Free Republic

At their third annual joint conference, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and George Washington University (GWU) held a meeting on GWU’s campus last week. CIA Director John Brennan gave the opening remarks and interestingly enough, mentioned that the humanitarian and refugee crises concern the CIA's analysts. Also in his opening remarks, he estimated that up to 35 years of development has been set back due to the current Syrian civil war. He spoke about the perceived secrecy surrounding the CIA, “The American people have the right to know” what the government is doing, and made a veiled reference to exiled...

Syrian Army cotninues massive advance in northern Aleppo By Leith Fadel - 03/10/2016 ALEPPO, SYRIA (4:15 A.M.) - The Syrian Arab Army's Republican Guard, backed by Liwaa Al-Quds (Palestinian paramilitary), continued their large-scale advance inside the provincial capital of Aleppo on Sunday night, targeting new areas under the control of Fatah Halab near the Handarat Refugee Camp and Kindi Cancer Hospital. According to a military source in the provincial capital, the Syrian Armed Forces managed to capture the western axis of the Awijah District after a fierce battle on Sunday night with the jihadist rebels of Harakat Nouriddeen Al-Zinki, the...

Volunteers of the White Helmets civil defense organization have a double life: they are 'volunteers' by day and terrorists by night. Photos, published online, reveal 'the second life' of volunteers of the White Helmets civil defense organization that operates throughout the Syrian territory, controlled by the 'moderate' opposition. According to the photos, the volunteers spend one part of their lives, providing assistance to civilian population, and then transform into members of terrorist groups and shoot at the same civilians. The White Helmets, also known as the Syrian Civil Defense (SCD), was founded in early 2013 by British security consultant James...

Syrian government and allied forces advanced north of Aleppo, pressing their week-old offensive to take the insurgent-held, eastern part of the city after dozens of overnight air strikes. The Syrian army told rebels to leave the area, offering safe passage and aid supplies. The Syrian military, supported by Iranian-backed militias and Russian air power, began their push to take the whole of the divided city after a ceasefire collapsed last month. The assault has nearly destroyed eastern Aleppo's healthcare system, the U.N said. An air campaign by the Syrian government and its allies was reinforced by a ground offensive targeting...

Graphic Photos *********************************************** A wounded Syrian child looks on from inside a vehicle following a reported airstrike on Kafr Batna in the outskirts of the capital Damascus Credit: AMER ALMOHIBANY/AFP ****************************************Syrian rebels and civilians in the besieged eastern half of Aleppo are bracing for an onslaught ground assault by Syrian regime forces and their Shia fighter allies which could once and for all end the opposition’s resistance in the city. US officials said they were seeing signs that thousands of troops from across the Shia world -  including Syrian regime soldiers, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hizbollah fighters, Iraqi militiamen and Afghan mercenaries...

Russian war planes struck rebel held areas north of Aleppo on Saturday as the army shelled the besieged old quarter in a major offensive, rebels and a monitoring group said. Russia was reported on Friday to be sending more warplanes to Syria to ramp up its air campaign as the United States said it had not yet given up on finding a diplomatic resolution. The latest strikes come 10 days into a Russian-backed Syrian government offensive to capture rebel-held eastern Aleppo and crush the last urban stronghold of a revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that began in 2011. Saturday's...

Russia is sending more warplanes to Syria to ramp up its campaign of air strikes, a Russian newspaper reported on Friday, as Moscow defied global censure over an escalation that Western countries say has torpedoed diplomacy. U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the Russian and Syrian bombing of the city of Aleppo as "barbarous", the White House said after the two leaders spoke by telephone. Fighting intensified a week into a new Russian-backed government offensive to capture all of Syria's largest city and crush the last remaining urban stronghold of the rebellion. Moscow and its ally,...

Fri Sep 30, 2016 | 3:47pm IST Russia beefs up its air force in Syria - paper Russia has reinforced its air base in Syria with several bombers and is ready to send ground attack aircraft as it intensifies support for Syrian government troops after the collapse of a ceasefire plan, Russia's Izvestia daily reported on Friday. A group of Su-24 and Su-34 frontline bombers have already arrived at the Hmeymim base, Izvestia wrote, quoting an unnamed military official. "If need be, the air force group will be (further) built up within two to three days," he said. "Su-25 ground...

Full Title: HEAD CHEF Merciless Iraqi housewife ‘beheads and COOKS ISIS fighters’ to avenge her family’s death making her terror group’s most wanted =============================================================================== Um Hanadi has survived seven assassination attempts and is 'more wanted than the Iraqi Prime Minister' THIS is the head-cooking housewife and militia commander so feared by ISIS she has even received personal death threats from the terror group’s leader. Machete-wielding Wahida Mohamed has been battling ISIS in its various guises since 2004. The machete-wielding housewife leads a band of around 70 militia in her Iraqi hometown ================================================================================ And her grim methods of disposing with enemies...

Russia and Syria appeared to attack two more hospitals and a bakery in the already besieged eastern city of Aleppo on Wednesday, in an aggressive push to seize and starve the city—home to as many as 100,000 children—back into regime control. So how will the Obama administration respond to an increasingly provocative Russia? For now, it won’t. There is an unspoken understanding within the administration that despite the many provocations Russia has carried out in Syria, there will be no major American response, a position that increasingly is drawing the ire of top national security officials, three U.S. officials told...

He might want to talk to his boss about it. Because his boss is the one bringing them here to enrich us and become "part of our story". Just like in New York, Boston and Orlando. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies worry that a surge of violent extremists will eventually move from ISIS-controlled areas in Syria and Iraq into Western nations with the aim of committing terrorist attacks, FBI Director James Comey told Congress on Tuesday. "The caliphate will be crushed," but hundreds of people will remain and become part of a "terrorist diaspora" in the next two to five...

The opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC) said on Wednesday a political solution was "no longer a viable option" for the Syrian conflict. "The armed Syrian opposition will be considering all options to defend the Syrian people against the Russian aggression on Syria," Muwaffaq Nyrabiya, vice-president of the Turkey-based SNC, said in a statement. "The armed and political oppositions are working on closing ranks and arranging their priorities in light of the fierce military campaign waged by the regime and its allies and their violations of international resolutions," the statement said.

Obama administration officials have begun considering tougher responses to the Russian-backed Syrian government assault on Aleppo, including military options, as rising tensions with Moscow diminish hopes for diplomatic solutions from the Middle East to Ukraine and cyberspace, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. The new discussions were being held at "staff level," and have yet to produce any recommendations to President Barack Obama, who has resisted ordering military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's multisided civil war. But the deliberations coincide with Secretary of State John Kerry threatening to halt diplomacy with Russia on Syria and holding Moscow...

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford has just gone where no JCS chairman has ever gone before! Unsurprisingly, it took a Marine general to stand up to President Barack Obama in the wake of yet another of his dubious national security decisions. The same mindless Obama/Kerry negotiating team that brought us an Iran deal undermining our national security, recently sought to bring us a similarly questionable deal with Russia. This one mandated the Pentagon’s participation in an intelligence-sharing agreement with the Russian Central Command in Syria-built upon a ceasefire paving the way for...

Secretary of State John Kerry threatened on Wednesday to end all cooperation between the United States and Russia to stop Syria's civil war, unless Russian and Syrian government attacks on Aleppo end. More than 250 people are believed to have been killed in the besieged city in the last week. Kerry's warning came in a telephone call Wednesday to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the State Department said, describing the latest U.S. ultimatum in Syria's 5½-year conflict. Many have gone unfulfilled, including President Barack Obama's declaration that the U.S. would take military action if Syrian President Bashar Assad crossed the...

There is no possible way that among the Syrian refugees desperately needing our help, there could be a few dangerous terrorists. It is only ridiculous, racist conservatives – the types of people who will vote for Donald Trump - who insult the Syrian people, and intelligent liberals everywhere, by saying that there could be. We know this because we were instructed in that regard by earnest, progressive commentators who were out recently parading their caring tolerance in reaction to the son of the Republican candidate for president in the United States. Except that they are wrong; and provably so. Donald...

Two days prior to devastating aerial attacks, Michael Ratney, the U.S. special envoy to Syria, was told the Assad regime was planning to hit the Aleppo facilities of the Syrian Civil Defense, a volunteer rescue group. Raed al-Saleh, the head of the organization, which is widely known as the White Helmets, was in Manhattan last week, where he told not only Ratney, but envoys from the Netherlands, Britain, and Canada. He said intercepted communications from military officers in the Assad regime signaled imminent plans to bomb several rescue centers, according to two sources who were in the room when al-Saleh...

Thousands of Iran-backed fighters converge on Aleppo amid deadly Syria airstrikes Published September 26, 2016 As deadly airstrikes pounded Aleppo, Syria over the weekend, a major foreign ground force was also converging on the region. As many as 3,000 Iranian-backed fighters have arrived in Aleppo supporting the Syrian regime in its fight to crush the rebellion, two U.S. officials confirm to Fox News. There are an estimated 250,000 Syrian civilians trapped in Aleppo facing an onslaught of Russian and Syrian bombs, according to reports. The Iranian-backed Shiite militias include fighters from neighboring Iraq as well as Afghanistan, officials say. Many...

Top UN officials have separately described the Syrian regime's brutal offensive against areas of the besieged northern city of Aleppo as "barbaric." Following the collapse of a short-lived, US-and Russia-brokered ceasefire, Syrian forces pounded rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Sunday, killing at least 85 people and wounding more than 300 others, an activist group reported.

Russia has been directly and repeatedly accused of war crimes at the UN security council in an unusually blunt session, as hopes of any form of ceasefire were flattened by the scale and ferocity of the Syrian regime’s assault on eastern Aleppo. The war crimes accusations centred on the widespread use of bunker-busting and incendiary bombs on the 275,000 civilians living in the rebel-held east of the city, weapons that Moscow’s accusers say were dropped by Russian aircraft.