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Four U.S. military personnel are being held in Libyan government custody, the State Department said Friday night. The circumstances and location of their detention were not immediately clear.

U.S. and Afghan officials reportedly have reached a tentative agreement on a critical security pact -- which would include President Obama writing a letter to the Afghan people acknowledging mistakes during the "war on terror." According to Reuters, an Afghan spokesman said Tuesday that Obama agreed to write the letter, to be presented with the draft security pact at a meeting of tribal elders later this week. The New York Times, citing a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, reported that Secretary of State John Kerry proposed the letter in a conversation with Karzai. Karzai asked that Obama sign it,...

Twelve years ago today, nineteen al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners and flew them into the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. In the war that Congress authorized against al Qaeda only three days after that attack, the vast majority of the U.S. casualties have occurred in the last four and a half years during the presidency of Barack Obama. In fact, according to the CNSNews.com database of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, 73 percent of all U.S. Afghan War casualties have occurred since Jan. 20, 2009 when Obama was inaugurated.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has canceled a trip to California next week so that he can stay in Washington "to work on the Syrian resolution before Congress," a White House official said on Thursday.

The President will deliver a statement on Syria at 1:15 pm today in the Rose Garden today.

U.N. experts investigating a poison gas attack in Syria left the country on Saturday, paving the way for the United States to lead military strikes to punish President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. President Barack Obama said the United States, which has five cruise-missile equipped destroyers in the region, was planning "limited, narrow" military action to punish Assad for an attack that Washington said killed 1,429 people. "We cannot accept a world where women and children and innocent civilians are gassed on a terrible scale," Obama said on Friday after Washington unveiled an intelligence assessment concluding Assad's forces were to blame for...

By authorizing the arming of Syrian rebels known to be led by members of al-Qaeda, is Obama violating the National Defense Authorization Act? President Obama OKs Shipment of Arms to Al-Qaeda in Syria The New American 14 June 2013 President Obama has given the green light to the shipping of weapons from the United States to opposition forces in Syria. In a statement released by Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, the White House claims that “our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin.” The Syrian...

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders. The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and...

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders. The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and...

Obama: You Can't Understand Syria Policy 'If You Haven't Been in the Situation Room' Obama: I hear folks saying, "Katie, bar the door, let's just go in and knock out Syria." 7:03 AM, Jun 18, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER Charlie Rose last night asked President Obama his new Syria policy. The president first objected to it being called a new policy. "I'm not sure you can characterize this as a new policy. This is consistent with the policy that I've had throughout," he said. Obama then explained the goal is regional stability, and especially in Syria. "Really, what we're...

Arming the Syrian rebels would be “pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs and Al-Qaeda thugs,” London’s mayor has warned. His is the latest call in a wave of rhetoric urging the UK prime minister not to provide the Syrian rebels with weapons. Writing for British publication The Telegraph, Boris Johnson wrote that the UK must not use Syria as “an arena for muscle flexing.” “We can’t use Syria as an arena for geopolitical point-scoring or muscle-flexing, and we won’t get a ceasefire by pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs,” wrote Johnson. He joins a number of prominent British...

Iran will deploy 4,000 Revolutionary Guards to Syria to bolster Damascus against a mostly Sunni-led insurgency, media reported. Meanwhile, US F-16s and Patriots will stay in Jordan – speculatively, to help establish a no-fly zone to aid Syrian rebels. The deployment of the first several-thousand strong military contingent was reported by The Independent on Sunday who quoted Iranian sources tied to the state’s security apparatus. The sources said the move signals Iran’s intention to drastically step up its efforts to preserve the government of President Bashar Assad. The Islamic Republic’s heightened military commitment could reportedly extend to the opening up...

Three hundred US Marines have been deployed to northern Jordan to pave the way for the West to arm Syrian rebels. A Patriot anti-aircraft missile system, designed to protect Jordanian territory from attack by Assad missiles, has also been moved into the area.

"Syrian 'rebels' pledge loyalty to Al-Qaeda...".... "WAR: USA TO PROVIDE MILITARY SUPPORT TO SYRIA 'REBELS'" !!!

June 14, 2013 President Obama OKs Shipment of Arms to Al-Qaeda in Syria Joe Wolverton, II, J.D. ..... As The New American has chronicled since it was first proposed, the National Defense Authorization Act purportedly authorizes the president of the United States to deploy the armed forces to apprehend and indefinitely detain anyone suspected of providing support to terrorists. Section 1021 of the NDAA reads in relevant part:Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40; 50 U.S.C.1541 note) includes the authority...

An unusually damning Kinselyan gaffe, tucked away by Politico inside a story about how circumstances in Syria have supposedly forced Obama’s hand on intervention or something. You would think, in light of the endless criticism of Bush over Iraq, government officials would studiously avoid the impression that they’re using WMD claims as a pretext for intervening in a Middle Eastern country. But here we are: “The decision was ultimately driven by the discovery Assad used [chemical weapons] but there were a number of other factors in place that were also important,” conceded an administration official with direct knowledge of the...

Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) welcomed the chemical weapons assessment. The two have been among the sharpest critics of the administration, saying it has not been doing enough to help the rebels. “U.S. credibility is on the line,” they said in a joint statement. “Now is not the time to merely take the next incremental step. Now is the time for more decisive actions,” they said, such as using long-range missiles to degrade Assad’s air power and missile capabilities.

The White House on Sunday defended its approach to the Syrian conflict as Republicans launched fresh accusations that the Obama administration is doing too little and has moved too slowly to aid rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad. “We have to be very discerning about what's in our interest and what outcome is best for us, and the prices that we're willing to pay to get to that place,” White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “We've rushed to war in this region in the past. We're not going to do it here,”...

That buildup has been going on for some time. For the past two years, the government opposition in Syria has been getting aid from the U.S., which has smuggled surface-to-air missiles and other heavy weaponry into Syria through Turkey. Along with arms, the U.S. has supplied fighters for the conflict, drawing mainly from al-Qaida-linked militias in Libya and elsewhere. This operation was at the root of the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the ambassador and three other Americans. The Obama Administration has been working to cover up the facts about Benghazi not just because of the glaring incompetence of...

Gunmen staged overnight attacks on at least six security buildings and outposts throughout Libya's eastern city of Benghazi, killing five soldiers, military officials said on Saturday. The assaults, which included snipers, rocket-propelled grenades and explosives thrown on to rooftops, came after a number of smaller targeted attacks and assassinations of security officials in the city over the past several months. A spokesman for the army's chief of staff, Ali el-Sheikhy, said no group had claimed responsibility for attacks. Officials have not announced any arrests. An elite military unit known as Saaqa claimed on its Facebook page that Islamic extremists were...