Free Republic

TEL AVIV — The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to reduce military coproduction with the United States. A leading Israeli analyst asserted that the Defense Ministry and the military agreed to reduce production of Israeli weapons and platforms in the United States. The analyst, Amir Rapaport, said the decision was based on the U.S. suspension of arms deliveries during the 50-day war with Hamas in July and August 2014. “The Israeli defense establishment will reduce the production of weapon systems in the USA in the context of joint Israeli-American projects, and will rely more heavily on Israeli-made products,”...

The Obama administration stopped shipping to Israel all defense items – and not just Hellfire missiles as previously reported – for a short time in the middle of the war against Hamas, reported Israel Defense’s Amir Rappaport, the well-informed and highly credibly editor of the website. Makor Rishon added to that report that the US actually cut off all communications with Israel’s Ministry of Defense purchasing offices in the US for days.

Bill O’Reilly put former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on the hot seat tonight, and repeatedly grilled him on whether President Obama‘s foreign policy has been effective or a failure. Panetta insisted to O’Reilly that he doesn’t doubt Obama’s commitment to fighting America’s enemies, there’s just a question of whether he’s made the right decisions in carrying out that fight. For example, Panetta says Obama did support providing a troop presence of thousands in Iraq, as he and others recommended, but the issue was “how hard did he fight to make it happen.” O’Reilly asked Panetta why it feels like the...

Will bombing Isis, like the Iraq war, prove to be the wrong "war" against the wrong enemy? America is war weary and will support our action against Isis for a short time and only so long as it is conducted by limited means, that is, without substantial casualties. In effect, America under the leadership of Barack Obama supports airstrikes and no more. What will this accomplish? While emotionally satisfying to Americans enraged at the horror of their compatriots being decapitated before their eyes, these strikes are very unlikely to accomplish the destruction of Isis or the worldwide Islamic terrorist jihad....

The Center for Security Policy’s Vice President for Research and Analysis, Clare Lopez, says in this exclusive video interview with The Daily Caller that very few have seemed to care that America switched sides in the global war on terror when President Obama deposed an erstwhile ally in the Middle East and provided weapons to al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood. Focusing on this under-reported, critical shift in American foreign policy, Clare Lopez discusses how an American ambassador and others were killed in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11 because the Obama administration decided to promote and defend their narrative that...

Full title: NBC reporter says military officials are ‘APOPLECTIC’ over Obama’s passive nonexistent foreign policy Meet the Press videoDirect link to youtubewww.youtube.com/watch?v=YENGfHUKwKo

On Thursday, President Obama told the world he didn’t yet have a strategy for dealing with the Islamic Front in Syria. Although it’s never good to let an army who beheads your citizens and is hell-bent on your destruction know you don’t know how to deal with them – yet, or otherwise – Josh Earnest, the president’s press secretary “clarified” his comments the next day. We do have a plan, it turns out. And the plan is awful. Before we dive into the new statements, let’s take a look back at some older ones. Back in January, when talking about...

Back in January, on a TV interview, naturally, Obama denigrated ISIS as the junior varsity. Even after ISIS ran amok in Iraq and Syria in June, the administration (or I should say Obama, because we know from many sources that he often completely disregards the recommendations of the Pentagon, intelligence community, and State Department) decided to abjure from taking action against the terrorist group, apparently out of pique at Maliki and the dysfunctions of the Iraqi government. That’ll learn ‘em, Barry apparently believed. So here we are. ISIS has secured a foothold over an area the size of Jordan. What’s...

President Barack Obama spent a leisurely five hours golfing Sunday afternoon as his Martha’s Vineyard vacation continues while Iraq falls further into chaos.As Obama was midway through his golf outing reports from Baghdad erupted with rumors that Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki was staging a coup to hold on to power as Iraq struggles to form a new government while fighting off the ISIS terrorists’ conquest of large swaths of Iraq.Right before heading off for his annual two week vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, Obama ordered air strikes against ISIS to ward off a possible advance against Erbil in Kurdish controlled...

We may as well finish up the weekend on yet another inexplicable appearance by the Commander in Chief. And this one is a doozy, picked up by Joel Gehrke at The Corner. The President, during his brief, pre-tee off time availability this weekend, chose to address what a mess Iraq currently is and whether or not our lack of presence there had anything to do with it. Well, it did, but it obviously wasn’t his fault. He never really wanted to leave in the first place. President Obama refused to take responsibility for the lack of U.S. troops in Iraq,...

Obama's Approval Rating Has Hit All-Time Low, And Confidence In The Future Of America Has Collapsed Joe WeisenthalAugust 5, 2014 A new poll from WSJ/NBC finds a high level of dissatisfaction with the president, the U.S. political system, and the economy, and a stunning number of respondents see a grim future for their children. Just 40% of respondents approve of the job President Obama is doing, a level which matches an all-time low. On the matter of foreign policy — which is in the news a lot lately due to Russia, Ukraine, Iraq, and Gaza — the President's approval is...

From the Middle East to Eurasia, it often seems that President Obama is reacting to events instead of trying to shape them. Americans have begun to see his collective failures as an indictment on his presidency, and they long for clarity and purpose from their president. The clear foreign policy that is grounded in American ideas of promoting liberty abroad and preserving our security at home is what is needed now. That is how we became a superpower. Reversing these ideas allows our adversaries to become stronger and impairs our ability to respond to present-day threats. While Mr. Obama’s foreign-policy...

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon didn't pull any punches Friday in his response to the Obama administration's request that Congress repeal the 2002 law authorizing the use of military force in Iraq. In a statement, McKeon, R-Calif., who's retiring at the end of this year, said he thought the letter sent earlier in the day to House Speaker John Boehner from national security adviser Susan Rice was a joke. He said: Obama Administration officials are warning us daily that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is ‘worse than al-Qaeda' and an extreme threat to the American people....

(Reuters) - A top Pentagon intelligence official warned on Saturday that the destruction of Hamas would only lead to something more dangerous taking its place, as he offered a grim portrait of a period of enduring regional conflict. The remarks by Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the outgoing head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, came as Israeli ministers signaled that a comprehensive deal to end the 20-day-old conflict in the Gaza Strip appeared remote. At least 1,050 Gazans - mostly civilians - have been killed, and 42 Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel have died. Flynn disparaged Hamas for exhausting...

'It looks like it may be a terrible tragedy': Obama goes AWOL again with just 40-second mention of Malaysian plane crash feared to have killed Americans before his jokey 16-minute transport speech Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, killing all 295 passengers on board President Obama said his national security team is working on identifying the U.S. citizens – and then launched into jokes and 16 minutes of prepared remarks Twitter erupted with digital eye-rolls at Obama's curt mention of the 'tragedy' that the Ukrainian government quickly called a 'criminal case' House Speaker John Boehner offered...

The organization responsible for securing America’s highly sensitive nuclear sites has been suffering from a “chaotic” and “dysfunctional” security policy that has endangered the country’s nuclear sites and left them vulnerable to attack, according to a new report by the government’s watchdog group.The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile and securing classified research sites, has “increased risks and reduced security” over the past several years in a bid to reduce overhead costs, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.Security vulnerabilities at these NNSA sites still persist two years after a...

The odds are that you think President Obama’s foreign policy is a failure. That’s the scathing consensus forming, with just 36 percent of Americans approving of Obama’s foreign policy in a New York Times/CBS News poll released this week. Foreign policy used to be a source of strength for the president, and now it’s dragging him down — and probably other Democrats with him. Blowing things up is often satisfying, and Obama’s penchant for muddling along instead, with restraint, is hurting him politically. But that’s our weakness more than his. Obama’s foreign policy is far more deft — and less...

<p>Cheney re Obama: Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.</p> <p>As the terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) threaten Baghdad, thousands of slaughtered Iraqis in their wake, it is worth recalling a few of President Obama's past statements about ISIS and al Qaeda. "If a J.V. team puts on Lakers' uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant" (January 2014). "[C]ore al Qaeda is on its heels, has been decimated" (August 2013). "So, let there be no doubt: The tide of war is receding" (September 2011).</p>

<p>The American Embassy in Baghdad plans to evacuate a substantial number of its personnel this week in the face of a militant advance that rapidly swept from the north toward the capital, the State Department announced on Sunday.</p> <p>The embassy, a beige fortress on the banks of the Tigris River within the heavily-secured Green Zone, where Iraqi government buildings are also located, has the largest staff of any United States Embassy.</p>

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday he will take several days to review options for how the United States can help Iraq deal with a militant insurgency, saying any action would need significant involvement by Iraq itself. "The United States is not simply going involve itself in a military action in the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis that gives us some assurance that they are prepared to work together," Obama said, making it clear that he would not send U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq. "We are not going to be able to...