Free Republic

Political leaders across the West piously lined up last week to identify the fall of Aleppo as a stain on our collective conscience. The West, they have said, should have done more to stop the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Syria. At a purely humanitarian level, this is obviously true. States can always do more to deliver humanitarian aid to people on the ground. But in a military sense, the notion that the West should have “done more” is fantastical and learns exactly the wrong lesson from this carnival of carnage. If there is a lesson for the West from the...

As President Bashar al-Assad's army closed in on the last rebel enclave in Aleppo on Tuesday, Russia, Iran and Turkey said they were ready to help broker a Syrian peace deal. The Syrian army used loudspeakers to broadcast warnings to insurgents that it was poised to enter their rapidly diminishing area during the day and told them to speed up their evacuation of the city. Complete control of Aleppo would be a major victory for Assad against rebels who have defied him in Syria's most populous city for four years. Ministers from Russia, Iran and Turkey adopted a document they...

HUGE crowds of Muslims chanting Allahu Akbar descended on London for the second time in a week in a series of protests to demand an Islamic caliphate in Syria. On Wednesday, more than 1,000 protestors gathered outside the Syrian embassy in London’s Belgrave Square calling for America to be punished over Aleppo. While one protester appeared to be waving a Taliban flag, others were seen handed placards made by Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, which calls for the reestablishment of a caliphate. Then just days later another 400 British Muslims travelled to the capital from cities including Birmingham and Bradford to take...

Russia's ambassador to Turkey has been assassinated allegedly in retaliation for the crisis in Aleppo. The gunman reportedly said in Turkish "We die in Aleppo, you die here" before opening fire and injuring Ambassador Andrei Karlov.

The battle for Aleppo has gripped the world, but it is hardly the only active front across war-torn Syria. One of the next targets for the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad will probably be the heartland of rebel territory, the neighboring province of Idlib. The province west of Aleppo is a stronghold of al-Qaida’s Syria affiliate and is now also packed with tens of thousands of rebels, many of them evacuated from other parts of the country, making it likely to be an even more bloody theater than Aleppo. Idlib has direct links to the Turkish border, and is...

Shades of “other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?” . . . On today’s Morning Joe, Mike Barnicle claimed that Barack Obama had a “great, outstanding” presidency, “with a few minor ripples like Syria.” So the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, traceable to Obama’s abandonment of his red line, is a “minor ripple?” How callous can Barnicle be? And as bad as was Obama’s failure on Syria, it is just one of a string of fiascos at his feet, from the rise of ISIS, to Iran, Libya, and on the domestic front, a record...

Pastor J.D. addresses the breaking news last week concerning what’s happening in the city of Aleppo specifically related to Bible prophecies concerning Damascus, Syria, Russia and Iran.

I am the opposite of a war junkie, I loathe the sound of fireworks because they remind me of a bloody night in Lithuania in January 1991, where I lay down in dirty snow to save my skin from Soviet bullets..... ...the old cliché that 'the first casualty of war is truth' is absolutely right, and should be displayed in letters of fire over every newspaper reports of conflict.... Almost nothing can be checked. You become totally reliant on the people you are with, and you identify with them..... .... we have been bombarded with colorful reports of events in...

ISIS has found another radical-Islamic Brit willing to butcher innocent hostages: Mohammed Reza Haque, 36, is depicted in the video using a serrated hunting knife to cut off a prisoner’s head in the middle of a barren desert. The vile killer was likened to extremist Mohamed Emwazi – dubbed ‘Jihadi John' – who beheaded five western hostages on video, after murdering his victim in an almost-identical fashion. Emwazi was known as "Jihadi John," ISIS' most infamous executioner. Before he was finally taken out by an American drone, Emwazi slaughtered at least five prisoners: David Haines and Alan Henning from Britain,...

At least 14 US-led coalition military advisers have been captured by the Syrian Special Forces in a bunker in the city of Aleppo, according to media reports... Mutaz Kanoğlu – Turkey David Scott Winer – USA David Shlomo Aram – Israel Muhamad Tamimi – Qatar Muhamad Ahmad Assabian – Saudi Abd-el-Menham Fahd al Harij – Saudi Islam Salam Ezzahran Al Hajlan – Saudi Ahmed Ben Naoufel Al Darij – Saudi Muhamad Hassan Al Sabihi – Saudi Hamad Fahad Al Dousri – Saudi Amjad Qassem Al Tiraoui – Jordan Qassem Saad Al Shamry – Saudi Ayman Qassem Al Thahalbi – Saudi...

Video: What’s really happening in Syria? Hint: Barack Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and the Mainstream Media have been lying to us. Eva Bartlett is an independent journalist from Canada. She has traveled to Syria many times to investigate human rights violations and terrorism against Syrians. What she has found out is a truth completely opposite of what the Mainstream Media and governments claim.

The perverse behavior by Washington and its European satraps is simply a case of sour grapes. Very sour grapes. They have been proven spectacularly wrong about Syria. The liberation of Aleppo this week exposes the Western governments and media in their unrelenting falsehoods and systematic complicity in the Syrian war. This was never a pro-democracy uprising. It was a Western-backed criminal regime-change operation that was unleashed in March 2011, and which is now staring at ignominious defeat. The blood of up to half a million people and many more maimed is on the hands of American and European governments. It...

How did this debacle come about? First, in calling for the overthrow of Bashar Assad, who had not attacked or threatened us, we acted not in our national interests, but out of democratist ideology. Assad is a dictator. Dictators are bad. So Assad must go. Yet we had no idea who would replace him. It soon became clear that Assad’s most formidable enemies, and probable successors, would be the al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, or ISIS, then carrying out grisly executions in their base camp in Raqqa. U.S. policy became to back the “good” rebels in Aleppo, bomb...

The hysteria being manufactured around evidence-free charges of Russian government manipulation of the 2016 presidential election is more and more resembling a temper tantrum thrown by a spoiled child unable to cope with losing some board game ("Russian interference," Dec. 12). And yes, the U.S. intelligence agencies claiming to have the inside dope on this nefarious Russian meddling are the same exemplars of integrity and competence who solemnly assured us in that it was a slam-dunk that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was just bristling with weapons of mass destruction — as President-elect Donald Trump has rightly noted. Nonetheless, these crybabies do...

Google Translation: On Thursday, the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe (BGH) issued a warrant for the suspected membership of a foreign terrorist organization against 24-year-old Tunesian Charfeddine T. (alias Ashraf Al-T.). The alleged IS member is in the urgent suspicion of having planned an attack in Berlin. The police had arrested the man, supported by a SEK unit, at the beginning of November in Schöneberg. There he lived as a sub-tenant of a refugee helper, a room in a rear house at Kolonnenstrasse. However, the investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice rejected the application of the Federal...

Leading the charge to tie Trump to Assad’s atrocities in Syria, Spotlight actor Mark Ruffalo tweeted a Huffington Post article: “As He Slaughters Civilians In Aleppo, Bashar Assad Prepares To Make Nice With Donald Trump.” Actress Laura Benanti bashed Trump for tweeting “while we watch a genocide unfold before our eyes.” Earlier this week, actor and comedian Michael Ian Black said it was Trump’s “buddies” who were behind the violence in Syria. Pop singer James McVey ignored Obama’s role in the Syrian calamity and instead ripped Trump: "This is a tragedy for humanity. Instead we report Kanye West meeting Trump....

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Friday his administration would build "safe zones" to try to help civilians trapped in Syria's bloody conflict, an idea that President Barack Obama said would be too hard to enforce. Mr Trump and Mr Obama spoke separately of the conflict after efforts to evacuate civilians from the city of Aleppo ground to a halt on Friday after weeks of bombardments by the Syrian army. "We're going to try and patch that up and we're going to try and help people," said Mr Trump, who takes over from Obama on Jan. 20. "We're going to...

link only due to copyright complaint

Kerry on TV now. Insists that all principles involved in Syria are committed to peace through his efforts as SECSTATE. Peace is at hand. Now answering question about whether Russia hacked the election. Has "high confidence that these thefts and disclosures effected the election in the way Obama warned. Now we have to get out the facts." Leaves stage abruptly. Spokesman takes his place. Insists that Syria and others have to talk to end war. Spokesman leaves amid many shouted questions.

First Deputy Head of the Main Operations Department at the Russian General Staff Lieutenant General Viktor Poznikhir said on Thursday: The militants have been driven out of 105 city quarters with a total area of 78.5 square kilometers during the whole operation. Over 900 terrorists have been killed, dozens pieces of heavy weapons and other military equipment have been destroyed. More than 3,000 militants have left Aleppo of their own free will, and more than half of them have been pardoned and released. A total of 108,076 civilians, including 47,183 children, were evacuated via humanitarian corridors to the city’s safe...