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The White House on Sunday defended its approach to the Syrian conflict as Republicans launched fresh accusations that the Obama administration is doing too little and has moved too slowly to aid rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad. “We have to be very discerning about what's in our interest and what outcome is best for us, and the prices that we're willing to pay to get to that place,” White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “We've rushed to war in this region in the past. We're not going to do it here,”...

Multinational military exercise 'Eager Lion' has been launched in Jordan amid condemnation from neighboring Syria and its ally Russia. The US brings Patriot missile batteries to the Syrian border, which could remain deployed afterwards. The exercises will last for 12 days, bringing together about 8,000 personnel from 19 countries, mostly Arabic, but also including the US and Europe. The maneuvers will also involve some 3,000 Jordanian and 500 British troops.

The White House announced Thursday that the Obama administration has conclusive evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime has used chemical weapons against his opposition, killing up to 150 people in the last year and crossing what President Obama has called a "red line" that would lead to greater American involvement in the crisis. It was not immediately clear what the next U.S. move would be, but a statement by Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes said that the use of chemical weapons by Syria has changed the President’s "calculus."

The crisis in Syria ...a deadly power struggle between two bitterly opposed Muslim ideologies, Sunni and Shia. Already, the war inside Syria has resulted in 93,000 dead and 1.6 million refugees, with millions more displaced internally SNIP On one side are those who follow President Assad, who belongs to the Alawites — a splinter sect from Shia Islam. On the other are ...insurgents drawn from the majority Sunni population, some of whom have close links to the Sunni jihadists of Al Qaeda. SNIP The main pillars of the current Assad regime are the army, the intelligence services and the Ba’athists,...

In a sharp escalation of the U.S. role in Syria's bloody civil war, the White House announced late Thursday that it will provide military aid to rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad after confirming that his government used chemical weapons on the opposition. Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes told reporters on a conference call that President Barack Obama had heard pleas from Syria's rebel Supreme Military Council (SMC) for more help. "Our aim is to be responsive," Rhodes said, underlining that the new assistance would have "direct military purposes."

War is hell and should be else there would be more of it, but there are things that are far worse. Living in a godless tyrannical Marxist/fascist hell with no liberty, no religious, political or economic freedom for one. No thank you. I'll stand by the constitution and defend my God-given unalienable rights, including the rights to free speech, free religion, to be armed, to be free from government spying, freedom from over-reaching tyrannical government, etc., etc., etc. The corrupt democrat politicizing of our government agencies must stop NOW!! The government snooping programs MUST be shut down NOW! Our borders...

War is politics by other means.  This is attributed to General Clausewitz, and I believe it is true.  I also believe that "Political Power grows from the barrel of a gun" as spoken by Mao Zedong is also true. In a successful revolution the underdog wins.  The American Revolution, the Soviet Revolution, the Chinese Revolution.  In a coup the stronger actor wins.  Understanding that there is no government, no entity, so strong that it is unbeatable is the first step in understanding that "political power grows from the barrel of a gun" and that revolutionary war is truly politics by...

Attacks on Christian children, both boys and girls, are on the rise in Egypt. Last week, a six-year-old Coptic Christian boy named Cyril Yusuf Sa‘ad was abducted and held for ransom. After his family paid off the Muslim kidnapper, Ahmed Abdel Moneim Abdel-Salam, he still killed the child and threw his body in the sewer of his house. In the words of the Arabic report, the boy’s “family is in tatters after paying 30,000 pounds to the abductor, who still killed the innocent child and threw his body into the toilet of his home, where the body, swollen and moldy,...

If there was a moment when the United States could have productively intervened in Syria, it looks like that moment has passed. Shiite militants, including Hezbollah -- partly at the behest of their paymasters in Iran -- are racing to the defense of Bashar Assad's regime. According to a witness account in the New York Times, there were some 11,000 Hezbollah fighters in the besieged town of Qusair alone. A Shiite religious student in Najaf, Iraq, told the Times that his colleagues believe the leader of Qatar, a backer of Sunni Syrian rebels, is a long-prophesied demonic figure who, it...

In the course of his rambling monologue on national security policy delivered at the National Defense University, President Obama gave only glancing attention to the most significant military undertaking of his term in office -- the Afghanistan war. The president scarcely ever mentions Afghanistan except to note that Bush's war there was "paid for with borrowed dollars." The word Afghanistan is nearly always mouthed in the context of "winding down" or "ending" our commitment. And, of course, because Obama still cannot help himself, he again chastised his predecessor for supposedly "shifting our focus" and prosecuting a war in Iraq. Perhaps...

The collapse of Middle Eastern states from Libya to Afghanistan vastly increases the terrorist recruitment pool, while severely restricting the ability of American intelligence services to monitor and interdict the terrorists. In addition, it intensifies the despair that motivates Muslims like the Tsarnaev brothers or Michael Adebolajo to perpetrate acts of terrorism. That makes President Obama’s declaration that America is winding down the “war on terror”–a misnomer to begin with–the worst decision by an American commander-in-chief since the Buchanan administration, perhaps ever. Last week I took part in a Tablet magazine roundtable on the crack-up of Middle Eastern states and...

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview broadcast Thursday that he is "confident in victory" in his country's civil war, and he warned that Damascus would retaliate in kind to any future Israeli airstrike on his territory.

Chinese Hackers Have Stolen Plans For Pretty Much The Entire US Military Geoffrey Ingersoll May 28, 2013, 11:11 AM Hackers have accessed designs for more than two dozen major U.S. weapons systems, according to a devastating classified report from a Pentagon advisor shared with the Washington Post. Although the report from the Defense Science Board did not identify the hackers, senior military and industry officials with knowledge of the breaches say they come primarily from China, according to Ellen Nakashima of the Post. A public version of the report released in January warned of an "existential cyber attack" with "potentially...

<p>Recently I was a guest on a national television show, and the host expressed some indignation when I said that soldiers in Afghanistan don’t much discuss the war they’re fighting. The soldiers are mostly in their teens, I pointed out. Why would we expect them to evaluate U.S. foreign policy?</p>

Two of Britain´s most celebrated war memorials have been defaced, apparently with the word ´Islam´ scrawled across them and inscriptions scrubbed out with red paint. Police have confirmed they are investigating the vandalism of the RAF Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park and the Animals In War Memorial in Park Lane, both in central London. Pictures taken today show that the damage has now been covered over with plastic or white sheets. Scotland Yard said there have not been any arrests, so it not clear if it has been done by Muslim protesters or far-right groups attempting to stir-up hatred.

Author’s note: This was originally published in Dec. 2011 in Front Page Magazine and it was the most popular piece I’ve written until this piece of mine. I’m a cartoonist, so the only essays I write are ones that I cannot express in any other way but words, and here- in light of the latest Jihad attack in London, and the latest “Islam vs “Islamism”” debate going on- is what I think is my most comprehensive piece on Islam, Muslims & Jihad.My name is Bosch and I’m a recovered Muslim. That is, if Muslims don’t kill me for leaving Islam,...

My confidential White House informant, The Really Honorable I.M. Totus, has provided this advance copy of the non-partisan Memorial Day address which he is programming President Obama to deliver. Editor's comment:Some far right-wingers may be shocked at what President Obama plans to say and may even consider it a bit over the top. However, it is wonderful to learn that he intends to meet his own personal goal of explaining things precisely as he sees them rather than hiding behind disgarded notions of political correctness and reverence for the past. Honesty is no longer merely the "best policy." Now it is...

Editor’s Note: Williamsburg resident Joe “Porky” Porcacelli’s oral narrative of his experiences in WWII is available from the Colonel Robert R. McCormick Research Center in Wheaton, IL, http://firstdivisionmuseum.org. Williamsburg Man’s Military Service Gave Close-Up View Of Combat By Etta Pettijohn The epic history of WWII has been told through movies and books, but nobody knows the details better than Joe “Porky” Porcacelli. His personal war experience was loaded with historic names and places - General George S. Patton Jr., D-Day, Omaha Beach, Nazi prison camps, the Nuremberg Trials, and War Correspondent Ernie Pyle, to name a few. >Porcacelli quit high...

The threats emanating from Syria have become downright frightening. For the past several days, Homeland Security Minister Gilad Erdan has been warning repeatedly that it is certain that Israeli population centers will be hit by Syrian ballistic missiles and that we have to be prepared for the worst case scenarios, including Scud missile launched chemical weapons attacks on Israel's metropolitan centers. Wednesday, Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel spelled out Israel's concerns from a military perspective. The chance of war breaking out at any time is extremely high. Syria has a massive arsenal that includes advanced anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship...

A new Fox News poll finds that nearly a quarter of voters (23 percent) thinks the U.S. should get more involved because it’s a humanitarian crisis and Syria is a strategically important country. However, nearly three times as many, 68 percent, say the U.S. should stay out because it’s a civil war and the U.S. could actually end up helping anti-American extremist groups. Syria is a rare instance of agreement across the political spectrum: majorities of independents (65 percent), Democrats (69 percent) and Republicans (70 percent) agree the United States should stay out of Syria. Voters who have served in...

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas the real “Maverick” spoke the hard core truth the other day by saying—‘I don’t trust Republicans.’ He is spot on and the old corrupt guard from both parties must be chucked now this coming 2014 election. There are only a few true blooded Republicans we should trust and they are Senators Ted Cruz and Trey Gowdy. America is in a War. A War bought on by banksters, corrupt politicians, and communists within our own government. Do not trust any “Progressives” regardless of party affiliation. All these corrupt individuals care about is getting elected and re-elected....

IAF Commander, Major General Amir Eshel, spoke Wednesday about the IAF's preparedness for a surprise war scenario with Syria. "A surprise war can come about through many scenarios at present," he said at a conference of the Fisher Institute for National Security in Herzliya. Isolated incidents can escalate very quickly, he explained, and added that "we are committed to being ready in a matter of hours and to operate up to the end of the spectrum."

WASHINGTON - A Senate panel voted Tuesday to provide weapons to rebels battling the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the first time lawmakers have endorsed the aggressive U.S. military step of arming the opposition. ... "The greatest humanitarian crisis in the world is unfolding in and around Syria," said Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), the committee chief. ". . . The United States must play a role in tipping the scales toward opposition groups and working to build a free and democratic Syria." Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the panel's top Republican, implicitly criticized the Obama administration as he...

The top Republican and Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs are demanding more information from defense Secretary Chuck Hagel about lost Army field records from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the subject of a ProPublica investigation last year. In an unusually detailed letter sent Friday to Hagel, Reps. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., and Michael Michaud, D-Maine, said the Defense Department's response to an earlier request about why records are missing — and what the military is doing about it — didn't go far enough. "Congress must have a clear understanding of the extent of the lost records in...

The United States is sending a force of 200 Marines supported by two aircraft to Italy as a precaution against unrest in Libya. The force would deploy in case of an attack similar to the one on the US consulate in Benghazi last year. On Wednesday Italy’s Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said that the Marines were being transferred to Sigonella air base in Sicily. "It is taking place in accordance with bilateral agreements," Bonino told a joint session of the House and Senate foreign commissions. "This is a reinforcement for the security of US personnel in Libya or for possible...

The Syrian army has begun deploying advanced surface-to-surface missiles and has aimed them at Tel Aviv, the British Sunday Times reports. According to the report, Syria is preparing to strike Israel in case the Jewish State launches another attack on its territory. The army has received orders to strike central Israel in case additional attacks against Syria are carried out, according to the Sunday Times. The information was reportedly obtained by reconnaissance satellites that were tracking the Syrian forces. According to the report, Syria was deploying advanced Tishreen missiles, which are capable of carrying a warhead of a half a...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let me start digging into this IRS Stack that I have here. UK Daily Mail: "When a Tennessee lawyer asked the IRS for tax-exempt status for a mentoring group that trained high school and college students about conservative political philosophy, the agency responded with a list of 95 questions in 31 parts, including an ultimatum for a list of everyone the group had trained, or planned to train. "'Provide details regarding all training you have provided or will provide,' the IRS demanded. 'Indicate who has received or will receive the training and submit copies of the training...

In those first minutes, they'll be stunned. Eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare, nerve endings numbed. They'll just stand there. Soon, you'll notice that they are holding their arms out at a 45-degree angle. Your eyes will be drawn to their hands and you'll think you mind is playing tricks. But it won't be. Their fingers will start to resemble stalactites, seeming to melt toward the ground. And it won't be long until the screaming begins. Shrieking. Moaning. Tens of thousands of victims at once. They'll be standing amid a sea of shattered concrete and glass, a wasteland punctuated by...

Mithal Al-Alusi, whose two sons were killed in a Baghdad ambush soon after he visited Israel, tells The Times of Israel he feels betrayed by the superpower which allowed him to return to his homeland Mithal Al-Alusi is angry. He is angry with Iran for supporting global terrorism. He is angry with Syrian President Bashar Assad for oppressing and killing his own people. He is angry with his own prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, for colluding with the two. But most of all, he is angry with US President Barack Obama for allowing this all to happen. “Obama has...

Turkey’s prime minister vowed Sunday his country won’t be drawn into Syria’s civil war, despite twin car bombings the government believes were carried out by a group of Turks with close ties to pro-government groups in Syria. The bombings left 46 people dead and marked the biggest incident of violence across the border since the start of Syria’s bloody civil war, raising fears of Turkey being pulled deeper into a conflict that threatens to destabilize the region. Syria has rejected allegations it was behind the attacks. But Turkish authorities said Sunday they had detained nine Turkish citizens with links to...

Now China Says It May Own Okinawa, Too Agence France PresseMay 8, 2013 US Sale Of Armed Drones To Japan And South Korea Would Transform Tensions In The Pacific China's top newspaper on Wednesday published a call for a review of Japan's sovereignty over the island of Okinawa -- home to major US bases -- with the Asian powers already embroiled in a territorial row. The lengthy article in the People's Daily, China's most-circulated newspaper and the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist party, argued that the country may have rights to the Ryukyu chain, which includes Okinawa. The island is...

While there have been no new military attacks on Syria since Sunday morning, something more peculiar happened in the past few hours, when according to Akamai and various other Internet traffic trackers, Syria has literally gone "dark", or, as Umbrella Security Labs describes it, as if "Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet." Some more from Umbrella's blog: At around 18:45 UTC OpenDNS resolvers saw a significant drop in traffic from Syria. On closer inspection it seems Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet. The graph below shows DNS traffic from and to Syria. Although Twitter remains relatively silent, the...

<p>Fresh strikes in Syria. Large explosions reported in Damascus and in northern Syria.</p>

The answer might seem obvious: one, at least since the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But Harvard's Linda Bilmes and UCLA's Michael Intriligator argue that it's at least four: In addition to these two large-scale conflicts the US is also fighting a number of unannounced and undeclared “wars”. These unannounced wars are fought mainly with air power and increasingly with drones rather than ground troops. If we define war to include conflicts where the US is launching extensive military incursions, including drone attacks, but that are not officially “declared,” then the US is directly involved in at least three...

We saved them from the nazis and latterly helped them get rid of Gaddaffi, and this is what we get?

Chinese Soldiers March Into Indian Territory, Pitch Tents, Declare Land For China Jake Maxwell Watts, QuartzMay 2, 2013, 11:22 AM China and India are once again at each other’s throats over an unmarked border in the Himalayas. But this time, oddly, nobody seems to know why. In mid-April, around 30 Chinese troops marched across the de facto border between China and India and pitched tents 19 kilometers inside Indian territory, just when relations between the two were going so well. The Indian government, which has so far exercised relative restraint, was accused by opposition politicians as being “weak, cowardly and...

WASHINGTON -- More than 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote "The Art of War." In it, the Chinese strategist postulated: "One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements. ... One who knows neither the enemy nor himself will invariably be defeated." Two millenniums later, Prussian military theorist Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz wrote a detailed exposition on the principles of warfare. His book "On War" -- published after his death in 1831 -- posits, inter alia, that inadequate, incomplete or incorrect intelligence will inevitably contribute to the "fog of war" and lead...

8 things to think about as we mark the conflict's 150th anniversary. Some ring strong: of course the end of slavery, perhaps the worst disgrace in the nation's history. And the 620,000 ancestors lost. Other vestiges have weakened with the passage of time but are no less legacies of the four horrific, heroic years that shaped us as one nation. Here are eight ways the Civil War indelibly changed us and how we live: 1. We have ambulances and hospitals. The Civil War began during medieval medicine's last gasp and ended at the dawn of modern medicine. Each side entered...

The chemical attack that killed Yasser Yunis’s family was a small, almost private affair. Had the 27-year-old car mechanic not managed to struggle out of the doorway of his home in Aleppo on to the street in the darkness of night, clutching his infant son to his chest, no one might have ever known what wiped out the family. They died twitching, hallucinating and choking on white froth that poured from their noses and mouths. Their doctors believe that they were killed by nerve gas. The Syrian regime prefers to gas its opponents in this small-scale way, testing the elasticity...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday accused the Obama administration of being overly cautious in analyzing intelligence about the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria, saying he feared the White House was looking for excuses not to get involved. “I’m worried that the president and the administration will use the caveats as an excuse to not act right away or to not act at all,” he told Fox News. “The president clearly stated that it was a red line and that it couldn’t be crossed without the United States taking vigorous action.”

One of the most famous sayings of the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky was this: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." It's one of the few correct things that violent Communist ever said. President Obama is clearly not interested in war. And he has stacked his administration with people who are similarly not interested. This is especially true when it comes to Islamist terrorists. They may make war on us, but to Mr. Obama and his minions, these are "man-caused disasters" or, preferably, domestic crimes to be dealt with in the normal course of...

Leh: India today said that it hopes to use agreements with China to "resolve peacefully" the stand-off in Ladakh, where New Delhi says soldiers from the People's Liberation Army have set up camp in Indian territory. "We have asked the Chinese side to maintain the status quo in this sector" said Syed Akbaruddin, spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Ministry. "By this I mean the status quo prior to this incident," he said. Here are 10 big developments in this story: 1. India and China held a second flag meeting today to discuss a stand-off over nearly a dozen Chinese soldiers...

Authorities believe neither brother had links to terror groups. However, two U.S. officials said Tuesday that Tamerlan Tsarnaev - who died last week in a gunbattle - frequently looked at extremist websites, including Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by al-Qaida's Yemen affiliate. The magazine has endorsed lone-wolf terror attacks.

America is facing a jihadist enemy. It is an enemy that has proven it can inflict more civilian casualties on the United States than any other foreign enemy in almost 200 years. Just last week this enemy killed 3 innocent people, wounded more than 100 and paralyzed a major American city. Yet, our obsession with political correctness, with a strong desire not to offend our enemies makes our self-defense immeasurably more difficult. The evil nature and intentions of our jihadist enemies are already clear. They hate us enough to pack pressure cookers with ball bearings, to hijack airliners and turn...

At the time I wrote the column below, news had not broken about the massive and devastating explosion at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas. Of course, all of my condolences and commendations about the victims and crisis care community in Boston I extend with profound correlations to my own heartbroken neighbors in Texas. One television news report estimated that 700 first responders were deployed immediately into action there. Let no one say the selfless and sacrificial American spirit isn't alive and well!As with others across the nation, my wife, Gena, and I are so proud of the first...

Washington (CNN) -- In a critical indication of growing U.S. military involvement in the civil war in Syria, CNN has learned Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is ordering the deployment of up to 200 troops to Jordan, according to two Defense Department officials. The troops, which will come from the headquarters of the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss, Texas, "creates an additional capability" beyond what has been there, one official said. The group will give the United States the ability to "potentially form a joint task force for military operations, if ordered," he said. The new deployment will include communications...

Prime Minister of Georgia Bidzina Ivanishvili admitted responsibility of Georgia for the outbreak of the war in August of 2008. He stated that the actions of the authorities of the country before crossing the border of Georgia by Russian forces were inadequate. This statement will have tangible consequences, first of all, for President Mikhail Saakashvili. "The political noose" around the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's neck is getting tighter. He is not yet being investigated, but the new authorities have already talked about the possibility of his interrogation about the events of 2008. The country may begin a new investigation into...

Did we? I must have missed that in the media coverage of the 10th anniversary of the second invasion of Iraq, which provided the beginning of the end of a 12-year war with Saddam Hussein’s regime. Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the fall of Hussein’s tyranny, when the dictator fled Baghdad for points unknown for another eight months, at which point American soldiers dragged him out of a spider hole. On that occasion, the new leader of Iraq reminds us that the US not only stopped the brutalization of 25 million people, we gained an important foreign-policy partner in...

North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un is waiting for United States President Barack Obama to make a phone call to Pyongyang to discuss easing tensions on the Korean peninsula, according to Russia’s news agency Itar-Tass. The report cited United Kingdom diplomats, saying Pyongyang was demanding the U.S. president personally call Kim Jong-un as one of the conditions to relieve the current conflict at hand.