Free Republic

We attempted to cut through all of the Western and Russian media propaganda on the way to describing what Moscow’s involvement in Syria actually portends for the global balance of power. Here are a few excerpts that summarize what’s taking shape in the Middle East: Putin looks to have viewed this as the ultimate geopolitical win-win. That is, Russia gets to i) expand its influence in the Middle East in defiance of Washington and its allies, a move that also helps to protect Russian energy interests and preserves the Mediterranean port at Tartus, and ii) support its allies in Tehran...

Hillary Clinton’s decision to wipe clean her email server has already done enormous damage to US intelligence efforts. The logic is so clear and compelling that it is amazing to me that only now, and only via an email to the blog Powerline, has the extent of her reckless (at best) action become clear. Scott Johnson passes along this, from reader he terms “knowledgable”: I saw your note on Clinton emails. You and everyone else are missing the real problem and scandal. It is not the emails she saved and turned over to the State Department. It is the erased...

When President Obama declared earlier this year that “climate change” represents “an immediate risk to our national security” he was absolutely right. Only, the key detail he forgot to mention is precisely why it represents such a risk: because his administration’s crazed faith that renewable energy represents a solution to “climate change” is severely impacting the defensive capabilities of the US military. Consider the case of two giant wind projects scheduled imminently for development near vital US defense facilities. Both ... accord with the Obama administration’s green priority commitments — which apparently take precedence over trivial issues like hurricane predictions,...

The ratchets have been turning lately on Nurse Ratched Hillary Clinton, over allegations of classified emails having been left on a private server. The Hillary camp is claiming this is a big bunch of nothing, that the server has been wiped clean, and that, besides, the emails were not marked as classified at the time she sent them. So, what's the big deal? Let's take a step back: outside of the election year, outside of partisan politics, and into the world of classified material. Some of the material itself is classified Top Secret. What's that mean? It sounds like James...

BREAKING//BOOM: Here it is ====> IC IG confirms that Hillary's "UNCLAS" emails had info up to TS/SI/TK/NF on them

What this article outlines is, in fact, the termination clause within the Iranian nuclear deal. A full analysis shows how the language used to craft the deal gives Iran the easy out, ‘the-exit-ramp’ as soon as the sanctions are lifted. Paragraph 36 tells us when and how the agreement might end. Both friend and foe have touted this deal as “historic” and promised (or moaned) that its provisions will stay in place for the long term. But in practice, this is not a ten-year agreement or a fifteen-year agreement or an eternal agreement. Paragraph 36 tells us the truth: Any...

The Washington Times has uncovered what it calls "deep-seated doubts" among Pentagon brass regarding President Obama's strategy in degrading and defeating ISIS. This revelation undercuts the official White House line that would indicate a unified front between the president and military officials. One Pentagon official, said to be involved in counterterrorism analysis, asked incredulously, “What strategy?” He went on to say, “We are now floating along, reacting to ISIS.” The general consensus among top military officials is that the president will never activate their recommended plan of sending in ground troops, a strategy that is believed to be the only...

Democrats have a very different understanding of national security than Americans.Americans think we should improve national security by keeping ISIS in. Democrats think importing the Syrian Civil War here is a national security imperative.They warn us that, “We cannot expect countries hosting Syrian refugees to continue shouldering such a disproportionate burden if the United States and other industrialized countries do not begin resettling many more Syrian refugees.”It’s as if Jordan and Lebanon are doing us some kind of favor by ‘hosting’ their own fellow Arab Muslims.Besides we didn’t take in Jews during WW2. Now we have to make up for...

Video US President Barack Obama has described the loss of key Iraqi territory to Islamic State as a tactical setback, while insisting the war against the jihadist group is not being lost. "I don't think we're losing," Obama said in an interview with news magazine The Atlantic published Thursday, days after the Iraqi city of Ramadi was overrun. Shia militias converged on Ramadi Monday in a bid recapture it from jihadists who dealt the Iraqi government a stinging blow by overrunning the city in a deadly three-day blitz. The loss of the capital of Iraq's largest province was Baghdad's worst...

Majorities of voters feel the country is still in recession, think terrorists are living in their hometown and rate the Obama White House handling of the government as incompetent. Those are some of the findings from the latest Fox News poll released Thursday. Six in 10 voters think it is likely terrorists are living in their hometown (60 percent). That’s up from 48 percent who felt that way in 2007, the last time the question was asked, and back to about what it was nine months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In June 2002, 58 percent thought terrorists were in...

One of America’s most revered investigative journalists has questioned the veracity of one of the Obama administration’s proudest achievements — and the firestorm of criticism has been immediate and unforgiving, from the White House to the Pentagon to the CIA. The publication Sunday of a 10,000-word article questioning the official version of the 2011 raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden might have received scant attention had it it not been penned by Seymour Hersh. The award-winning reporter, 78, who uncovered one of the worst war crimes by U.S. troops during the Vietnam War and disclosed the torture...

The White House was scrambling Monday to put a positive face on an upcoming summit of Persian Gulf states after learning leaders from four of the six invited nations are expected to skip. While those nations are still sending representatives to the summit being hosted by President Obama later this week at Camp David, the absence of crucial heads of state -- notably, Saudi Arabia's new king -- could present an awkward situation for the administration. But State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf rejected the notion this was a "snub," and White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest likewise said the administration...

EXCLUSIVE: At least three of the five Taliban leaders traded last year for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl have tried to plug back into their old terror networks, a government official familiar with the intelligence told Fox News, describing it as an attempt to "re-engage." The new allegations come as Bergdahl now faces desertion charges, and as the one-year deal governing the former Guantanamo detainees' supervised release in the Gulf nation of Qatar is set to expire -- at the end of May. The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency recently told Congress that, after that expiration, all his officers can do...

Iran is still getting the final say. Not the United States, not Israel…… but Iran. When did the greatest super power in the world let a terrorist regime dictate a nuclear deal? When? 2009 When Barack Hussein Obama took office. Bowing down to diplomats worldwide. Apologizing to countries for no reason at all and making us the laughing stock of the world. This president and his administration are doing exactly what they said they would do “fundamentally transforming” the greatest and freest nation on the globe.

The Iraqi military launched a major campaign to take back a key city from the self-proclaimed Islamic State over the weekend—a move that caught the U.S. “by surprise,” in the words of one American government official. The U.S.-led coalition forces that have conducted seven months of airstrikes on Iraq’s behalf did not participate in the attack, defense officials told The Daily Beast, and the American military has no plans to chip in. Instead, embedded Iranian advisors and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are taking part in the offensive on the largely Sunni town, raising the prospect that the fight to beat back...

From his time briefing generals in the Pentagon, Stephen Coughlin — a leading expert on national security and author of the soon-to-be-published book, “Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad” — has always feared for our nation’s safety and thinks it’s time for the government to stop lying. Coughlin is an attorney, decorated intelligence officer and expert on Islamic law and terrorism. He says the “entire world, friend and foe alike, understands, that starting with the Bush administration and accelerating in the Obama administration, that our foreign policy community is absolutely incoherent and completely vulnerable. These people have...

The Obama administration is considering slowing its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan for the second time, according to U.S. officials, a sign of the significant security challenges that remain despite an end to the U.S. and NATO combat mission there. Under the still-evolving plans, Army Gen. John F. Campbell, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, could be given greater latitude to determine the pace of the drawdown in 2015 as foreign forces scramble to ensure Afghan troops are capable of battling Taliban insurgents on their own, the officials said. The options under discussion would not alter what is...

Chuck Todd: Obama Foreign Policy ‘Doesn’t Seem To Exist’ By Douglas Ernst - The Washington Times - Friday, February 6, 2015 NBC’s “Meet the Press” host teased this weekend’s edition by saying he would talk about President Obama’s foreign policy, which “doesn’t seem to exist.”

<p>President Obama reportedly penned a secret letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last month discussing their shared interest in fighting the Islamic State -- a development one congressional source told Fox News "f***s up everything."</p> <p>The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that, according to people briefed on the letter, Obama wrote to Khamenei in the middle of last month and stressed that any cooperation on dealing with the Islamic State, or ISIS, was tied to Iran striking a deal over its nuclear program. The U.S., Iran and other negotiators are facing a Nov. 24 deadline for such a deal.</p>

It’s bad enough that Obama rejects an Ebola travel ban because he thinks we need more Ebola, but he’s attacking Democrats and Republicans who are doing the responsible thing by enacting quarantines. The Obama administration has been pushing the governors of New York and New Jersey to reverse their decision ordering all medical workers returning from West Africa who had contact with Ebola patients to be quarantined, an administration official said on Sunday.But both governors, Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey, stood by their decision, saying that the federal guidelines did not go far...