Free Republic

A perfect example of the blatant hypocrisy of the mainstream media is CNN posting this video entitled, “Who cares what Cheney says?” because of the supposed hypocrisy of entering the Iraq War and criticizing Obama’s abandoning Iraq to ISIS terrorists. Funny how they don’t talk about the massive hypocrisy of former DEMOCRAT Vice President Al Gore, who sold his cable network to oil interests for millions, while shamelessly whining about Global Warming. Or how about his enormous energy-devouring house? Or how about the time HE criticized George H.W. Bush for not going after Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass...

Flattus wrote: It's funny to watch Cons attempt to portray this disaster in Iraq as Obama's issue. Sorry, no sale. Thinking Americans know whose war this is. But it's not surprising to see you run from it.From Ron Paul's column today, referring to Necons:"They cannot admit they were wrong about the invasion being a ‘cakewalk’ that would pay for itself, so they want to blame last week's events on the 2011 US withdrawal from Iraq. But the trouble started with the 2003 invasion itself, not the 2011 troop withdrawal. Anyone who understands cause and effect should understand this."-- Welcome Our...

US President Barack Obama has greeted Muslims across the world on the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan, describing it as the time for self-reflection and devotion through prayer and fasting. "A time for self-reflection and devotion through prayer and fasting, Ramadan is also an occasion when Muslims around the world reaffirm their commitment to helping the less fortunate, including those struggling because of economic hardship and inequality," Obama said in a statement yesterday. Lauding the role of Muslim organisations in America for their efforts at social empowerment, Obama said: "Here in the US, we are grateful to the...

On behalf of the American people, Michelle and I extend our best wishes to Muslim communities here in the United States and around the world on the beginning of the blessed month of Ramadan. A time for self-reflection and devotion through prayer and fasting, Ramadan is also an occasion when Muslims around the world reaffirm their commitment to helping the less fortunate, including those struggling because of economic hardship and inequality.  Here in the United States, we are grateful to the many Muslim American organizations, individuals, and businesses that are devoted to creating opportunity for all by working to reduce...

Original Title:ISIS Holds Military Parade In Mosul -- Threat Matrix Update: ISIS Holds Parade With Captured US Military Vehicles -- Zero Hedge The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham's Ninewa Division continues to crank out images of its conquest of Mosul and the surrounding province. Earlier today, the Ninewa Division released photographs of its forces seizing control of several bases, displaying captured military hardware, and executing Iraqi soldiers. Then, the Ninewa Division published a set of photographs of a military parade in the city of Mosul. The photographs provide a glimpse of the ISIS' military strength in Mosul. Scores...

Opinion: The Third Iraq War By: Cmdr. Daniel Dolan Published: June 24, 2014 12:57 PM Updated: June 25, 2014 2:33 PM In the Naval War College’s Strategy and Policy course students have an opportunity to critically analyze both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). These two historical case studies are commonly referred to by students and faculty alike as the First Iraq War and the Second Iraq War. Now, before us we see the Third Iraq War unfolding. Despite what some pundits and former administration officials are saying America is still playing an active role in Iraq’s wars....

Yes, the Iraq War was a disaster of historic proportions. Yes, seeing its architects return to prime time to smugly slam President Obama while taking no responsibility for their own, far greater, failures is infuriating. But sooner or later, honest liberals will have to admit that Obama’s Iraq policy has been a disaster. Since Obama took office, Iraq watchers - including those within his own administration - have warned that unless the United States pushed hard for inclusive government, the country would slide back into civil war. Yet the White House has been so eager to put Iraq in America’s...

As the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) continued its advance toward Baghdad this weekend, the group released a new video that shows that it has a wide reach far outside the borders of Syria and Iraq. On Sunday, ISIS militants took overtook the majority of Anbar province, giving the group control of most of Iraq’s western border. The group advanced quickly, with four towns in the province falling in just two days and Iraqi soldiers fleeing before ISIS arrived. The fall of Anbar, Iraq’s larger province, now gives ISIS the platform to launch an assault against Baghdad. Secretary...

ISIS is bigger, badder, richer, and better organized than any jihadi threat the United States has faced thus far. Its rise represents a foreign policy disaster of the first order. A group more radical than al-Qaeda, better organized, better financed, commanding the loyalty of thousands of dedicated fanatics including many with Western and even U.S. passports? And this group now controls some of the most strategic territory at the heart of the Middle East? Welcome to President Obama’s brave new world. [....] One wishes we had a Republican President right now if only because when a Republican is in the...

The Associated Press reports that 3 Al Jazeera reporters were sentenced to 7 years in prison by an Egyptian court Monday for charges related to terrorism. The basis for the government's charges was support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been declared a terrorist organization, and ousted president Mohammed Morsi. Secretary of State John Kerry called the verdict and sentence "chilling": The verdicts against Australian Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohammed came after a 5-month trial that Amnesty International described as a "sham." The group called Monday's rulings "a dark day for media freedom in Egypt."

May you live in interesting times – Chinese curse As a student of WWII, I was always amazed at how people could watch what happened to Poland (and to a lesser degree, Austria) and allow Germany to become a serious threat to the world. I now understand, because the same scenario is unfolding today as I pen these words, and little is being done about it, nor will it be until world powers reach a “now or never” point regarding their perception of the risk as they did, eventually, after the fall of Poland. But it takes a leader, conspicuously...

Like Birkenstocks and ironic t-shirts, blaming Bush has never gone out of style on the left. When Al Qaeda’s resurgence in Iraq became so obvious that even the media, which had been pretending that Obama’s claims about a successful withdrawal were true, could no longer ignore them, their talking points were all lined up and ready. It was all Bush’s fault.Defenses of the war by pivotal figures like Dick Cheney and Tony Blair only enraged them further. “Why wouldn’t they admit it was all their fault?”But the left’s lazy talking points about Iraq, like their talking points about the economy,...

Poland's Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski called his country's ties with the US "worthless", a Polish news magazine says, giving excerpts of a secretly recorded conversation.

Yes, it is true that there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq when George W. Bush took office. But it is equally true that there was essentially no al-Qaeda in Iraq remaining when Barack Obama took office. Which makes Bush responsible for the terrible costs incurred to defeat the 2003-09 jihadist war engendered by his invasion. We can debate forever whether those costs were worth it, but what is not debatable is Obama’s responsibility for the return of the Islamist insurgency that had been routed by the time he became president.

<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>

After the U.S. military battled heroically to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and to eliminate the possibility that it might become a staging area for terrorist attacks, the Obama administration has created a vacuum now being filled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an Al Qaeda affiliate, which has overrun Mosul and Fallujah, cities liberated by American soldiers. ISIS now threatens Baghdad. The administration and much of the media try to separate “fanatical Muslims” from “peaceful” ones, but the distinction is meaningless when the fanatics have the weapons and are willing to die for their cause....

Many of us declared the Arab Spring dead and buried. But the Arab Spring really came in two phases. The first phase was the political destabilization of formerly stable Arab countries by liberals and Islamists. The second phase was an armed conflict by Islamists to take over entire countries. These phases overlapped in some cases and the second phase has been underway for a while already. In Libya and Syria the first phase of the Arab Spring became the second phase. When protests didn’t work, the Islamists turned to force. When elections didn’t work for them in Libya, they turned...

Sunni militants spilling over the border from Syria seized control Tuesday of the northern city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest, in the most stunning success yet in a rapidly widening insurgency that threatens to drag the country and the region into war. Having consolidated control over Sunni-dominated Nineveh Province, armed gunmen were heading on the main road to Baghdad, Iraqi officials said, and had already taken over parts of Salahuddin Province. Thousands of civilians were fleeing south toward Baghdad and east toward the autonomous region of Kurdistan, where security is maintained by a fiercely loyal army, the peshmerga. The Iraqi...

The insurgent fighters who routed the Iraqi army out of Mosul on Tuesday did not just capture much of Iraq’s second-largest city. They also gained a windfall of arms, munitions and equipment abandoned by the soldiers as they fled — arms that were supplied by the United States and intended to give the troops an edge over the insurgents. The problem is not a new one, but it looms larger now that the United States is shifting its counterterrorism strategy away from using American armed forces directly, and toward relying on allied or indigenous troops and security forces supplied and...

Just Breaking on AP wires.......I have heard it all now.......lies lies and more lies.