Free Republic

"I think it is important for us to send a signal that we are not hellbent on regime change,” presidential candidate Barack Obama said in 2007. He was talking about Iran but citing former President George W. Bush’s disastrous precedent of ousting Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Obama defined his candidacy in opposition to that 2003 regime change war and eventually became president. Times have changed. Most Democrats in Tuesday night’s CNN/New York Times presidential debate blasted President Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from northern Syria and said they believe his decision endangers the Kurds. But only one candidate said...

WALLACE: ...in October of 2002 in which you authorized the use of force, you went further than the president ever did. Let's watch:(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)ROCKEFELLER: I do believe that Iraq poses an imminent threat, but I also believe that after September 11th that question is increasingly outdated.(END VIDEO CLIP)WALLACE: Now, the president never said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. As you saw, you did say that. If anyone hyped the intelligence, isn't it Jay Rockefeller?ROCKEFELLER: No. I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I'll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a...

The Kurds in Syria say the Syrian government has agreed to send its army to the northern border to try to halt Turkey's offensive against them. Syrian state media earlier reported that government forces had been deployed to the north. It follows the US decision to pull all its remaining troops from the area... (Turkey said) It also plans to resettle more than three million Syrian refugees currently in Turkey within the zone. Many of them are not Kurds. Critics have warned this could lead to ethnic cleansing of the local Kurdish population. (Just as Turkey did after it took...

The near consensus view of President Donald Trump’s decision to remove US special forces from the Syrian border with Turkey is that Trump is enabling a Turkish invasion and double crossing the Syrian Kurds who have fought with the Americans for five years against ISIS. Trump’s move, the thinking goes, harms US credibility and undermines US power in the region and throughout the world. There are several problems with this narrative. The first is that it assumes that until this week, the US had power and influence in Syria when in fact, by design, the US went to great lengths...

Syrian President Bashar Assad met on Tuesday in Damascus with an unnamed senior Iranian official to discuss ways to cope with Israeli airstrikes in the war-torn country, reported regime-affiliated Syrian newspaper Al-Watan. According to the report, the Iranian official also discussed with Assad the Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan and presented Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s plan to contend with it. The report comes against the backdrop of recent attacks on pro-Iranian forces in Syria, some which have been attributed to Israel though it denies involvement. In other cases, Israel has taken responsibility for attacks in Syria. In the...

US-led forces have blown up three oil tankers in Syria as the United States increases its pressure on Syria by thwarting the oil trade between the PKK/YPG and the Assad regime, according to local sources quoted by several media sources. The strike was carried about by coalition planes, which hit three oil tankers, leaving four dead. The coalition has not yet made a statement about the attack. In the area controlled by Assad, oil consumption stands at around 136,000 bpd. Production, meanwhile, is only 24,000 barrels per day. This means that the regime must import significant volumes of crude oil...

WASHINGTON — The United States said Tuesday it suspected that Syrian government forces have carried out a fresh chemical attack and threatened reprisals. The State Department said it was assessing indications that the regime used chemical weapons on Sunday during its offensive in Idlib, the most significant remaining holdout in Syria of jihadist rebels.

Caught between a stalling U.S. pullout, Israeli 'alliance' and Idlib militias, Russian president finds his monopoly over Assad's resurgence may require some flexibility. Russian President Vladimir Putin can indeed credit himself with an important military accomplishment after transferring control of most of Syria’s territory to Syrian President Bashar Assad, but it seems this diplomatic minefield is presenting new and unexpected challenges for him that could erode the military achievements. The diplomatic plan Russia drew up looks, on its face, to be orderly and logical. According to the plan, Russia was already meant to be withdrawing some of its forces from...

BEIRUT, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned on Sunday the United States would not protect those depending on it, in reference to Kurdish fighters who control much of the north. "We say to those groups who are betting on the Americans, the Americans will not protect you," he said without naming them. "The Americans will put you in their pockets so you can be tools in the barter, and they have started with (it)." U.S. President Donald Trump declared in December he would pull troops from Syria, raising more questions over the fate of Washington's Kurdish allies...

The last contact Grigoriy Gancherov and his wife had with their son, a Russian private military contractor fighting in Syria, was on Feb. 4 last year. The father subsequently learned from a friend and fellow fighter of Sergei's that the 25-year-old had died several days later in a major battle against U.S.-led forces in the Deir al-Zor region. It was not until mid-April that he received formal notification of his son's death and the body was returned, accompanied by a death certificate stating he died on March 7 on the other side of Syria. Gancherov's account is one of half...

In response to the latest Israeli-Iranian hostilities, the head of Iran’s air force, Brig.-Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh, declared Monday: “We’re ready for the decisive war that will bring about Israel’s disappearance from the earth.” This statement echoes the message behind weeks of Iranian propaganda, accompanied by antisemitic symbols, predicting Israel’s imminent destruction. The latest hostilities started on January 20 with an attack on military targets in the Damascus region that Syrian media attributed to Israel. Iranian forces responded almost immediately by launching a rocket toward the Mount Hermon ski resort in the Golan Heights, crowded with civilians, yet the Iron Dome...

RABAT (Reuters) - Morocco softened its rhetoric on Syria on Wednesday, with its foreign minister signaling support for calls among some Arab states for a return of Damascus to the Arab League. {snip} ...Arab states, including some that once backed rebels against President Bashar al-Assad, are seeking to reconcile with him after decisive gains by his forces in the war, aiming to expand their clout in Syria at the expense of non-Arab Turkey and Iran. The Moroccan position on Syria comes after Lebanon’s caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil called last Friday for reinstating Syria ...

About the only people having a Happy New Year in the Muslim world aren't the Christians who are huddling and waiting out the storm, but the Islamists who use a different calendar but are having the best time of their lives since the last Caliphate. The news that the Obama Administration has brought in genocidal Muslim Brotherhood honcho Yusuf Al-Qaradawi to discuss terms of surrender for the transfer of Afghanistan to the Taliban caps a year in which the Brotherhood and the Salafists are looking up carve up Egypt, the Islamists won Tunisia's elections, Turkey's Islamist AKP Party purged the...

On December 19, 2018, President Trump declared correctly that “we have won against ISIS,” and announced that the remaining 2,000 American troops in Syria would be withdrawn. The president has made the right decision. Having won the war against ISIS, he does not want to lose the peace by getting into a military conflict with the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s forces, or with the Iranians or the Russians, or even with the Turks for that matter. As the father of an Army officer who is in theater right now, I think I have a right to an opinion. And in...

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) added her name to the long list of lawmakers to publicly oppose President Trump's decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria. She minced no words during her appearance on "Face the Nation" over the weekend. "I am deeply, deeply concerned, and I oppose strongly the president's decision apparently to withdraw troops from Syria, the apparent decision that we're now going to be looking to withdraw troops from Afghanistan," Cheney said. "I think the president has done a lot of very good things in terms of beginning to rebuild our military, getting out of the Iranian...

A narrow majority of U.S. voters support President Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and reduce the country's military presence in Afghanistan, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they back the moves in Syria and Afghanistan, which came as a surprise to the president's own national security advisers when it was announced last week. By contrast, 48 percent said they oppose the troop withdrawals and reductions, the poll found. Trump announced he would completely remove the approximately 2,000 troops in Syria battling ISIS, while he said he...

Rumors began on Friday morning that the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish group that had been partners with the US in fighting ISIS, was withdrawing from Manbij. Manbij was liberated from ISIS in 2016 by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the YPG is a part. However Turkey, which views the YPG as a terrorist group linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) vowed to stop the SDF’s progress, launching an operation in the fall of 2016 dubbed Euphrates Shield. Since then Turkey has agitated for the US and the SDF to hand over Manbij. In the summer...

The United Arab Emirates is re-opening its embassy in Damascus, the Syrian regime said Thursday, in a major public step towards welcoming Bashar al-Assad back into the fold of Arab leaders after years of estrangement...as it has become increasingly clear that Assad is likely to stay in power and prevail over downtrodden rebel forces, Syria’s Arab neighbours have begun moving to restore diplomatic ties with the former pariah. The re-opening of the UAE’s embassy in Damascus would be the most significant public step so far towards Assad’s rehabilitation in the Arab world. The move is likely to have been coordinated...

Nothing unites our political class like the threat of ending our never-ending war So we’re withdrawing troops from the Middle East. GOOD! What’s the War on Terror death count by now, a half-million? How much have we spent, $5 trillion? Five-and-a-half? Unless Donald Trump decides to reverse his decision to begin withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, cable news for the next few weeks is going to be one long Scanners marathon of exploding heads. “Today’s decision would cheer Moscow, ISIS, and Iran!” yelped Nicole Wallace, former George W. Bush communications director. “Maybe Trump will bring Republicans and Democrats together,” said...

On 'America's Newsroom' Senator Rand Paul backed President Trump in the face of harsh criticism from Republicans over his decision to withdraw the 2,000-strong U.S. force from Syria. RAND PAUL: This is a very bold move for President Trump. It is exactly what he promised the American people -- in fact it is one of the reasons he won the election. Because he is different from so many Republicans who want us to be everywhere all the time around the world. They want us to be the world policeman, that every war on the planet we have to have our...