Free Republic

The U.S. should elect a woman as president "as soon as possible," first lady Michelle Obama said Monday at the first-ever White House Summit on Working Families. "I think this country is ready," the first lady in response to a question from ABC's Robin Roberts about when a woman should be elected to the highest office in the country. Obama didn't call out former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by name, so it was no endorsement - and she also said that qualifications matter more than gender.

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...

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.

Hillary Clinton is doing it. Glenn Beck did it too. And Dick Cheney? Not so much. This is the season for admitting you were wrong on Iraq in 2003. And all Republicans who either regret their vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq, or who were silent on foreign policy matters back then, should take this occasion to step up and say they'll never make the same mistake twice. To them I say: Do it for the sake of your conscience, and if not that, at least for the sake of your career.In the Obama years, Republicans have habituated...

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.

The Department of Defense celebrates LGBT Pride month in June 2014. Here is the month-long announcement of this fact on an internal website at a U.S. Navy facility: In January 2014, the U.S. Navy celebrates homosexuality via the euphemism of rainbow-colored "diversity." Here is the several-week announcement of this celebration on an internal U.S. Navy facility: The Department of Defense celebrates LGBT Pride month in June 2013. Here is the month-long announcement of this fact on an internal website at a U.S. Navy facility:

Obama and his criminal syndicate are completely and tyrannically running the show in the USA. US and Constitutional laws are not being followed—and have not been since Obama took the Office of POTUS—by Obama and the members of his ruling cabal. Obama’s legal authority is to enforce the laws of the land. Obama has—and is—doing neither. Instead, he is writing and judging laws—replacing both Congress and SCOTUS.

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...

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...

About 200 Americans under contract with the Department of Defense at Balad Air Force Base in Iraq are trapped by the al-Qaida-inspired jihadists who have seized control of two cities and are now threatening Baghdad, according to WND sources. The sources, private contractors who have recently returned to the U.S. from Iraq, said Friday their former colleagues effectively have been abandoned by the U.S. military and are fighting for their lives against an army of jihadists surrounding the base who belong to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. The U.S. contractors are at Balad to help the...

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...

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel admitted that “the trust has been broken” between the White House and Congress following the Obama administration’s decision to skirt U.S. law and release five top Taliban leaders without first consulting with lawmakers. Hagel admitted to lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday that the administration unilaterally inked a deal with the Taliban to release five top prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp without first notifying Congress, as is legally mandated. The deal was signed “without providing 30 days notice to Congress,” as is required by law, Hagel told lawmakers before attempting to justify...

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 South Side lakefront jewel where Barack and Michelle Obama held their wedding reception vs. a rare, open downtown field set against Chicago's majestic mountain range of skyscrapers. These are just a few of the preliminary offerings area universities plan to present to the president, the first lady and the few confidants helping them as they begin to weigh where to locate the Obama presidential library and museum. Meanwhile, the University of Hawaii, where the president grew up, has said it wants to build the library on oceanfront property in Kakaako, a commercial and retail district of Honolulu between Ala...

At a ceremony commemorating some of the bravest Americans of World War II, President Barack Obama reminded the "greatest generation" how the U.S. military has changed under his command, by slipping in references to immigrants and women. "Rock, I want you to know that Staff Sgt. Melvin Sabillo Martin, who is here today, is following in your footsteps. He just had to become an American first. Because Melvin was born in Honduras, moved to the United States, joined the Army. After tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was reassigned to the 82nd Airborne. And Sunday, he'll parachute into Normandy. "Wilson,...