Free Republic

Scratch the surface of most of the world’s armed conflicts and you won’t see an ideological struggle or deep-seated ethnic or religious hatred that has erupted in a war of all against all. Rather, what you’ll find is a collection of thugs for hire, some in uniforms and some not, who are taking advantage of the chaos of war to prey on the weak. Sometimes this involves stealing oil or diamonds, or sexual brutality. But it’s pretty rare that it involves some larger design. True, the hooligans who take part in these orgies of destruction will often claim loyalty to...

US President Barack Obama has said he will not allow jihadists to carve out a "caliphate" straddling Syria and Iraq. On Friday, the US began launching air strikes on fighters of the Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq. Mr Obama said there would be further air strikes if necessary but no US military operation on the ground.

Saturday from the White House South Lawn, President Barack Obama blamed "intelligence estimates" for not anticipating the speed in which ISIS would capture large sections of Iraq. (Watch the 2:41 video clip at source)

Not only did we repeatedly hear that al Qaeda was on a “path to defeat” multiple times on the campaign trail in 2012, we also heard President Obama brag about ending the Iraq War and leaving behind a “sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq.” Via CNS News: Obama: 'I Said I End the War in Iraq - I Ended It' Last night, however, after months of ISIS’ bloody rampage in the country, President Obama announced that America is coming to help. Airstrikes on ISIS artillery began Friday.

1 Samuel 17 Now the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at Sokoh in Judah. They pitched camp at Ephes Dammim, between Sokoh and Azekah. Saul and the Israelites assembled and camped in the Valley of Elah and drew up their battle line to meet the Philistines. The Philistines occupied one hill and the Israelites another, with the valley between them. ... Now the Coward in Chief is so desperate to look relevant on the world stage he has decided to drop a few bombs on some camels in Iraq. His next feat will be emptying the ocean...

As militants with the Islamic State launched artillery rounds at Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, the U.S. military on Friday launched airstrikes using fighter jets on the USS George H. W. Bush, Pentagon officials said. It was just the latest involvement in combat for the Bush, which was commissioned in 2009. It was used extensively in 2011 to support combat operations in Afghanistan, and left Norfolk, Va., in February on its second deployment. It arrived in the Middle East in March, and entered the Persian Gulf in June, as the Islamic State took control of vast regions of northern and...

U.S. airstrikes on Islamic State positions have begun. Fighter jets also bombed Islamic State militants in northwest Iraq on Thursday night. But it's not clear who the pilots were. The Pentagon immediately denied a New York Times report that the U.S. carried out Thursday's strikes. Iraqi military officials told CNN and the Wall Street Journal that the Iraqi Air Force had struck ISIS targets near Erbil, which is the regional capital of Iraqi Kurdistan and host to hundreds of U.S. military advisers. The Iraqi Air Force is poorly equipped, consisting of several Cessna planes carrying American-supplied Hellfire missiles, some American-...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Does anybody remember how Barack Obama first achieved national attention? These are always intriguing questions to me, 'cause I of course know the answer. (interruption) Well, yes, that was the occasion of the speech. But what did he do in this speech, what did he say? What did Obama say? Do you remember how Obama first achieved national attention? And if you're shouting at me, "It was that convention speech, Rush, in 2004 at the Democrat convention." Yes, that's correct. That was the occasion. But what did he do in this speech? In 2004 Barack Obama condemned...

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. fighters dropped bombs on Islamic militants in Iraq Friday, the Pentagon said, carrying out President Barack Obama's promise of military force to counter the advancing militants and confront the threat they pose to Iraqi civilians and Americans still stationed there.

DOHUK, Iraq — The United States on Friday afternoon launched a second round of airstrikes on Sunni militants in northern Iraq, sending four Navy fighter jets to strike eight targets around Erbil, according to Pentagon officials. The attacks came hours after an initial wave of strikes by military aircraft and armed drones, escalating the American involvement in Iraq a day after President Obama announced that the United States military was returning to a direct combat role in the country it left in 2011. Military officials said they believed that the second round of attacks resulted in a number of casualties...

Perhaps history will mark this as the week that President Obama recognized that evil unimpeded will devour everything before it. We say perhaps because with this President you never know.

Last night, President Obama authorized an American military and humanitarian mission inside Iraq. Today, the bombing began with a pair of airstrikes on an ISIS artillery site near the Kurdish city of Irbil in the country's northern region. America's war in Iraq has resumed: RT @BBCNewsGraphics: Location of US air strike on #IS Islamic militants in northern #Iraq http://t.co/szcudWL6Fa pic.twitter.com/qvgigyzQYf — Melissa Clouthier (@MelissaTweets) August 8, 2014 ISIS, an astonishingly brutal Islamist group, is in the process of establishing a hardcore Caliphate across much of Syria and Iraq. Their goal is to establish Sharia law at the point of...

United States officials are “closely monitoring” a potential “humanitarian catastrophe” in northern Iraq but will not be sending combat troops back into the country, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday. Earnest said the United States would cooperate with Iraqi military and Kurdish authorities in the volatile region, but he declined to respond to several questions about whether the U.S. would consider any military action to protect refugees fleeing advancing Sunni militants. “I’m not in position to shed light on the president’s thinking” on the subject, Earnest said.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest has rejected Washington’s plans for bombing militants in Iraq, saying the US has no military solution to the ISIL threat in the country. "There are no American military solutions to the problems in Iraq," Earnest told reporters on Thursday. "These problems can only be solved with Iraqi political solutions.” He added that Washington may choose military action if the country's interests fall in danger.

“It maybe good for the U.S. administration to understand that the world does not stop turning and does not hold its breath while they do nothing.... President Barack Obama had a message for the thousands of minority Yazidis under siege...analysts remain skeptical that the U.S. can do much to help.....

Democratic leaders rallied behind President Obama’s decision to authorize airstrikes against Islamic terrorists in Iraq, applauding him for imposing limits on military action and vowing not to send U.S. troops back into Iraq. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said early Friday that it was “appropriate that the President authorized airstrikes against [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] should they threaten U.S. personnel and other interests in Erbil or elsewhere in Iraq.” “As the President reiterated, there is no American military solution to the situation in Iraq,” she said. “Defeating ISIS will require Iraq’s leaders to see beyond their divisions...

It may well be that ISIS is one of at least two too-clever-by-half operations masterminded by our enemies. At the beginning, ISIS spun off from Al Qaeda because, we were told, Zawahari was too moderate for them. AQ didn’t slaughter enough, didn’t crucify enough, wasn’t psychotic enough for their taste.

You can tell how bad a crisis is based on the staged photos that Obama’s official propaganda photog deploys for action.On August 2nd, the situation was only mildly severe, so Pete Souza gave us this photo of Obama leaning back in the White House while chatting with Susan Rice and an NSA guy. But then major newspapers (the kind his donors read) started talking about genocide in Iraq and Obama’s inaction. So after signing off on some aid drops, after a whole bunch of non-Muslim Yazidi kids had died of thirst, this photo was deployed for action.The photo was retweeted...

Washington (CNN) -- Two U.S. F/A-18 jet fighters bombed artillery batteries of Sunni Islamic extremists in Iraq on Friday, escalating America's military involvement more than two years after President Barack Obama brought home forces from the country. Obama authorized "targeted airstrikes" if needed to protect U.S. personnel from fighters with the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. The U.S. military also could use airstrikes to prevent what officials warn could be a genocide of minority groups by the Islamic State fighters. The U.S. aircraft dropped 500-pound laser-guided bombs on a "mobile artillery...

President Barack Obama stepped in front of the cameras on Thursday to utter words he hoped he would never say as commander in chief. "I've therefore authorized targeted airstrikes if necessary to help forces in Iraq," Mr. Obama said in a statement from the White House. "Today America is coming to help." The return to military engagement in Iraq is a reversal for Mr. Obama, whose early opposition to the war that toppled Saddam Hussein, and his promise to end it, fueled his long-shot campaign for the White House.