Free Republic

Islamist rebel groups in Syria are recruiting children as young as 14 years, under the guise of offering them education, in their battle against the forces of the government of President Bashar Al Assad, a Human Rights Watch report said Monday. The rights group released its 31-page report "'Maybe We Live and Maybe We Die': Recruitment and Use of Children by Armed Groups in Syria", documenting the experience of 25 children and former child soldiers in Syria's armed conflict. "The groups have used children as young as 14 in support roles. Extremist Islamist groups including the Islamic State of Iraq...

Army Private Aaron Toppen and his family are members of the same church I attend. I don't know the family personally, I do remember our church praying for Aaron as he attended his last service at our church. Visitation Services for Private Aaron Toppen are tomorrow, June 23rd from 1-9pm. Funeral Tuesday starting at 10am. Any/All Chicago area Freepers who would like to help support Aaron Toppen's family are welcome to attend. Our church is a very large one, expect (and hope) that the turnout will be huge to support the family. My family will be attending the wake tomorrow...

MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday ordered military forces in central Russia on combat alert as well as a drill of airborne troops, a day after Ukraine ordered a cease-fire with pro-Russian rebels. [....] Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ordered his forces to cease fire Friday and halt military operations for a week, the first step in a peace plan he hopes will end the fighting that has killed hundreds. The Kremlin dismissed the plan, saying it sounded like an ultimatum and lacked any firm offer to open talks with insurgents.

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran has censured the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for its failure to abide by its previous agreements with Tehran. In a Thursday interview with Inter Press Service, Ali Akbar Salehi said pursuant to the February 2014 “Framework for Cooperation” agreement between Tehran and the IAEA, the UN nuclear supervisory body should have ended the investigation into Iran’s “exploding bridge-wire (EBW) experiments.” IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano has so far refused to finalize the issues regarding the fast-functioning detonators, despite the fact that the EBW was the first issue that the two sides...

India has confirmed that 40 of its citizens have been kidnapped in the violence-hit Iraqi city of Mosul. The men were construction workers, a ministry of external affairs spokesman said. India had not received any ransom demand, he added. A 24-hour helpline has been set up for the families and a special envoy is being sent to Baghdad. On Tuesday, the government said it was in touch with 46 Indian nurses stranded in a hospital in Tikrit. Tikrit and Mosul are under the control of the militant Sunni group ISIS. They are among a number of Iraqi towns and cities...

The United States is considering airstrikes against Islamic rebels with our newest ally, um, Iran. from Reuters: Joint action between the United States and Iran to help prop up the government of their mutual ally would be unprecedented since Iran's 1979 revolution, demonstrating the urgency of the alarm raised by the lightning insurgent advance. As a courtesy to those readers who don't speak Obama, let me provide a translation: "We've screwed up so badly that we have to have enemies like Russia, China, and Iran bail us out in foreign policy and war, over and over and over again." This...

<p>Leon Trotsky probably did not quite write the legendary aphorism that “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” But whoever did, you get the point that no nation can always pick and choose when it wishes to be left alone.</p>

The Obama administration likely will succumb to growing pressure to "do something" kinetic and dramatic in Iraq, and when it does, it will most likely be air and missile strikes against ISIS targets. This could relieve the political pressure on the President: His critics continue to blame him for abdicating U.S. leadership in Syria and in Iraq --which now faces the advancing extremist militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). But answering the political mail in Washington is not the same thing as dealing with, let alone resolving, the complex issues on the ground that have led...

As the commencement speaker at West Point, President Barack Obama told the 1,000 cadets in their dress uniforms that the U.S. must always lead on the world stage and the military is the backbone of that leadership. But "U.S. military action cannot be the only or even primary component of our leadership in every instance," said Obama. "Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail." Though United States forces are out of Iraq and leaving Afghanistan, the president emphasized that the lessons of Sept. 11 are still with us and terrorism remains...

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As al Qaeda-linked terrorists wreak havoc across Iraq, House Speaker John Boehner unloaded on President Obama for ignoring the escalating crisis there, contending that the president has been “taking a nap” while the situation rapidly deteriorated. “It’s not like we haven’t seen over the last five or six months these terrorists moving in, taking control of Western Iraq. Now they’ve taken control of Mosul. They’re 100 miles from Baghdad,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said during a news conference at the Capitol. “And what’s the president doing? Taking a nap!” Earlier this year, on Jan. 9, Boehner publicly urged Obama to “maintain a...

White House Claims ‘Ending War in Iraq’ As Major Accomplishment:: By: Larry Walker II ::Borrowing from the Lonely Conservative, this week terrorists have taken over the cities of Mosul and Tikrit in Iraq. They had already taken control of Fallujah and the entire region is spiraling out of control. But, that didn’t stop White House spokesman Josh Earnest from proclaiming that ending the Iraq war is one of the administration’s major accomplishments.The only problem with this unsound proclamation is that a war isn’t over until someone surrenders. Where’s the peace treaty? Have Al-Qaeda and its affiliates surrendered? Has the Taliban...

The Financial Times reports Poroshenko opens talks with Russia. Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s new president, has opened talks with Russia on restoring peace in two breakaway eastern provinces a day after taking office, vowing to negotiate an end to the three-month-old pro-Russian insurgency. Mr Poroshenko took part on Sunday in a three-member “working group discussion” on a proposed peace plan with Mikhail Zurabov, Russia’s ambassador to Ukraine, and a representative of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Iryna Friz, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian president said. The opening of dialogue came a day after the billionaire oligarch took office...

video interview with author/film maker Sebastian Junger on sequel film to his award nominated documentary "RESTREPO" that followed a years worth of embedded filming with one Platoon in the high Hindu Kush Mountains of north eastern Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama is moving ahead with his push to close the Guantanamo Bay prison despite the uproar over the exchange of five Taliban prisoners for a captured American soldier, an administration official said Thursday. The Periodic Review Board has determined that more former 'forever prisoners,' including one who says he has been reformed by practicing yoga and another who was a bodyguard for Bin Laden but now wants to start a 'milk and honey farm' are fit for release to their homelands or repatriation. Ghaleb Nasser al Bihani, 35, told a parole board in April that he had read...

The move indicates a shift from defence to offence in the East and South China seas Sunday, 08 June, 2014, 10:32amKristine Kwok and Minnie Chan China is looking to expand its biggest installation in the Spratly Islands into a fully formed artificial island, complete with airstrip and sea port, to better project its military strength in the South China Sea, a Chinese scholar and a Chinese navy expert have said. The planned expansion on the disputed Fiery Cross Reef, if approved, would be a further indication of China's change of tack in handling long-running sovereignty disputes from a defensive stance...

Administration officials showed senators video of Bergdahl to support claims that his health was failing. The Obama administration gave senators a classified briefing Wednesday night on just what thinking went into the prisoner trade to recover Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from Afghanistan. But that won't end questions from Congress. "This gentleman needs to be looked into, quite extensively," said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., following the briefing, referring to questions about whether Bergdahl deserted the military. During the classified briefing, senators were shown a roughly minute-and-a-half-long "proof of life" video of Bergdahl, which the Taliban had provided, in which the soldier "didn't...

THE WOLF, THE BEAR and THE LAMBS One of the complaints leveled against Conservatives by Progressives is that we’re always looking backwards. Why always so locked in the past? Why so obsessed with history? Why always looking behind us? Why not look forward? There’s actually a very simple explanation for that. You see, the past exists. And the future doesn’t. Not yet, anyway. That’s why progress isn’t always good. We could be progressing forward off a cliff. Or into the room where the murderer is hiding. Or out into the water where the shark is. And since we can’t know...

"But Sherry Horton knows a different Bergdahl than the one the world has come to see in the chilling proof of life videos the Taliban released. "He's a very interesting guy, he was very quiet, he was an observer," Horton said. Horton, the artistic director of Sun Valley Ballet in Idaho, said she was Bergdahl's ballet teacher and later, she became his roommate in his hometown of Hailey, Idaho, when he was about 18 or 19 years old. She describes Bergdahl as someone who was interested in mixed martial arts, culture, languages and learning new things. "He was a wonderful...

Are we at war? I remember the Congress voting to authorize GWB to go into Iraq, but I’ll be hornswaggled if I can remember any authorization for Afghanistan. If not, how can Bergdhal be a POW? I’m confused. Can anyone explain the nitty-gritty here?