Free Republic

U.S. Moves Military out of Qatar & Turkey This past Thursday, Debka reported that the U.S. military has liquidated its two major air bases in the Middle East, at Incirlik (Turkey) and Al-Udeid (Qatar). Various facilities and capabilities will be moved: from Qatar to Saudi Arabia, and from Turkey to various friendly Middle Eastern countries. Air bases are designed to be liquidated and relocated in a short period of time. For historical context, we recall a similar event in the past. In 1969, King Idris of Libya was undergoing surgery in Athens, Greece. Taking advantage of his absence, Col. Muammar...

Aileen Milton of The Villages Conservative Media interviews Wallace Bruschweiler & William Palumbo on the Jamal Khashoggi Affair Link to video: http://streamnetradio.com/videos/twallace.mp4 Wallace S. Bruschweiler, Sr. is a quadri-linguist and subject matter expert in counter-terrorism and national security issues. He has over 30 years’ experience operating in Europe, Middle East, and North Africa. He is a results-oriented security executive, analyst, strategist and problem-solver with extensive expertise and 30+ years of achievement in complex domestic and international security and intelligence situations in a range of venues. He possesses broad cultural knowledge and awareness, derived from worldwide first-hand experience. Mr. Bruschweiler is...

As I read CNN trying to get Trump by playing up the apparent murder of a Saudi citizen by the Saudi government, I'm reminded that in 2003 CNN and the NY Times both admitted that they hid all sorts of atrocities being committed by Saddam Hussein in exchange for access. They admitted that Saddam and his sons told them in advance of planned assassinations that they didn't report. They admitted that they knew of instances of torture and brutality against not just Iraqi's but even against their own cameraman in one torture instance and they kept all that quiet too....

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress from both parties made clear on Sunday that they wanted to see Saudi Arabia punished for the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as President Trump shifted his tone again on the issue and joined the lawmakers in expressing doubt about the Saudi government’s account of the death. “Obviously, there’s been deception and there’s been lies,” Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview late Saturday with The Washington Post. “Their stories are all over the place.” The president’s response to the Saudi accounts has likewise changed from day to day. Speaking to The New York...

President Trump on Friday denied a report that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo heard an audio recording of journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was never given or shown a Transcript or Video of the Saudi Consulate event. FAKE NEWS!" Trump tweeted. The president's comments come one day after ABC News reported Pompeo listened to the recording and was given a transcript of it during meetings this week in Turkey scheduled in response to Khashoggi's disappearance. Trump administration officials have repeatedly denied the report, which was based on the account of...

Some conservatives have been peddling smears against missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in an effort to cushion President Donald Trump from blowback over his handling of the situation with Saudi Arabia, The Washington Post reported Thursday. Efforts to raise questions about Khashoggi have made their way to Capitol Hill, where a group of House Republicans have been circulating articles from conservative outlets that tie the missing journalist to the Muslim Brotherhood and Osama bin Laden, the Post reported. Among those circulating such claims is Donald Trump Jr., who last week retweeted an unsubstantiated claim insinuating Khashoggi is a terrorist sympathizer....

The debate over free speech and content policy on Twitter– like on other social media sites— is often centered on issues relevant to political and cultural debates in the United States, where the company is headquartered. Yet this discussion of hypothetical censorship obscures the fact that company policies today are already used to silence important voices— journalists reporting from Kurdistan, who provide key information on political and military developments there at great personal risk.  While Twitter is a safer platform for Kurdish reporters and supporters of the Kurdish cause than sites like Facebook— which ban pages and accounts for posting photos of the...

Why has the media and much of the political establishment made the presumed murder of an Islamist Saudi dissident on Turkish soil a defining issue in American foreign policy? Jamal Khashoggi is not a U.S. citizen, despite his past residence in Virginia, nor is he a lover of liberty, despite his criticism of Saudi Arabia’s despotic regime. He previously served that regime as a mouthpiece for, and adviser to, the alleged al-Qaeda-tied Saudi intelligence leader Turki bin Faisal. Khashoggi mourned the death of Osama bin Laden, whom Khashoggi had been granted unusual levels of access for numerous interviews. Khashoggi was...

American and western intelligence sources believe Iran has been increasing its shipments of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah, and that the deliveries now include Global Positioning System (GPS) components to make previously unguided rockets into precision guided-missiles, increasing the threat to Israel, Fox News reported on Friday. One of the Iranian flights arrived in Lebanon three days ago, officials told the news channel. Iran’s Fars Air Qeshm flight number QFZ-9950 departed Tehran International Airport on Tuesday at 9:33 a.m. local time, and flew to an unknown destination, according to flight data obtained by Fox News. Later in the day, the Boeing...

The United States on Thursday downgraded the status of its main diplomatic mission to the Palestinians by placing it under the authority of the U.S. Embassy to Israel. The move, which was immediately denounced by the Palestinians and hailed by Israel, is the latest Trump administration decision to align with Israeli government views and a victory for U.S. Ambassador David Friedman. He had long sought to end the Jerusalem consulate’s independent status but had faced resistance from within the State Department. Friedman’s push picked up steam in May after the Trump administration moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem...

The Trump bandwagon is swinging into top gear--with Jordan in the box seat and the PLO left flailing way behind. Any lingering thought that the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) would have any role to play in President Trump’s soon to-be-released peace plan has vanished - after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that $165 million had been deducted from funding to the PLO because of its continuing “pay for slay” policy in breach of the Taylor Force Act. Jordan has now signalled its preparedness to replace the PLO by publicly supporting Trump in an article written in the Jordan Times...

If you get your news from the media, then you will have heard that Jamal Khashoggi was a heroic reform who sought freedom for the region, and was brutally murdered to the strains of hip-hop music by a legion of Saudi assassins. And it was all recorded on his Apple Watch. If you're interested in the facts, instead of the fake news, you probably already know that Jamal Khashoggi was a Muslim Brotherhood leader and an old friend of Osama bin Laden. He's being mourned by the media that backed the Muslim Brotherhood.

....Israel does not need the love of the Arabs nor does it need to convince them of its right to exist in their midst. It knows that its existence is outside the context of history and logic and that it came into being by force, it will live by force and it will die by force. Consequently, it will have to live with its finger on the trigger... ....this doctrine is still alive. It is exactly what the current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is implementing so faithfully in Gaza today, in the footsteps of his predecessors. In brief, and...

A Turkish newspaper reported on Oct. 18 that one of the suspects involved in the disappearance of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi died in a “suspicious car accident” in Riyadh. Mashal Saad al-Bostani, a 31-year-old lieutenant of the Saudi Royal Air Forces, was among the 15 suspects who arrived and left Turkey on Oct. 2 after going to Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate when Khashoggi visited there, according to daily Yeni Şafak. The newspaper said sources did not release any details about the traffic accident in Riyadh and Bostani’s role in the “murder” was not yet clear. Daily Hürriyet columnist Abdulkadir Selvi...

"He'll get money from the Saudis. He'll make money from Putin when he gets out — that's why he's been Putin's lapdog. Donald Trump is all about money," the 'Morning Joe' co-host said on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.' MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough has a bold political prediction: he doesn't think President Donald Trump will run for re-election in 2020. "I don't think Donald Trump's going to run for re-election. He didn't want to be elected president, he didn't think he would be elected president. He didn't even think he was going to get the Republican nomination....

Wikipedia entry from 10/14/2018:"Khashoggi and his fellow travellers believe in imposing Islamic rule by engaging in the democratic process."[22] Khashoggi became de facto leader of the Saudi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.[22]" It was gone one day later. Preserved for eternity, however, thanks to the Wayback Machine.

In high school, Jamal Khashoggi had a good friend. His name was Osama bin Laden. “We were hoping to establish an Islamic state anywhere,” Khashoggi reminisced about their time together in the Muslim Brotherhood. “We believed that the first one would lead to another, and that would have a domino effect which could reverse the history of mankind.” The friendship endured with Jamal Khashoggi following Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan. Khashoggi credited Adel Batterjee, listed at one time as one of “the world’s foremost terrorist financiers” by the Treasury Department, with bringing him to Afghanistan to report on the fighting....

Former CIA Director John Brennan suggested Wednesday night that President Trump is conspiring with Saudi leaders to make up a story about journalist Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance. The Saudi journalist was last seen on October 2 walking into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Turkey says the Saudis killed him, but Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud deny the charge. Trump suggested that he has no reason not to believe him and cited our economic relationship. That left Brennan with this theory. “So they’ve been working to concoct a story that’s going to stand...

Colonel Richard Kemp: UN Encourages Terrorism Against Israel By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem, Israel — May 21, 2018 … Speech made by Colonel Richard Kemp at the emergency session of the United Nations Human Rights Council on the deteriorating situation in Gaza on 18 May 2018. Col. Kemp, decorated for his bravery with the UN Protection Force in Bosnia, tells the United Nations Human Rights Council: “Your failure to admit Hamas is responsible for every drop of blood spilt encourages their violence and use of human shields, makes you complicit in further bloodshed.” VIDEO CAN BE VIEWED AT: http://israelnewsagency.com/un-terrorism-gaza-hamas-iran-jihad-human-rights-israel-idf/...

“The Palestinians are not a UN Member State or any state at all. The United States will continually point that out in our remarks at UN events led by the Palestinians,” Haley said. The United States does not recognize Palestine as a state, its envoys said on Tuesday as they opposed United Nations General Assembly move to enhance the stature of the Palestinian Authority. “The Palestinians are not a UN Member State or any state at all. The United States will continually point that out in our remarks at UN events led by the Palestinians,” US Ambassador to the United...