Free Republic

The ex-president's willingness to speak out on Syria spells disaster for Obama in more ways than one.I wish that when President Bill Clinton started spouting off the other day about the need for President Barack Obama to intervene in Syria's horrific civil war or risk looking like "a total fool," Obama had followed the example set by his wife when she was recently confronted by a heckler. I wish that Obama had leaped from his bully pulpit, got in Clinton's face and silenced him with a withering put-down. But of course, that didn't happen. Instead of resisting the intensifying pressure...

The State Department has acknowledged that five U.S. personnel killed in Afghanistan, including 25-year-old diplomat Anne Smedinghoff, were on foot when they were attacked by a suicide bomber, and not in an armored vehicle, as officials had told bereaved relatives earlier this week. The violent deaths of U.S. diplomatic personnel — and the State Department’s changing account of how they died — harken back to the debacle in Benghazi, Libya, where Islamist extremists killed four Americans in assaults on the U.S. diplomatic compound on Sept. 11. “We are able to clarify at this point that they were

The Obama Administration is deliberately misleading Americans about the drone war it is waging in Pakistan. Can anyone read the McClatchy Newspapers summary of top-secret intelligence reports and continue to deny it? Set aside the morality and effectiveness of the CIA's targeted-killing program. Isn't it important for Congress and the people to know the truth about the War on Terrorism? Many Americans remain furious that the Bush Administration gave Iraq War speeches that elided inconvenient truths and implied facts that turned out to be fictions. Is the objection merely that the Iraq War turned out badly? Or is misleading Congress...

Washington (CNN) – Two leading Republican lawmakers said Tuesday that reports of chemical weapons use in Syria, if true, mean the president's threshold for involvement in the country's civil war has been met. Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have led calls in Congress for greater U.S. involvement in Syria, issued a joint statement saying the attacks, if verified, would demand a response from President Barack Obama. “If today’s reports are substantiated, the President’s red line has been crossed, and we would urge him to take immediate action to impose the consequences he has promised," the senators wrote.

President Obama didn’t make any phone calls the night of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the White House said in a letter to Congress released Thursday. “During the entire attack, the president of the United States never picked up the phone to put the weight of his office in the mix,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, who had held up Mr. Obama’s defense secretary nominee to force the information to be released. Mr. Graham said that if Mr. Obama had picked up the phone, at least two of the Americans killed in...

Link only

Kyl suggests Benghazi 'cover-up' Sen. Jon Kyl, (R-Ariz.) suggests the Obama administration orchestrated a "cover-up" of the events that led to the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead. "There are three questions that have to be answered," Kyl said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," appearing on a panel with three other retiring senators. "Why weren't the warnings about the need for security heeded? Why weren't the requests for help during the ted attack answered and why did the administration think...

Four American service members were killed by an Afghan policeman early today, the third attack on coalition forces in three days, bringing the death toll in the recent violence to eight. The attacks -- two "green on blue" incidents and an assault on a coalition base by 15 Taliban fighters -- come as tensions flared across the Muslim world over an anti-Islam film that was produced in the United States. In the latest attack, an Afghan police officer turned his gun on NATO troops at a remote checkpoint in southern Afghanistan before dawn. Four U.S. soldiers were killed before the...

The senior commander for Special Operations forces in Afghanistan has suspended training for all new Afghan recruits until the more than 27,000 Afghan troops working with his command can be re-vetted for ties to the insurgency. The move comes as NATO officials struggle to stem the tide of attacks on NATO forces by their Afghan colleagues. The attacks, which have killed 45 troops this year, have forced NATO officials to acknowledge a painful truth: Many of the incidents might have been prevented if existing security measures had been applied correctly. But numerous military guidelines were not followed — by Afghans...

Taliban-led insurgents opened a spring offensive Sunday with a wave of coordinated suicide missions, firing at embassies and government offices from seized buildings in Kabul and attacking U.S. bases and police stations in three eastern provinces. The strikes, which seemed to catch U.S.-led forces and Afghan authorities by surprise, sparked fierce firefights in Kabul and two other cities that underscored the insurgency's lethality as U.S. combat troops gird for the second phase of a withdrawal due to end in 2014.

President Barack Obama has a PR problem when it comes to Afghanistan, to say the least. Once the must-fight war for America, the decade-long mission has spiraled into a series of U.S. missteps and violent outbreaks that have left few ardent political supporters. After NATO detained a U.S. soldier Sunday for allegedly killing sleeping Afghan villagers, Republicans and Democrats alike pointed to the stress on troops after years of fighting and reiterated calls to leave by the end of 2014 as promised, if not sooner. "It's just not a good situation," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Our troops...

War On Terror: Have the president's swift military pullouts from Afghanistan and Iraq served U.S. interests? All we see is a "surge" on U.S. targets by our enemies, while our secretary of state pleads with them not to meddle. Pakistani-backed Taliban fighters on Saturday set off a 1,500-pound bomb on an armored vehicle full of American troops and allies, killing 18. It was their biggest armed attack on a U.S. target since they downed a helicopter carrying elite SEALs shortly after the unit took out Osama bin Laden. It was also the biggest attack ever against a U.S. target within...

President Barack Obama delivered on another foreign policy promise on Friday with plans to pull the last U.S. troops from Iraq. But in a re-election campaign all about the weak U.S. economy, he may not get much credit. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi -- these are all dead U.S. opponents that Democrat Obama can claim a measure of credit for getting. Now add to that Obama's announcement on Friday that the eight-year war in Iraq is ending, fulfilling a campaign goal he made in 2008 when he declared the...

All those Occupiers holding their “End the War!” signs better march on over to the White House. President Obama just announced he’s sending U.S. troops to central Africa to fight something called “the Lord’s Resistance Army.” The letter to House GOP Speaker John Boehner: TEXT OF A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT TO THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE OF THE SENATE October 14, 2011 Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:) For more than two decades, the Lord’s Resistance...On October 12, the initial team of U.S. military personnel with appropriate combat equipment deployed to Uganda....

President Obama has deployed combat troops to central Africa to aid in the fight against the Lord's Resistance Army. In a letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner, Obama says 12 troops with "appropriate combat equipment" were deployed on October 12 and approximately 100 in total will be deployed including a second combat team and headquarters, communications and logistics personnel. The forces will provide information and advise and assist "select partner nation forces," Obama explains. The troops will not fight except in self-defense. The full letter is after the jump.

President Obama's announcement that only 3,000 troops will be left in Iraq by the end of the year heralds a serious and dangerous downgrade from the current 45,000 troops, spelling disaster for our soldiers. According to a FOXNEWS report, President Obama’s military commanders are livid over this recent decision – a decision that Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, allegedly gave signature to. President Obama may be trying to keep a 2008 campaign promise to remove our troops from Iraq however the problems is that regardless of what some misguided people may say, the war in Iraq is not over, there are...

Politicians often rail against government spending, except when it goes to the military. Conservatives believe there is no such thing as too much defense spending, and liberals don't argue, for fear of being labeled appeasers. So when there is talk of the two parties agreeing to cut the Pentagon budget, it sounds like a monumental change. But probably not. It's a good thing that defense, which accounts for roughly a fifth of all federal outlays, is no longer considered immune to the need for frugality. But both supporters and opponents have a stake in portraying any trims as far more...

BILL O'REILLY, FOX NEWS HOST: Who wouldn't want out of that mess? I mean we're spending billions of dollars over there and we're getting our people killed. Who wouldn't? But, here's the deal. Once you fight, you have to fight to win. You have to fight to win. And, a lot of Americans, including me, are not sure he has the heart for the fight. BOB WOODWARD: It's a fair question. When you look at the record here that's presented in this book, the "X" factor that never comes out, he never -- when I asked him, I said, "Well,...

With the departure of General Jones from the White House, America is losing fine public servant and excellent military man. One of the few in Washington who eschewed the limelight, Jones did his job fairly competently and with a minimum of self promotion. Will we get that lucky with his replacement? The man picked to be President Obama's next national security advisor was sharply criticized by top officials in the administration, with the Secretary of Defense saying he would be a "disaster" in the job. According to the new book about the Obama administration's handling of Iraq and Afghanistan by...

Bob Woodward's searing critique of the Democrats' war strategy comes as key advisers are leaving and voters lose patience with Barack Obama's promise to deliver 'hope and change'. Alex Spillius reports on an increasingly isolated President. When Barack Obama took office 20 months ago – and what a long 20 months it seems – there was a lot of talk about the great "Team of Rivals" he was appointing around him. Parallels were drawn with the cabinet of substantial talents and big personalities assembled by Abraham Lincoln to rebuild the nation after the civil war. Now, in a new book,...