Free Republic

The Ted Cruz campaign may have played a key role in handing Donald Trump the White House, an on the record discussion between key political operatives Thursday revealed. Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, warned the Trump campaign ahead of the New Hampshire primary that support for him was dropping in their internal polls, giving Trump a chance to recalibrate his strategy in the key primary state. He went on to win New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, essentially locking up the Republican nomination. Corey Lewandowski, then Trump’s campaign manager, recalled the phone call at an election post-mortem hosted by Harvard...

What?! "An obscure private firm hired by the State Department over internal objections to protect U.S. diplomats in Benghazi just months before the American ambassador and three others were killed was staffed with hastily recruited locals with terror ties who helped carry out the attack,...."

NORTHERN IRAQ – On the Western side of Mosul, lies a forgotten front crucial to choking off ISIS' lifeline to Syria. Fox News recently made the eight hour trip west from Mosul to the front outside the devastated city of Sinjar and found a small outpost where a handful of men hold off near-daily attacks from ISIS fighters. One soldier manning the post was David Shumock, a 62-year-old Floridian and former U.S. Air Forces pararescueman. The American fights side-by-side with the Kurdish Peshmerga, and serves as medic and trainer to his comrades, as well. Shumock has called the dusty, makeshift,...

The Discovery Channel has produced a program called “Taking Fire” and is the product of placing helmet cameras on several soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, stationed in Afghanistan’s Korangal Valley. The action takes place in 2010, during Obama’s surge. It was a typical Obama disaster where he pulled out the troops too soon to have any effect. I do not know if the troops were placed in the position they were because of Obama’s Rules of Engagement or due to some of the worst military planning that I have ever seen. The platoon is stationed on the valley floor...

Outgunned, outmanoeuvred, hopelessly outnumbered and besieged in the Afghan desert, a small band of British soldiers chose to save a final bullet for themselves rather than fall into Taliban hands. For nearly two months, the 88 men of Easy Company – a mix of Paratroopers and the Royal Irish – had faced the overwhelming force and firepower of up to 500 Taliban determined to over-run the remote Helmand outpost of Musa Qala.

KERNERSVILLE, N.C. — An unusual coalition of largely older and conservative former military men and younger, left-leaning law students are waging a joint campaign for one of the most unlikely causes: clemency for troops convicted of killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. They want to push President Obama to reduce sentences and grant pardons for seven convicted war criminals, ranging from a private who followed an order to shoot unarmed detainees, to the more well-known case of Robert Bales, an Army staff sergeant sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of 16 Afghan civilians in 2012. The...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Navy has fired the commander of the 10 American sailors who wandered into Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf and were captured and held by Iran for about 15 hours. In a statement Thursday, the Navy said it had lost confidence in Cmdr. Eric Rasch, who was the executive officer of the squadron that included the 10 sailors at the time of the January incident. He was responsible for the training and readiness of the more than 400 sailors in the unit. A Navy official said Rasch failed to provide effective leadership, leading to a...

The commanding officer of a West Coast-based Navy riverine squadron has been fired in the fallout from an investigation into an incident in which ten sailors were briefly captured by Iranian forces earlier this year. Cmdr. Eric Rasch, commanding officer of Coastal Riverine Squadron 3, was relieved today by Capt. Gary Leigh the commander of Coastal Riverine Group 1 due to a “loss of confidence in his ability to command,” according to a Navy release. Leigh made the decision to remove Rasch after reviewing a preliminary investigation into the incident that unfolded over Jan. 12-13. Two riverine boats carrying ten...

For decades we've heard Republicans and Democrats tell us that we have to somehow "overturn Roe vs. Wade" in order to stop the abortion holocaust. In the first place, there's nothing to "overturn." Roe was not a law. It was an arbitrary, unconstitutional, lawless court opinion delivered by a handful of oath-breaking, unprincipled, usurping judges -- men who have all already gone on to meet the Supreme Judge of the Universe to explain exactly why they did what they did. Their mere opinion, in one particular case, which opened the door to one of the largest mass murders in human...

On January 5, 2016, America lost an elite Special Forces soldier when the White House turned their back on him and his unit. Army Green Beret Sergeant First Class Matthew McClintock lost his life, and two others were wounded, when his unit came under Taliban fire in a compound in Marjah, Afghanistan. After the unit was pinned down by enemy combatants, reports say the ground commander requested support from a circling AC-130 gunship. Due to the Obama administration’s fear of collateral damage, the gunship was initially waived off. The “quick” reaction force (QRF) was also delayed by hours. Although one...

Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a former Air Force pilot who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said on Thursday that Donald Trump is openly advocating war crimes that would cause the soldiers who obeyed his orders to be jailed. “If you’re a private in the field and your major or your colonel orders you to do something that is a war crime, you actually bear responsibility, you can’t say that the colonel made me do it,” said Kinzinger, who is supporting Marco Rubio. “What Donald Trump, as wanting to be president of the United States is advocating, is a war...

Ted Cruz likes to say “personnel is policy” but the single most important personnel decision he’s made on the 2016 presidential campaign has become his most controversial. Cruz has carefully built his brand on trustworthiness — he stands almost daily in front of signs that read “TrusTED” — but in selecting his campaign manager, Cruz tapped a take-no-prisoners operative well practiced in political dark arts. Those who have crossed Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, say things like he’s “mean” and a “master of sleazy politics.” He’s also an indisputably talented tactician who has guided Cruz from an asterisk early in...

A recent US intelligence report said that Daesh (also known as ISIL/Islamic State) is degrading. Two coalitions - one led by the US and the other by Russia - have been involved in fighting the terrorists. It is high time to figure out some differences between the two approaches. The Common Goal Russia, the United States, and Syria have one common enemy - the terrorist group Daesh. In September 2014, US President Barack Obama pledged to destroy Daesh with massive airstrikes. "Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy. We...

The speed of the news cycle and the media obsession with the presidential horseraces have crowded out a crucial development in the war on ISIS and related Islamic jihadist groups. House Speaker Paul Ryan has been sounding out colleagues for a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The current AUMF, which was written in 2001 and targeted groups connected to 9/11, has not been renewed. Believe it or not. Bravo for Paul Ryan's statesmanship. But a new AUMF must be accompanied by a clear U.S. declaration of war against ISIS. We will never destroy them without a full-blown...

Arkansas has asked the Supreme Court to revisit its long-standing ruling that a woman can terminate a pregnancy until the fetus is viable outside of the womb. Arkansas on Tuesday asked the justices to overturn a lower court decision that found that the state’s ban on abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy and when a heartbeat is detected is unconstitutional. The court established the viability standard in the 1973 case Roe v. Wade and reaffirmed it in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Arkansas argues that the viability rule is arbitrary, not written in the constitution, and is outdated....

War is nasty, brutal and costly. In our latest wars, many of the casualties suffered by American troops are a direct result of their having to obey rules of engagement created by politicians who have never set foot on — or even seen — a battlefield. Today's battlefield commanders must be alert to the media and do-gooders who are all too ready to demonize troops involved in a battle that produces noncombatant deaths, so-called collateral damage. According to a Western Journalism article by Leigh H Bravo, "Insanity: The Rules of Engagement" (http://tinyurl.com/p59nlqs), our troops fighting in Afghanistan cannot do night...

General rips military leaders: 'They should put their stars on the table and be prepared to resign' U.S. Army Special Forces (photo: Department of Defense) Rules of engagement that risk the lives of U.S. forces and harsh punishments over questionable charges have America’s elite Green Berets fuming at the Obama administration, and the former commander of all Green Berets says it’s just the latest symptoms of a military deliberately weakened by this administration and military officials more concerned about advancement than the good of their forces and their nation. The litany of Green Beret frustration was detailed this week by...

During his historic trip to Alaska, President Barack Obama spent some time fishing at Kanakanak Beach in Dillingham and in a comical moment, a salmon spawned on his shoes. Wearing a pair of orange gloves, Obama examined some of the fish that he caught. The second one he picked up began squirting at his shoes. "Uh-oh, what's happening there?" he asked.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon (Likud) encouraged constant vigilance on Wednesday, during a visit to the "Jordan Lions" Brigade in the Jordan Valley. "The result in every encounter with terrorists should be like this: that you remain standing while the terrorist is on the ground," he stated. "You should be aware that someone is looking at you and looking for the weak spot." Ya'alon also addressed the waves of terror rippling through Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. "In Judea and Samaria, we are going through a time of multiple incidents," he said. "The trick is not to become a target by terror...

Gay marriage and abortion have little in common except for how each became federal law without ever being codified by Congress. The U.S. Supreme Court's Obergefell decision delivers social change the citizenry not only did not want but which it actively fought against.