Free Republic

After the Islamic terrorist attacks in France, I have been amazed by the reaction of many of those in the media and Washington to these recent events. Over 40 different world leaders assembled in Paris to show their opposition to these terrorist attacks. But strangely enough, many of them were surprised that the President of the United States was nowhere to be seen for the event. The only thing surprising about this fact is the fact that anybody was actually surprised by it.

[Editor's Note: Gayle Trotter was able to sit down for an interview with Iraq's Ambassador to the United States, for his perspective on the unrest in the Middle East, terrorism, and America's role in fighting ISIS.]Gayle TrotterTell me a little bit about your background and how you find yourself in Washington, D.C., as the representative of your country Iraq? Lukman Faily My major is in mathematics and computer science so my background was always technical. I worked in various companies in the United Kingdom and worked in IT-related industries, primarily consultancy. I moved on into project management, program management and...

Paris — “To misname things is to add to the world’s unhappiness.” Whether or not Albert Camus really did utter these words, they are an astonishingly apt description of the situation in which the French government now finds itself. Indeed, the French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius no longer even dares pronounce the real name of things. Mr. Fabius will not describe as “Islamists” the terrorists who on Wednesday, Jan. 7, walked into the offices of the newspaper Charlie Hebdo, right in the heart of Paris. Nor will he use “Islamic State” to describe the radical Sunni group that now controls...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The focus of the Boston Marathon bombing trial figures to be as much on what punishment Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could face as on his responsibility for the attack. With testimony expected to start later this month, the Justice Department has given no indication it is open to any proposal from the defense to spare Tsarnaev's life, pushing instead toward a trial that could result in a death sentence for the 21-year-old defendant. In a deadly terror case that killed three people, including a child, and jolted the city, there may be little incentive for prosecutors who believe they...

“We've gone from being in the crossfire to being ... right in the crosshairs,” said Charlie Sennott, executive director of the GroundTruth Project and the co-founder of Global Post, the news outlet James Foley was working for when he was abducted and later killed by the so-called Islamic State. “This is a new front that has been opened up by Islamic extremists in the last few years, where they are going out and targeting journalists.”

The United States and its allies carried out 29 separate airstrikes targeting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq on Friday, according to the Combined Joint Task Force. The strikes occurred between Friday and Saturday morning, and targeted a range of Islamic State vehicles, buildings, and other positions, according to Reuters. Sixteen of the attacks occurred in seven different Iraqi cities. Vehicles, buildings, equipment and fighting positions were targeted, as well as Islamic State units, according to the task force. In Syria, 11 more airstrikes were conducted around the city of Kobani. Those strikes destroyed a tank and other fighting...

Which terrorist will Obama set loose next from Gitmo? A better question might be is there any terrorist he won’t free? Is there an Al Qaeda or Taliban Jihadist who poses too much of a threat to the United States for Obama to free with a lot of airline miles and Michelle Obama’s recipe for arugula fruitcake? If Obama has a red line when it comes to releasing terrorists, we haven’t seen it yet. There appears to be no threat that a terrorist can pose and no crime he has committed too severe to prevent him from getting a plane...

Op-ed: The distorted mutation that is Islamic fundamentalism has to be acknowledged; many Muslims recognize there is a problem, which is not just a handful of Jihadists involved in terrorism. Any debate on Islam in Muslim countries and among Muslim communities in the West is like stepping into a minefield. When it comes to the media outlets and academe, for the most part, the subject of Islam sparks a convoluted and apologetic discourse; on the social networks, on the other hand, the discourse it prompts is a racist one. The thing is there's a problem. It's hissing and bubbling. Many...

President Barack Obama has been making progress on his pledge to shut down the prison at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, having transferred out more than 20 prisoners since last fall, leaving fewer than 60 the administration considers eligible for release if countries can be found to accept them. That would leave some 70 hard-core terrorists at the base. The president is reported to believe that Congress will then reject the high cost of keeping the facility open for these 70 prisoners, including the man who organized the aircraft attacks of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and agree to transfer them...

Muslims never guilty of 'terrorist massacres,' Turkey's Erdogan insistsTurkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly bizarre rhetoric continued this week when he told reporters Muslims have "never taken part in terrorist massacres" and appeared to blame the West for the recent Islamist attacks in Paris.

The Obamacare-IRS ScandalFrench Terror Attacks Tied To FBI Asset? New Docs: Top IRS official may have obstructed investigations into the IRS scandal The Obamacare-IRS Scandal There is a lawsuit that could bring President Obama’s federal healthcare crashing down under the weight of its own lawlessness. A few weeks ago, we filed anamicus brief in support of plaintiffs who are making the plain obvious point to the United States Supreme Court that President Obama (or any other president) should not be permitted to rewrite federal statues in brazen violation of the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers. The plaintiffs in David King...

The manager of the Paris kosher shop that was attacked now plans to move to Israel, his brother told a German newspaper. Patrice Oalid, 39, who was shot in the arm and is recovering in the hospital, told his older brother, Joel, that after just surviving the Jan. 9 attack, and seeing his customers and employees murdered, he cannot stay in Paris any longer, Joel Oalid told the Bild newspaper on Sunday in what the German daily said was an exclusive interview. He expects many more French Jews to follow suit, Joel Oalid said his brother told him. The gunman,...

In recent interviews former President Jimmy Carter has once again taken to blaming Israel for all that is wrong in the Middle East. Carter, to his mind, has always viewed the Jewish state as ultimately being responsible not simply for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but for the “unrest” that is historically endemic to the region. Islamic extremism, he has intimated, exists because Israel does. In no less a non-serious venue as Comedy Central, Carter told host Jon Stewart that “the Palestinian problem” is part of the reason why terrorist attacks like that which took place last week in Paris. “Well, one...

In the municipality of Örebro the ruling body have highlighted the problem of IS-sympathizers. According to Councillor Rasmus Persson (C), they municipality will try to help the IS-warriors who returns to Orebro getting a job and get psychological help for their traumatic experiences. - We have discussed how we should work for these guys who have come back, to make them not go back, and that they should be helped to process the traumatic experiences they have been through, says Rasmus Persson (C) to SVT Tvärsnytt. The City Council has also reasoned regarding the possibility of offering the returning men...

Could this argument be any dumber? The Obama administration has forced America and much of the world into a debate no one wanted or needed. Namely, does Islamic terrorism have anything to do with Islam. This debate is different than the much-coveted "national conversation on race" that politicians so often call for (usually as a way to duck having it), because that is a conversation at least some people want. The White House doesn't want a conversation about Islam and terrorism. White House spokesman Josh Earnest says, "We have chosen not to use that label [of radical Islam] because it...

The plan was to gun down law officers in Belgium's streets or at police stations, possibly disguised in police uniforms themselves.But police stopped suspected terrorists in the city of Verviers in a raid Thursday night just before they were about to strike, Belgium's federal prosecutor said Friday. "Could have been hours, certainly no more than a day or two," Eric van der Sypt said.Officers killed two suspects, and wounded and arrested a third in Thursday's operation. Like the Paris killers a week before, the three suspects had been spotted dressed all in black. They carried large duffel bags outside of...

Lassana Bathily, the Malian Muslim employee who helped save the lives of several customers during last week’s deadly attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris, will be awarded French nationality, France’s Interior Bernard Cazeneuve announced Thursday. In a statement applauding Bathily’s “act of bravery,” Cazeneuve said that the young man will become a French citizen during a ceremony on January 20. The move comes following an outpouring of public support for Bathily, whose striking story of courage trickled out in the days after the hostage crisis at the Hyper Casher supermarket in eastern Paris. The 24-year-old shop assistant was in...

The US Department of Defense is to send 400 troops and hundreds of support staff to train moderate rebels against Islamic State (IS) in Syria. It is not yet clear where the troops will be drawn from or where they will be based, though Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have offered to host them. The US aims to train more than 5,000 rebels annually for three years.

Could any or all of the victims in the Paris attack have survived if they had guns to protect themselves? One Texas gun group tried to find out by organizing a simulation on a set designed to look like the offices of Charlie Hebdo, hoping to learn how things might have been different in Paris or any other mass shooting. KTVT's Andrea Lucia reports.