Free Republic

McMaster had purged Derek Harvey, one of the NSC's best people on the Middle East, for trying to fire Obama holdovers. "In the late 1980s, Harvey traveled throughout Iraq by taxicab—500 miles, village to village—interviewing locals, sleeping on mud floors with a shower curtain for a door. He [was] full of questions, intensely curious and entirely nonthreatening. After the 1991 Gulf War, when the CIA was predicting the inevitable fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Harvey, then a major, insisted that Hussein would survive because members of the Sunni community knew their fortunes were tied to his. He was right....

A British columnist who has written several books on the Middle East says Iran is gearing up to attack Great Britain and the West. Con Coughlin, defense editor for The Telegraph, wrote a Thursday opinion column in which he called on the United Kingdom and its allies to understand Iran's intent and do "a major rethink of how we deal" with Tehran. "With experts warning that Iran could have enough material for a nuclear warhead within two weeks, it also means Britain and its allies need to give serious consideration to how they deal with the emerging threat to their...

Our current state of counterterrorism is such that Robert Spencer, Steven Emerson, Patrick Poole, Dave Reaboi, John Rossomando, Stephen Coughlin, or Philip Haney would be extremely unlikely to be invited as experts on terrorism. The wife of the Ground Zero Mosque Imam though? Sure. Come on down and tell us that ISIS supporters don't understand Islam. ... why is the defense bringing in Khan to testify as to whether an ISIS supporter properly understands Islam? Is this really about helping the defendant or about allowing Khan to promote a particular narrative?

Activists affiliated with Movimento Cosecha today marched from Perth Amboy to the Woodbridge office of Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-19) in an effort to get establishment Democrats to commit to driver’s licenses for undocumented workers. “Half a million would benefit from this bill in New Jersey,” organizer Carlos Rojas Rodriguez told InsiderNJ, refering A-4743 sponsored by Assemblywoman Annette Quijano (D-20). He appreciated Coughlin appearing outside his office to greet the marchers. “But it didn’t sound like it was a priority for him for now,” said Rodriguez. “He didn’t give us a solid commitment and timeline to get this done before lawmakers...

A former pairs champion took his own life Friday, just one day after he was suspended by U.S. Figure Skating. [snip] Coughlin was suspended Thursday by U.S. Figure Skating and U.S. Center for SafeSport. USA Today reported a “matter concerning him” was presented to SafeSport. The details were not immediately disclosed. In December, SafeSport restricted his participation in the sport before the “interim suspension” was announced. He was temporarily suspended from “participating in any capacity, in any activity or competition authorized or organized by USFS or the U.S. Olympic Committee,” USA Today reported.

In the world of ISIS jihadis, there are no forms to fill out to send in a check to get a membership card. This is not the Sierra Club. When ISIS declared to its target audience of followers in the West that this year’s Ramadan (June 5-July 5, 2016) would be a time of jihad, if they heard the call and agreed with it, under sharia law they had a duty to act. The Orlando shooter heard the call, agreed with it, and therefore had a duty to act, and acted. It’s just this simple. Why was the Orlando shooter...

The greatest achievement in the history of the Muslim Brotherhood has been its successful subversion of the American intelligence community over the past fifteen years or so. Carefully placed agents of the Ikhwan have managed to persuade the Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI that examining Islamic doctrine and law is not only a form of ethnic and religious discrimination, but also helps to validate the ideology of the “radicals” who commit violent terror attacks in the name of Islam. By some unspecified magical process, any study of Islamic law by the DIA or the FBI would cause the “extremists”...

Over more than a decade following 9/11, MAJ Stephen Coughlin was one of the US government's most astute and objective analysts, and an expert in the connections between Islamic law, terrorism and the jihadist movement around the globe. Through knowledge of published Islamic law, MAJ Coughlin had an demonstrated ability to forecast events both in the Middle East and domestically and to accurately assess the future threat posture of jihadist entities before they happen. He has briefed at the Pentagon, for national and state law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and on Capitol Hill for Members of Congress. Today, he is...

Maj. Stephen Coughlin is a retired U.S. Army officer and one of the foremost experts on Islamic law in the United States. For years he was well-known inside the Beltway for his "Red Pill" briefings of military commanders and defense officials on the topics of jihad and sharia. The videos below are of a "Red Pill" briefing Maj. Coughlin gave to the Wiener Akademikerbund on May 23 under the auspices of Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa, following his participation with the team at the OSCE conference in Vienna.

Stephen Coughlin has written a new Unconstrained Analysis report entitled, Burning Down the House: A Strategic Overview of the Threat, the CVE, and Strategic Incomprehension in the War on Terror. This strategic overview argues for how the War on Terror should be visualized alongside the processes that seek to obscure it... The metaphor is a house engulfed in a crucible of flames. Where the people burning in the house see three players, it is long overdue to understand them as one. Where people see civilization jihad disassociated from assaults from the left, it is time to recognize alliance.

Tom Coughlin resigned as New York Giants head coach on Monday as one of 13 coaches in NFL history to win multiple Super Bowls. He is the seventh coach in NFL history with 100 wins and two Super Bowl victories for a single team, according to Elias Sports Bureau research. The others are Hall of Famers Don Shula, Tom Landry, Chuck Noll and Joe Gibbs, as well as Bill Belichick and Mike Shanahan.

Former military intelligence officer and author Steven Coughlin predicts more jihadi violence in America based on what radicals and international elites are saying and doing. Snip A September Reuters/Ipsos poll showed increasing numbers of Americans feel they are unable to recognize their country. Yet when asked about this poll, Coughlin believes the profound American political and cultural transformation relates to the ideological and intentional hollowing out of rights manifested in our founding documents, and this dominant political correctness that elevates other cultures while obfuscating the truth. On explaining why some supporters of Donald Trump may disagree with some aspects of...

Former military intelligence officer and author Steven Coughlin predicts more jihadi violence in America based on what radicals and international elites are saying and doing. Coughlin explains in this video interview that both political parties appear increasingly more worried about not being called "a bigot" than in protecting American citizens from emerging threats. Asked here to comment on the disregard by the Obama administration for keeping Americans safe from terror with inadequate immigrant vetting, open borders and the release of Guantanamo Bay prisoners, this author focuses on the cultural and political narratives that demonstrate a form of information warfare.

Over more than a decade following 9/11, MAJ Stephen Coughlin was one of the US government's most astute and objective analysts, and an expert in the connections between Islamic law, terrorism and the jihadist movement around the globe. Through knowledge of published Islamic law, MAJ Coughlin had an demonstrated ability to forecast events both in the Middle East and domestically and to accurately assess the future threat posture of jihadist entities before they happen. He has briefed at the Pentagon, for national and state law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and on Capitol Hill for Members of Congress. Today, he is...

'If we're going to get a grip on this, we have to know their narrative and understand it' A noted specialist on Islamic law and ideology from the Center for Security Policy, who has been cited as an expert for the Pentagon, says a coalition of Islamists and Marxists is working to destroy the United States. The comments come from Stephen Coughlin, a lecturer for leading Department of Defense institutions such as the Naval War College, Marine Corps HQ-Quantico and for the FBI. Coughlin is a retired major in the U.S. Army reserves and was assigned to USCENTCOM, with a...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLjJlXASwOg This is an excerpt from a longer presentation by Center for Security Policy senior fellow Stephen Coughlin. In it, he explains doctrinal and historical background for the recent jihadist attack in Boston. Beginning with media reports willfully confused about the motivations of the Chechen Mulsim Tsarnaev brothers, Coughlin deconstructs the lineage of the 'individual jihad' vs 'jihad by bands' or secret, foreign-controlled cells.

One of the central questions surrounding the Boston Marathon bombings is whether they portend a larger wave of terror attacks by homegrown Islamic radicals. The culprits, two brothers of Chechen origin, one of whom was a naturalized U.S. citizen, had both lived in the country for more than a decade.

One of the ways of understanding the strange nonchalant response of the administration to prior warnings of trouble in the Arab Spring countries, and its contextualization of the violence on the anniversary of 9/11, is its belief that it is somehow separated from the object of the violence. Raging crowds and Islamic wrath could not possibly be connected to the enlightened Obama administration given the three years of laborious Muslim outreach and the long-ago departure of George Bush. So we are to think away all those burning flags, stormed consulates, and dead Americans, and instead remember that the violence “is...

Brown was thought to be in for a tough reelection race, in part, because his party was decimated in the state last cycle. Democrats lost five House seats, the governor's mansion and failed to pick up the open Senate seat in Ohio last November. But a new survey by Public Policy Polling showed Brown with a comfortable lead over his potential challengers. Former Secretary of State Ken Blackwell trails Brown by 51-33, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor (R) loses to the Democrat, 50-31 and former State Sen. Kevin Coughlin (R) trails by a similar deficit. State Treasurer Josh Mandel (R) and...

The soldiers expressed their gratitude over and over to the NFL coaches who made the trip to Iraq. "They kept thanking us," said the Tennessee Titans' Jeff Fisher. "We kept thanking them." Fisher, the New York Giants' Tom Coughlin, the Baltimore Ravens' John Harbaugh, former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill Cowher and former Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden are taking part in the first NFL-USO coaches tour over the Fourth of July weekend. A world they knew only through the distant glimpses of news reports turned very real for the coaches as they met with hundreds of soldiers in three...