Free Republic

"More than 30,000 tons of chemical munitions have been disposed of over nearly three decades. Years behind schedule and several times over budget, the United States’ declared chemical weapons stock is fully destroyed. The last batch of munitions containing sarin gas, a deadly nerve agent, were disarmed on Friday, July 7 at the Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant in Kentucky. The destruction was verified by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons."... ..."Under the Chemical Weapons Convention, the military was supposed to have eliminated its stockpile in 2007, almost two decades ago. It was granted a five-year extension...

Why settle for helping Iran nuke America, when you can also help Al Qaeda nuke America? With inflation rising almost as fast as gas prices and the cost of a home, Joe Biden ain’t doing much for most Americans. But if you’re an Al Qaeda terrorist, he’s got your back. Just ask three of Gitmo’s finest who are benefiting from Biden’s generosity. Saifullah Paracha (pictured above) was a Pakistani businessman and New York travel agent with some big plans. The Gitmo inmate now being set loose by Biden wanted to “do something big against the US.” 9/11 was in Al...

Israeli jets have reportedly targeted a suspected chemical weapons factory in western Syria. The Syrian National Army said four IAF warplanes hit a military site in Hama province, near Masyaf, in the early hours of Thursday morning, killing two soldiers and causing massive damage. It is believed the site was linked to the sarin gas attack in April, which UN investigators said was the work of the Syrian government. The UN confirmed the chemical attacks in Khan Sheikhoun, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians and prompted a US missile attack, were perpetrated by Assad regime forces. Israel...

"The US state department said it is monitoring the "very disturbing" reports, and that Russia - which is fighting alongside the Syrian government - should be held responsible if deadly chemicals had been used."

Brenda Arthur received an unexpected visit on March 8 that, one week later, leaves her feeling more than a little uneasy. At her door that day was an officer with the West Virginia State Police. He wanted to know about her involvement in a Freedom of Information request regarding a local mosque. Arthur, who will turn 67 this summer, is leader of the West Virginia chapter of ACT For America, whose mission is to educate Americans about the advancement of Islamic principles in Western societies. As a Jewish American, she was concerned about a major expansion of the Islamic Association...

The U.S. has no evidence to confirm reports from aid groups and others that the Syrian government has used the deadly chemical sarin on its citizens, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday. “We have other reports from the battlefield from people who claim it’s been used,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon. “We do not have evidence of it.” He said he was not rebutting the reports. “We’re looking for evidence of it, since clearly we are dealing with the Assad regime that has used denial and deceit to hide their outlaw actions,” Mattis said. Syrian President Bashar Assad denies...

Despite the antiwar Left's favorite mantra about how Bush lied regarding WMDs in Iraq, the evidence now proves there were WMDs after all. According to recent announcement made by Senator Rick Santorum and Rep. Peter Hoekstra , approximately 500 weapons munitions, containing degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent, have been discovered in Iraq since 2003. Saddam, therefore, had the means to put WMDs into terrorists' hands. So what is the primary significance of these revelations? And why are these developments not front page news in our media? Where are all of Bush's critics who called him a liar? Where are...

Syria said on Friday that a United Nations report accusing it of using sarin gas in an attack on the town of Khan Sheikhun in April was a "falsification of the truth", AFP reports. The report, seen by AFP on Thursday, says that President Bashar Al-Assad's regime is responsible for the April 4 attack in which sarin gas projectiles were fired into Khan Sheikhun, a rebel-held town in the Idlib province of northwestern Syria. More than 87 people were killed in the attack, which was not the first time that sarin had been used during the civil war in Syria....

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Richard Dowling's statue ended up saving a whole lot of lives. Here's what happened now. Andrew Cecil Schneck, 25, was charged with attempting to maliciously damage or destroy property receiving federal financial assistance, federal prosecutors announced. A park ranger doing a routine patrol of the area around Hermann Park on Saturday caught Schneck kneeling in the bushes near the statue of Richard Dowling, a commander in the Confederate army

On April 6, United States President Donald Trump authorized an early morning Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in central Syria in retaliation for what he said was a deadly nerve agent attack carried out by the Syrian government two days earlier in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order despite having been warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon. The available intelligence made clear that the Syrians had targeted a jihadist meeting site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied guided bomb equipped...

The US military and intelligence community has intercepted communications featuring Syrian military and chemical experts talking about preparations for the sarin attack in Idlib last week, a senior US official tells CNN.

A professor who challenged the 2013 claims of a chemical attack in Syria is now questioning the Trump administration’s narrative blaming the Assad government for the April 4 attack in the Idlib province town of Khan Shaykhun. On Tuesday, the White House released a declassified intelligence brief accusing Syrian President Bashar Assad of ordering and organizing the attack, in which Syrian planes allegedly dropped chemical ordnance on civilians in the rebel-held town. The report “contains absolutely no evidence that this attack was the result of a munition being dropped from an aircraft,” wrote Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Theodore...

On Aug. 21, 2013, I woke up in the dark around 4:45 a.m., struggling to breathe. My eyes were burning, my head was throbbing, and my throat was blocked. I was suffocating. I tried to inhale but all I heard was a horrible rasping sound as my throat closed up. An unbearable pain drummed in my head. The world began to blur. I pounded my chest but couldn’t breathe. My heart seemed about to explode. Suddenly, my windpipe opened. A gust of air pierced my lungs. Needles seemed to stab my eyes. A searing pain clawed at my stomach. I...

This is from last year but pertains to the recent Syria situation. Gives a little credence to what some people have said about the sarin gas thing being either a false flag or rebels being the source of the sarin. Either way, Trump's being duped.In April of 2013, Britain and France informed the United Nations that there was credible evidence that Syria used chemical weapons against rebel forces. Only two months later, in June of 2013, the United States concluded that the Syrian government did, in fact, use chemical weapons in its fight against opposition forces. President Obama immediately used...

A former Obama official acknowledged Sunday that the U.S. "always knew" an agreement with Syrian President Bashar Assad did not clear all chemical weapons out of Syria, despite the fact that the administration touted the deal as an unequivocal success at the time. "We always knew we had not gotten everything, that the Syrians had not been fully forthcoming in their declaration," Tony Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state and former deputy national security adviser under Barack Obama, told the New York Times.

Then why did he do it? He used nerve gas to block a peace process agreed by the US and Russia that would turn Syria into cantons and reduce Alawite control only to those districts where the Alawite minority dominates.

Sean Keeley of The American Interest noticed a curious statement from National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster when he briefed reporters on the Syrian strike. And the one thing that I will tell you though, there was an effort to minimize – to minimize risk to third-country nationals at that airport – I think you read Russians from that – but that – and we took great pains to try to avoid that. […] And then there were also measures put in place to avoid hitting what we believe is a storage of sarin gas, so that that would not be ignited...

Conservative talk show host, Michael Savage, who fervently supported Trump during the Presidential campaign, soured on him today. Savage, referencing his background in science, having a PhD in epidemiology, said the alleged gas attack in the ISIS controlled city of Idlib was most likely phosgene and not sarin. Backing up his claim that the attack did not contain sarin, Savage made reference to photos showing first responders attending to bodies without gloves or protective gear. Had sarin been used in the attack, all of those men in white helmets would be dead. In nearly a 15 minute soliloquy over the...

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster delivered remarks in Florida today to give some background on the strikes against Syria Thursday. He made one curious comment that raises a lot of troubling questions: And the one thing that I will tell you though, there was an effort to minimize—to minimize risk to third-country nationals at that airport—I think you read Russians from that—but that—and we took great pains to try to avoid that. Of course, in any kind of military operation, there are no guarantees. And then there were also measures put in place to avoid hitting what we believe is...

The director of a top American spy agency said Tuesday that he believed that material from Iraq's illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war.The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material ''unquestionably'' had been moved out of Iraq.''I think people below the Saddam Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what...