Free Republic

Japan-China: Two Chinese navy ships sailed through the international waters between Okinawa and Miyako in the Ryukyus. Yesterday two bombers flew between the two islands. Syria: The fighting has continued with no let up. The government has made small gains in multiple areas. However an al-Qaida-affiliated group of the al Nusra Front drove government forces from the village of Maaloula. This is one of the three villages in the world that still speak a variation of Western Aramaic, which is the language thought to be closest to the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth. As occurs whenever a Christian village is captured,...

David Cameron sounds pretty excited about it too. Did Waffles bumble his way into a “solution” to the crisis? Here’s the presumptive Democratic nominee creating a little rhetorical space for her party to declare victory and walk away: “If the regime immediately surrendered its stockpiles to international control, as was suggested by Secretary [John] Kerry and the Russians, that would be an important step,” Clinton said. “But this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction. Russia has to support the international community’s efforts sincerely, or be held to account.”Clinton also defended Obama’s push for strikes as instrumental in making...

Rebels including Al-Qaeda-linked fighters gained control of a Christian village northeast of Damascus, Syrian activists and residents said Sunday, but government media provided a dramatically different account of the battle, suggesting regime forces were winning. It was impossible to independently verify the reports from Maaloula, a scenic mountain community known for being one of the few places in the world where residents still speak the ancient Middle Eastern language of Aramaic. The village is on a UNESCO list of tentative world heritage sites. The rebel advance into the area this week was spearheaded by the Nusra Front, exacerbating fears among...

A Maaloula resident said the rebels, many of them sporting beards and shouting God is great, attacked Christian homes and churches shortly after moving into the village overnight. They shot and killed people. I heard gunshots and then I saw three bodies lying in the middle of a street in the old quarters of the village,' said the resident, reached by telephone from neighboring Jordan. 'So many people fled the village for safety.' Now, Maaloula 'is a ghost town. Where is President Obama to see what befallen on us?' asked the man. Another resident who fled the village of 3,000...

I was watching hannity tonight and varney was hollering about the moral outrage over the 400 kids killed by gas attack in Syria and that we had to do something. Heck, the United States kills 100,000 unborn children a month and has done so since 1973. And it's all "legal"! Imagine the confusion on the part of the Syrians. Why the sudden concern over children when the US kills far more than they do. To quote bammy's pastor.....America's chickens have come home to roost.

The latest estimate of the number killed is 7,000 higher than that issued by the UN only last month. Mr Ban was speaking at UN headquarters in New York alongside US Secretary of State John Kerry. Both men stressed the urgency of finding a political solution to the conflict. Mr Ban appealed for fresh efforts to convene a peace conference. In the past the UN has said its statistics are an underestimate as it believes many deaths have not been reported. A further 1.7 million Syrians have been forced to seek shelter in neighbouring countries. The UN announcement came as...

In an August 29 interview on Gov. Mike Huckabee's radio show, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) pressed President Obama to think before attacking Syria in a way that will result in the deaths of any of that country's minority Christian population. According to The Hill, Paul said Obama needs to realize there are more "Christians living in Syria... than just about anywhere else in the Middle East," and "they're on the other side in this war." Paul made it clear there is no room for recklessness or haphazardly lobbing cruise missiles into the country. He added pointedly, "I don't want to...

A leading skeptic of U.S. intervention in conflicts abroad said Sunday that he believes there is only a "50/50" chance that the GOP-controlled House will vote to authorize the use of U.S military force in the Syria. "I think it's at least 50/50 whether the House will vote down involvement in the Syrian war," Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said on NBC's Meet the Press.

Daily Record = September 1, 2013 FURIOUS politicians have demanded Prime Minister David Cameron explain why chemical export licences were granted to firms last January. BRITAIN allowed firms to sell chemicals to Syria capable of being used to make nerve gas. Export licences for potassium fluoride and sodium fluoride were granted 10 months after the bloody civil war in the Middle East began. Yesterday, politicians and anti-arms trade campaigners urged Prime Minister David Cameron to explain why the licences were granted. Dunfermline and West Fife Labour MP Thomas Docherty, who sits on the House of Commons’ Committees on Arms Export...

It seems to be "show me the Muslim" or "show me the oil." Blacks and Christians in Sudan and Rwanda get the near genocide treatment and the U.S. does not intervene. Nor did we hit Saddam real hard when he gassed many and more Kurds in Iraq. Coptic Christians in Egypt were treated very harshly even before the military ousted Morsi, but did the U.S. intervene? No. Kosovo intevention: Muslims involved. Libya: oil and Muslims. Syria: Muslims, and in a region region where instability could affaect oil prices. But Christians there --- who cares about them, right? Rand Paul is...

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday for talks criticized by the White House as undermining American efforts to isolate the hard-line Arab country. Pelosi said Assad assured her of his willingness to engage in peace talks with Israel, and that she and other members of her congressional delegation raised their concern about militants crossing from Syria into Iraq, as well the Israeli soldiers kidnapped by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas.

I was watching Fox News last night, and John Bolton (R-GOP-e) was asked to give a reply to a previously recorded clip from Rand Paul, and Bolton seemed to be acting as if the president (Obama) is the one who gets to wage war, while Congress just gets to merely declare and/or authorize it. As if the president (be it Nixon, GHWB, or Clinton) sits on the throne and Congress' job is to merely place the crown on their heads and the scepter in their hands. Once again, it seems as if another Republican goes to bat for Obama (like...

Appearing on Meet The Press on Sunday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) slammed Secretary of State John Kerry on his willingness to intervene militarily in Syria by twisting his most famous words against him. "I would ask John Kerry, How can you ask a man to be the first one to die for a mistake?" Paul said, in reference to Kerry's famous words against the Vietnam War to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/31/member-of-congress-berates-obama-for-consulting-congress-on-syria/

Syrian rebels beheaded a Christian man and fed his body to dogs, according to a nun who says the West is ignoring atrocities committed by Islamic extremists. The nun said taxi driver Andrei Arbashe, 38, was kidnapped after his brother was heard complaining that fighters against the ruling regime behaved like bandits.

Syrians inside the country say the revolution began with peaceful protests from the poor seeking reforms. The movement now brims with violent terrorist operatives aligned with Al Qaeda and Al-Nasra, including extremist fighters from Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq. The mainstream media portrays a false picture of the now-compromised Free Syrian Army. The extremist elements within are not just minority-affiliates. They win the battles, they have the ammunition and the food. They have slowly filled the power vaccuum and they do not fight for a freed Syria, but to establish an ultra-fundamentalist state. American taxpayers have fueled the Syrian Civil War...