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RIA Novosti is confirming reports seen on Twitter in the past few hours that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has been hit by rockets/mortars by ISIS: The report: BAGHDAD, October 22 (RIA Novosti) – The US Embassy in Iraq located in central Baghdad has been shelled with rockets, Al-Mustakillah news agency reported Wednesday citing a security source. “On Tuesday night the US Embassy was hit with three rockets. They were fired from a park area in the Dora district [in southern Baghdad],” the agency’s source said. Earlier on Tuesday, Al-Sumaria TV channel reported a mortar shelling of the so-called “green...

(CNSNews.com) – Turkey’s president on Sunday rejected U.S. proposals to arm Syrian Kurds fighting against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) near the Turkish border, shortly after the White House said he and President Obama had pledged to “strengthen cooperation” against the jihadists. “It would be wrong for the United States, with whom we are friends and allies in NATO, to talk openly and to expect us to say ‘yes’ to such a support to a terrorist organization,” said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. His comments were the latest sign that Turkey and the U.S. are far from being...

Perhaps Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey did not intend to make the startling admissions he did when he appeared on ABC News on Sunday morning. Perhaps the chairman did not seek to confirm for the public that the Islamic State’s advance in Iraq has been more effective and wider spread than previously reported. Maybe he did not set out to corroborate the increasingly evident fact that the coalition air war against ISIS is failing to achieve its objectives. He probably did not want to do these things, but that is what he accomplished. Reports broke late last...

It was tragically comical that the commander in chief in just a few weeks could go from referring to ISIS as “jayvee” and a manageable problem to declaring it an existential threat, in the same manner he upgraded the Free Syrian Army from amateurs and a fantasy to our ground linchpin in the new air war. All that tragic comedy was a continuance of his previous untruths, such as the assurance that existing health plans and doctors would not change under the Affordable Care Act or that there was not a smidgeon of corruption at the IRS. But lately the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Joseph Miller is the pen name for a ranking Department of Defense official with a background in U.S. special operations and combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has worked in strategic planning.President Barack Obama has taken a lot of flak since his Sunday night “60 Minutes” interview, in which he blamed the intelligence community for his failure to tackle the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. And that is right and proper. Because not only was his excuse of blaming us a lie, but when questioned on his lie, White House press secretary Josh Earnest...

For Salah Paulis, it came down to a choice between his faith and his crop. A wheat farmer from outside Mosul, Paulis and his family fled the militant group Islamic State early last month. The group overran the family farm as part of its offensive that captured vast swathes of territory in northern Iraq. Two weeks later, Paulis, who is a Christian, received a phone call from a man who said he was an Islamic State fighter. “We are in your warehouse. Why are you not here working and taking care of your business?” the man asked in formal Arabic....

ISIS captured Fallujah and Ramadi, two major cities in Iraq, eight months ago. Surely the president knew about that when it happened. He receives an intelligence briefing every day; more often than not, he prefers a written briefing rather than one where he and his briefers can zero in on problem areas in a face-to-face conversation. Yet since the February takeover of the Iraqi equivalent of Chicago and Los Angeles, the president has told the American people that ISIS is junior varsity and he had no plans to address it, and he seemed not to care about it until ISIS...

An Army intelligence bulletin is warning U.S. military personnel to be vigilant after Islamic State militants called on supporters to scour social media for addresses of their family members – and to “show up [at their homes] and slaughter them."

An Army intelligence bulletin is warning U.S. military personnel to be vigilant after Islamic State militants called on supporters to scour social media for addresses of their family members – and to “show up [at their homes] and slaughter them." The assessment, obtained by Fox News, came from the Army Threat Integration Center which issues early warnings of criminal and terrorist threats to Army posts worldwide. The advisory warns military personnel and their families about the Islamic State, or ISIS, calling on supporters to target their homes.

Pentagon orders crisis unit to Kuwait - video on site -

The rise in U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, in one graphic As outlined a short time ago on Checkpoint, the cost of the U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State is likely closing in on $1 billion, and could rise at a cost of between $200 million and $320 million per month as it continues. This graphic was produced by colleagues at The Washington Post with information released by U.S. Central Command and compiled in this spreadsheet I posted on Google Docs. It shows that the pace of U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria have increased rapidly, especially...

Given that the “moderates” are our allies, you would think this problem could be avoided by coordinating with them on where to attack and where not to. But there’s a hitch: We … don’t trust them enough to rely on the intelligence they give us.You’d trust a group that’s fighting so closely alongside Al Qaeda (a.k.a. the Nusra Front) that bombing the latter means collateral damage for the former, wouldn’t you? Since U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Syria began on Sept. 22, there has been no coordination between the U.S. military and its alleged partners on the ground, according...

MECCA, Saudi Arabia: As they gather in Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca for the annual hajj, some pilgrims have denounced atrocities by ISIS jihadists as "a virus" threatening the world. But many also expressed concerns about the US-led air war against them. "Islam is innocent from actions of the Islamic State (ISIS)," Kurdish Iraqi pilgrim Alan Abdullah told AFP, describing ISIS as "a virus threatening the whole world". ISIS has seized large parts of Iraq and Syria, declaring a Muslim "caliphate" and imposing its own harsh interpretation of Islamic law. The jihadists have executed captured Iraqi soldiers, crucified people,...

President Barack Obama has spent more time golfing than he has spent listening to daily intelligence briefings. The Daily Caller has calculated that he’s spent almost 700 hours in 875 “Presidential Daily Briefings” since 2009. But he’s also spent roughly 800 hours on almost 200 golf trips since his first inauguration.

A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report reveals that President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1% of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) in the 2,079 days of his presidency through September 29, 2014. The GAI report also included a breakdown of Obama’s PDB attendance record between terms; he attended 42.4% of his PDBs in his first term and 41.3% in his second. The GAI’s alarming findings come on the heels of Obama’s 60 Minutes comments on Sunday, wherein the president laid the blame for the Islamic State’s (ISIS) rapid rise squarely at...

Islamic State militants in western Iraq. Photo: ISIS video ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—Large numbers of Islamic State (IS) militants withdrew from Shingal region on Monday and headed to the Syrian border, Kurdish Peshmerga forces told Rudaw. “Around sunset a convoy of about 30 IS vehicles left the area and drove towards the Syrian border,” said Haji Ibrahim, a veteran Yezidi Peshmerga. Ibrahim said that the IS militants were holding their front lines against the Peshmerga forces until Monday. Ibrahim said that the IS positions around Shingal have been the target of intense US airstrikes in the past few weeks. IS...

3 Times Obama Administration Was Warned About ISIS Threat Sep 29, 2014 By JONATHAN KARL Did the intelligence community underestimate ISIS or did the president? In his "60 Minutes" interview, President Obama seemed to put the blame on the intelligence community, saying, “I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.” At the White House daily briefing, Press Secretary Josh Earnest cast the net quite a bit wider. “Everybody was surprised to see the rapid advance that ISIL was able to make from Syria across the Iraqi border,” said Earnest. “To be able to take over such large...

The White House says it wants to work with Syria’s moderate rebels. But warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition came awfully close to striking one of their HQs. Last week, an airstrike from the American-led coalition nearly hit a command-and-control facility affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the moderate rebels the Obama administration says are America’s “boots on the ground,” according to two opposition leaders. They are asking the Obama administration to please coordinate with them in the future before America bombs its only allies in Syria. Since U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Syria began on Sept. 22, there has been...

President Obama’s 60 Minutes interview, taped last Friday and aired Sunday, is turning out to be a disaster for him, and may even be a tipping point of sorts. There are six dimensions to the disaster.1.  By blaming the intelligence community for his failure to act on the ISIS threat, he ensured that a series of damaging leaks will be coming, and they are already starting. The UK Daily Mail, always far less constrained than the American media when it comes to revealing information damaging to the American progressive establishment, quotes “an administration insider,” summarized in its own bullet points:...

Fierce fighting has gotten closer and closer to Baghdad, with some reports saying the Islamic State is within one mile of the city limits.