Free Republic

“The one thing I like about President Trump, he understands that we’re in a religious war,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Tuesday night, hours after a legal immigrant from Uzbekistan rammed his rented truck into people enjoying a sunny day on a lower Manhattan bike path, killing eight of them.The terrorist, apparently acting on behalf of ISIS, ended his mile long rampage when he crashed into a school bus. A policeman shot and injured him. He is expected to survive.Graham told Fox News the American people need to know, “We’re fighting people who are compelled by their religious views to kill us all. They kill fellow Muslims...

With Donald Trump threatening “fire and fury” against North Korea for its provocative nuclear program, many in the United States are braced for the worst. But not everyone is concerned. Robert Jeffress, a Texas evangelical Christian pastor (and outspoken Trump supporter) backed Trump’s hostile moves. He specifically pointed to a Biblical passage on government authority — Romans 13 — to justify a potential war against North Korea. Jeffress’ use of this passage to support military action, however, is a dangerous misinterpretation of what the Bible actually says. There are reasons to be concerned about Jeffress’ argument that have nothing to do with his Biblical...

ANALYSIS/OPINION: By Oliver North October 16, 2017 Richard Nixon kept his promises, Ken Burns did not When Richard Nixon was in the White House, I was in Vietnam and he was my commander in chief. When I was on Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council staff, I had the opportunity to brief former President Nixon on numerous occasions and came to admire his analysis of current events, insights on world affairs and compassion for our troops. His preparation for any meeting or discussion was exhaustive. His thirst for information was unquenchable and his tolerance for fools was nonexistent. Mr. Nixon’s...

After World War II, the United States became the most powerful and most militarily active nation in the world. The real reason the US decides to go to war is not for the reasons we are sold through the mainstream media. It’s not about getting rid of evil dictators or for humanitarian reasons. It is not even about defeating terrorism. The real reason the US is always at war is purely to protect its economic hegemony. Once the second world war ended, the developed world was so devastated that the US easily rose to become the world’s most powerful nation....

The Israeli military has determined that the rockets recently fired from Syria were not a spillover but an intentional attack on Israel. Amir discusses the implications of this, predicting a soon occurrence of Isaiah 17 and an eventual war, the first of Israel against a major power. The future is not all bleak, however, and will of course include great things for Israel. Look up, keep the faith, and do not live for the things of this world, is his message. Be ready, as always.

No one really knows all that much about North Korea's nuclear or conventional military capability or its strategic agenda. Are its nuclear missiles reliably lethal, are they as long-ranged and accurate as hyped, and are they under secure command and control? Conventional wisdom states that Seoul would be destroyed in minutes by at least 10,000 North Korean artillery and rocket batteries that are now aimed from right across the Demilitarized Zone. Such guns are said to be capable of firing 500,000 rounds within a few minutes. As a result, South Korea and its allies are supposed to be veritable hostages,...

Watching the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick PBS series on the Vietnam War put me in mind of a memorable essay that Jim Webb—Vietnam war hero, novelist, secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, and most recently Democratic senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia—penned for the American Enterprise Institute seventeen years ago. In this remarkable piece, he called into question the popular idea of a “Vietnam generation.” Webb noted that those who came of age during that war are more properly regarded not as a generation but as an age group, permanently divided by different reactions to a whole range of counter-cultural...

With his declaration Friday that the Iran nuclear deal is not in the national interest, President Donald Trump may have put us on the road to war with Iran. Indeed, it is easier to see the collisions that are coming than to see how we get off this road before the shooting starts. After "de-certifying" the nuclear agreement, signed by all five permanent members of the Security Council, Trump gave Congress 60 days to reimpose the sanctions that it lifted when Teheran signed. If Congress does not reimpose those sanctions and kill the deal, Trump threatens to kill it himself....

Late Sunday morning, hundreds of Civil War reenactors concluded their battle on a rolling patch of grass 80 miles west of Washington. In normal years, taps would be played and each side would march back to its tent encampments. But this was hardly a normal year. Last week, organizers announced they had received a letter threatening “bodily harm” to attendees. And Saturday, the battlefield had to be temporarily cleared because a suspicious device, possibly a pipe bomb, was found.

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea is believed to be preparing to launch a ballistic missile ahead of an upcoming joint naval drill by the US and South Korea, a news report said Saturday, citing a government source. The US navy said Friday that a US aircraft carrier will lead the drill in the coming week, a fresh show of force against North Korea as tensions soar over the hermit state's weapons programme. The move will likely rile Pyongyang which has previously responded angrily to joint exercises. The Donga Ilbo daily, quoting a government source, said satellite pictures show ballistic missiles...

If you were asked to rate the readiness levels of the U.S. military, what would you say? For this exercise, assume you have a scale with five choices: very weak, weak, marginal, strong and very strong. Think about each branch of the military. Where would it fall? Perhaps you're thinking, "I'm not an expert, so I can't say for sure." So let me refer you to the latest report from The Heritage Foundation's Center for National Defense. The authors are, in fact, experts -- and their conclusions are sobering. I'm referring to the 2018 Index of U.S. Military Strength. The...

Almost a half-century ago, in 1968, the United States seemed to be falling apart. The Vietnam War, a bitter and close presidential election, antiwar protests, racial riots, political assassinations, terrorism and a recession looming on the horizon left the country divided between a loud radical minority and a silent conservative majority. The United States avoided a civil war. But America suffered a collective psychological depression, civil unrest, defeat in Vietnam and assorted disasters for the next decade -- until the election of a once-polarizing Ronald Reagan ushered in five consecutive presidential terms of relative bipartisan calm and prosperity from 1981...

Winston Churchill summarized the theme of his seminal history of World War II as “[h]ow the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom, carelessness, and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm.”His first volume, The Gathering Storm, recounted many instances of failure among the leading figures of the 1930s to appreciate the growing danger of Hitler’s rise to power. Churchill’s history highlighted how the good intentions and virtuous character of Britain, France, and the United States hindered them from taking actions that could very well have prevented a war that claimed the lives of some 60 million people. He marveled at [how]...

Britain is reportedly preparing for the possibility of war breaking out with North Korea as concerns rise that another provocative missile test could trigger a military response by the US. North Korea is being closely watched amid fears it could launch another long-range missile test on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the founding of its ruling party.Bellicose rhetoric from Donald Trump has heightened tensions in the region in recent months, prompting British officials to draw up military plans for a response to a break out of hostilities, it was reported.  Among the plans disclosed by the Daily Mail is the deployment of...

President Trump continued to make vague threats toward North Korea on Saturday, saying that diplomatic negotiations and agreements over the years have not worked and that “only one thing will work,” without elaborating on what that one thing would be. “Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid . . . hasn't worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!” Trump tweeted in two messages on Saturday afternoon. "Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North...

Donald Trump made a lot of hay on the campaign trail by decrying the foreign adventurism of previous administrations. Trump positioned himself as the righteous outsider ready to rein in the executive overreach of his predecessors. None of that began with Barack Obama or George W. Bush, but Americans with short historical memories readily identified illegal and ill-advised wars as a major problem in America, particularly since some of those wars were often carried on without any congressional input. See Obama in Libya for example. But what if the problem of executive overreach in foreign policy began long before either...

President Barack Obama reportedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin in October that directly interfering with the U.S. election could result in an "armed conflict." According to NBC News, Obama opted to use the red phone to contact Moscow directly, a communication system that dates back to the Cold War. It's not an actual telephone, but instead sends a secure email message between the two countries. "International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace," part of the Oct. 31 message read, according to NBC. "We will hold Russia to those standards."

Russia and Turkey confirm the decision to politically resolve the conflict with Syria. The conditions for stopping the fratricidal war have already been set up in the country. Vladimir Putin said that after meeting with Turkey's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The meeting took place in Ankara for 3 hours, behind closed doors. Afterwards, the leaders made short statements. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WeP4F6Zkak

A top legal executive at CBS, Hayley Geftman-Gold, said she “is not even sympathetic” for the victims of the shooting at a country music festival at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas Sunday night. “If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing,” wrote Geftman-Gold on Facebook, perhaps referring to Sandy Hook on Facebook. “I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.”

The propaganda machine is in full force with this latest push toward war with one of our oldest enemies as portrayed by the military industrial complex and those seeking to destroy the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Clinton allies in Hollywood have teamed up with the neoconservative establishment in Washington to do their best to “inform” the public about Russia’s meddling in our election and why it was clearly an act of war. A video recently released by The Committee to Investigate Russia, a group founded by movie director Rob Reiner and necon editor of The Atlantic David Frum, attempts...