan after all... if only for the people, not so much the military-industrial complex of course.*  *  *Remember Those ‘Moderate’ Syrian Rebels That The U.S. Armed? ISIS...