Free Republic

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>

A three word text was released from inside the Embassy about six hours ago: “Too late Alamo.” That message is open to interpretation. Just minutes ago news came from within the United States Embassy in Baghdad that the Iraqis have shut down internet service for those barricaded inside. Limited text messages via private cell phones are still coming through. It is unknown how many of the more than 5,000 U.S. civilians in Baghdad are actually taking refuge inside the embassy compound. NBC war correspondent, Richard Engel reported last night that civilians in and around Baghdad have boarded up residences and...

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...

Obama Inc. keeps insisting that Qatar could be trusted when it was already concluded by the 9/11 Commission that the Islamist tyranny had ties to the attack on the United States. Since then Qatar has become so out of control in its backing of Jihadists that it has been disavowed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but that just made Obama embrace it even harder.Consider this. Obama is hugging a regime that the Saudis think is too extreme. That’s how bad things are. This latest revelation is no surprise at all. The New York Times had already let slip that...

State Department counterterrorism officials warned in late April that Iran had “trained, funded, and provided guidance” to ethnic Iraqi terror groups bent on destabilizing the country. The April warning appears to directly contradict and undermine comments last week by a State Department spokeswoman claiming that the United States and Iran have a “shared interest.” As Iraqi militants continue to wage attacks and seize territory, the State Department has signaled that it is willing to work with neighboring Iran to stabilize the country. They have even raised the idea of discussing Iraq on the sidelines of the ongoing nuclear discussions taking...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is back in America, but it will be months before his future takes shape, according to both experts in the military's legal system and people familiar with the treatment of long-term captives. After nearly five years in the hands of the Taliban and Haqqani network in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the American soldier was exchanged for five top Taliban operatives, underwent medical and psychological treatment at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and, Friday morning, landed at a military base in San Antonio. There he will undergo treatment to reintegrate back into society -- or possibly military...

WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO and there's an ad.

Europeans...felt what it said on the poster – “Hope”. But in the Muslim world, the people who were bitterly anti-American for reasons way beyond the invasion of Iraq were not converted or even appeased. Nor did anti-Western wolves like Vladimir Putin want to lie down with the new American lamb. He made lots of speeches....each slightly less interesting than the last. He held out the hand of friendship.... and it began to hang a bit limp. America had no quarrel with Islam, he told audiences in Cairo and Istanbul, but this had no effect on those extreme Muslims who believe...

Full Title: ISIS butchers leave 'roads lined with decapitated police and soldiers': Battle for Baghdad looms as thousands answer Iraqi government's call to arms and jihadists bear down on capital The full horror of the jihadists’ savage victories in Iraq emerged yesterday as witnesses told of streets lined with decapitated soldiers and policemen. Blood-soaked bodies and blazing vehicles were left in the wake of the Al Qaeda-inspired ISIS fanatics as they pushed the frontline towards Baghdad. They boasted about their triumphs in a propaganda video depicting appalling scenes including a businessman being dragged from his car and executed at the...

One of the five senior Taliban leaders transferred to Qatar in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl played a key role in al Qaeda’s plans leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mohammad Fazl, who served as the Taliban’s army chief of staff and deputy defense minister prior to his detention at Guantánamo, did not have a hand in planning the actual 9/11 hijackings. Along with a notorious al Qaeda leader, however, Fazl did help coordinate a military offensive against the enemies of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan the day before. And Osama bin Laden viewed that...

A spokeswoman for the State Department referred to the Taliban operatives released from Guantanamo Bay as part of the deal to retrieve Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl as "gentlemen." In a Monday afternoon appearance with Andrew Mitchell on MSNBC, Marie Harf, the deputy spokesperson at State and an alumna of the Obama campaign, argued with Mitchell over the question of whether or not Congress should have ben notified about the exchange before it occured. Noah Rothman at Hot Air documents the conversation, and near the end of the interview, Harf defends the deal against questions about whether or not the Taliban operatives...

"The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been"

The man who convened the meeting that buried the Soviet Union in 1991 has warned that it is being restored in his native Belarus and across the post-Soviet space. Stanislav Shushkevich – the politician who hosted the 1991 summit at which Belarus, Ukraine and Russia signed the USSR into obsolescence and paved the way for independence – said a mixture of despotic leaders, KGB-revivalism and Putin’s Ukraine interference all remind him of the worst of the Soviet Union. “What we see now is the restoration of Soviet order, in Belarus most of all,” Shushkevich said in his study in the modest central Minsk...

The White House is making plans to transfer more detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay despite the mounting political furor over the exchange of five Taliban prisoners for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, officials said Tuesday. Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said the White House was "making progress on a number of additional promising opportunities" to transfer more prisoners and that officials were reviewing Yemeni detainees "on a case-by-case basis." "While we do not generally discuss transfers before they take place, we are fully committed to implementing the president's direction that we transfer detainees to...

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (Isis) has become the richest terror group ever after looting 500 billion Iraqi dinars - the equivalent of $429m (£256m) - from Mosul's central bank, according to the regional governor. Nineveh governor Atheel al-Nujaifi confirmed Kurdish televison reports that Isis militants had stolen millions from numerous banks across Mosul. A large quantity of gold bullion is also believed to have been stolen. Following the siege of the country's second city, the bounty collected by the group has left it richer than al-Qaeda itself and as wealthy as small nations such as Tonga, Kiribati,...

No, it didn’t happen exactly that way this week. But hippie jihadist Bob Bergdahl got his chance to stage a classic agitprop stunt (“spontaneously,” of course), by twice reciting the jihadist credo in Arabic as a public signal of surrender to the Haqqani terror network in Afghanistan --- a bunch of evil killers who rival the Taliban in their militant hatred for the United States. And Obama just gave our American jihadist a little smile. But what does Obama know? He’s just a passenger on this cruise ship to hell. The Hitler salute meant something so cruel and dangerous that...

The US has been secretly holding talks with Hamas for months Buzzfeed reported Thursday, despite its official stance that it would (not?) negotiate with the terrorist organization. “Our administration needed to hear from them that this unity government would move toward democratic elections, and toward a more peaceful resolution with the entire region,” a US official stated to the “social news” site, on condition of anonymity. “It was important to have that line of communication.” US officials have publicly denied the charges, however, leading to confusion over the report’s veracity. …