Free Republic

Three Republican members of the U.S. Congress made a quick trip Sunday into opposition-held northwest Syria in the first known visit to the war-torn country by American lawmakers in six years. They urged the Biden administration and regional partners to keep up the pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad. The roughly one-hour stop was a signal of the significant support on Capitol Hill for the opposition in Syria’s long civil war.

Biden administration criticized for Syria mixed messaging Why the Arab League's decision to bring back Assad has 'destroyed' US leverage in Syria Middle East Institute senior fellow Charles Lister discusses the significance of the Arab League's decision to welcome Syria back into the multilateral body and the Biden administration's response to Arab states' re-engagement. Syrian President Bashar Assad appeared at an Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia for the first time in more than a decade Friday after his country was expelled in 2011 for its brutal crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring.

PARIS — Marat Gabidullin's face is lined from years of exposure to the elements, and his hair is thinning. But at 56, he has the trim physique and muscular arms of a man 30 years younger. He wears a chunky ring bearing the image of a skull.The skull is the symbol of the Wagner Group — a private Russian mercenary force believed to be financed by an oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. The group is fighting alongside the Russian army in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. And it's widely believed that at least some of the "little green...

In late 2016, Syrian government forces had sealed off Aleppo's rebel-held eastern half, with 270,000 people inside, and for months they and Russian warplanes blasted it to rubble. Food was scarce. .. Hashem and other Aleppo survivors on Tuesday mark the 11th anniversary of Syria’s revolution-turned-civil war. This year, many of them are not just reflecting on their own fates, they are watching in shock as Ukrainians face familiar horrors: bombardment, brutal siege and flight from their homes. In Syria's war, Russia helped President Bashar Assad's government gain the upper hand with a ruthless strategy. One by one, they locked...

In the Hadash party, Russia and Putin are "victims" of Ukraine, which is generally aggressive. The Hadash party defends the small and attacked country, Russia The left-wing Hadash party de facto stands to the right of Vladimir Putin. This is an event reminiscent of their historic support for the tyrannical Syrian ruler, Bashar Assad, who murdered his people with terrible cruelty with the help of the Russians. Although every reference of this party begins with a "no no no" to Putin, with a statement of "yes to peace and no to war" but at the end come the statements and...

Since the Democrats took control of the White House and both Houses of Congress a hundred days ago, the Middle East has become a powder keg. But Israel's ruling class sees nothing. In Afghanistan and Iraq, violent attacks against US forces are rising steeply. From January through April, attacks on US forces increased 40%. President Joe Biden's announcement that the US will withdraw its forces from the country by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the jihadist attacks on the US worsened the situation by communicating a message of profound American weakness and defeatism. The Taliban, al-Qaida and Iran clearly...

"We're doing it simultaneously. In Russia they decided to do the clinical trial in parallel and collect the data, as is customary in the West, as well as allowing in some cases that we call 'compassion treatments' for some patients" Those words from Dr. Zeev Rotstein, director of Hadassah Hospital in Israel, getting into the details of what's really going on as Russia has announced that its developed the first effective coronavirus vaccine..... Omaha City Council voting unanimously to impose an emergency mask-muzzle order for indoor public places..... Law enforcement in Belarus using live ammunition on people protesting last Sunday's...

A complete and total collapse of oil prices today to below zero levels...... Syrian media report an Israeli air strike on the central city of Palmyra tonight.... After an additional buildup of Turkish military forces in northwestern Syria over the weekend the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdgoan accusing the Syrian government of violating the cease-fire in the Greater Idlib region. He said the Syrian government would face 'heavy losses' if the violations continued. The "Al Masdar" news website reporting Syrian government shelling of jihadist positions in Idlib.... The Iranian Foreign Minister visited Damascus today.... An attack on a US military...

Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky and activist Ammon Bundy take stands for the US Constitution in the face of America's "Coronavirus Crisis" but first..... French President Emmanuel Macron expressing his gratitude to Iraqi authorities over the release of four workers from a French Christian charity who were kidnapped in Iraq... Israel air force planes attacking targets in Gaza tonight after a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip.... President Trump calling for the ejection of libertarian Republican US Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky from the Republican Party for insisting on a roll call vote to pass the multi-billion dollars coronavirus bailout...

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) took shots at Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and her prosecutorial record during Wednesday night's Democratic Debate."Senator Harris says she's proud of her record as a prosecutor and she'll be a prosecutor as president. But I'm deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana," Gabbard said. "She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She...

Too poor to even buy pens and notebooks for school, Mehdi left his home in Afghanistan soon after his 17th birthday and headed to Iran, hoping to make his way to Europe and find work. Instead, Mehdi ended up fighting in Syria’s civil war, a conflict he had nothing to do with, 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from home. He was one of tens of thousands of Afghans recruited, paid and trained by Iran to fight in support of Tehran’s ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad. There, he found himself thrown into one of the war’s bloodiest front lines, surrounded by the...

"There is not a smoking gun....there is a smoking saw" That's the assessment of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham regarding the involvement of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2nd. Graham said that the Saudi Crown Prince, commonly called "M-BS" is a:....... British Prime Minister Theresa May lost three votes in the House of Commons over Brexit Tuesday as her government was found in "contempt of Parliament"...... Nigel Farage announced Tuesday evening that he was leaving UKIP..... The French President, Emmanuel Macron, was booed and...

The international chemical weapons watchdog confirmed Friday that sarin gas was used in the deadly April attack on a Syria town that left more than 80 people dead. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said it deployed a team within 24 hours to collect samples, attend autopsies and interview witnesses. Due to security risks, the team was not able to be on the ground in the Khan Shaykhun area where the attack took place, but traveled to a "neighboring country" to conduct its work.

(IsraelNN.com) Security services suspect that former MK Azmi Bishara, a fugitive living abroad accused of providing aid to Hizbullah, is intent on recruiting agents for the Lebanese terrorist group among Israeli Arabs. In recent days, agents of the General Security Services (GSS) invited activist members of the Balad party from Wadi Ara to the agency's offices and warned them against contact with Bishara. Balad was led by Bishara until his flight from the country in 2007. A member of the Arab Coordinating Committee, Ashraf Kortam, was also questioned by security services about his relationship with Bishara. He was asked to...

Nizar Najoef, a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper “Di Telegraaf,” that he knows the three sites where Iraq’s WMD are kept. The storage places are: 1. Tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria. These tunnels are an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles. Iraqi chemical weapons and long-range missiles are stored in these tunnels. 2. The village of...

Some 50 State Department officials have signed a memo calling on President Obama to launch air and missile strikes on the Damascus regime of Bashar Assad. A "judicious use of stand-off and air weapons," they claim, "would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process." In brief, to strengthen the hand of our diplomats and show we mean business, we should start bombing and killing Syrian soldiers. Yet Syria has not attacked us. And Congress has not declared war on Syria, or authorized an attack. Where do these State hawks think President Obama gets the authority to...

Barack Obamas repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office and that there are moderate rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagons Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administrations fixation on Assads primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasnt adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washingtons anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and...

Putting U.S. troops on the ground in Syria to counter the Islamic State and take on Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime would be a mistake, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Wednesday."I don't believe the answer is sending boots on the ground to Syria," the Republican candidate for president told reporters in Washington. "President Obama - and I think far too many Republicans - are eager to get us in the middle of an internecine civil war in Syria. We don't have a dog in that fight."Assad is a "monster" who has murdered women and children and gassed his own citizens,...

Whatever. Here’s how seriously you should take her alleged outrage over Netanyahu’s “Bibi knows best” attitude. Back in 2007, while George W. Bush was warning people that Bashar Assad might not be the cuddly would-be “reformer” that Democrats like Hillary Clinton were convinced he was, one prominent liberal flew all the way to Damascus to sit down with Assad and pose for photos. Bush wanted to isolate him; the Democrat in question, convinced that she and her party knew best, had other ideas. Guess who.I also like the idea here that when U.S. intelligence tells you something, you can...

Never mind the negotiations with Iran over the Islamic Republic's nuclear weapons program. Far more urgent developments are afoot. While the foreign ministers were busily counting how many centrifuges could spin in Iranian facilities, President Obama and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have arranged a working relationship throughout the Middle East that effectively puts American policy at the service of Iran.Long the goal of Obama, who sent a private emissary to Tehran as early as the 2008 election campaign to tell the Khamenei regime he wanted to be their friend, there is now a de facto alliance between the two...