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Earlier this month I reported here at PJ Media on the surrender and defections of U.S.-backed Syrian rebel troops to Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda’s official affiliate), most notably the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, which the DC foreign policy establishment was hailing as “the West’s best fighting chance against Syria’s Islamist armies,” and Harkat al-Hazm, the first group to receive heavy weaponry from the U.S. earlier this year.Now Mona Mahmood of the Guardian reports that elements of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are defecting to ISIS: US air strikes in Syria are encouraging anti-regime fighters to forge alliances with or even defect...

Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Mughdeed sits in a pickup truck equipped with an anti-aircraft weapon as he and his men wind through steep roads to their base in the rocky Zartik Mountains. Mughdeed's Iraqi Kurdish forces are members of the Peshmerga, a key U.S. ally in the fight against the so-called Islamic State. Also known as ISIS, the Sunni extremists have taken control of about a third of Iraq. In October, Mughdeed's men retook this area east of Mosul from ISIS occupation. The mountain road winds through villages that now look like a post-apocalyptic tableau, with homes reduced to knee-high...

Revolutionaries posing as cooks infiltrated an ISIS camp and poisoned meals in a bid to kill as many fighters as they could. Sources in the Syrian Free Army said a dozen Islamic State militants perished after eating a contaminated lunch at the Fath El-Sahel camp, where 1,200 are based. The rebels who hatched the plot were a group of defected Syrian soldiers who are fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. The Times of Iraq reported that witnesses said around a dozen were killed and 15 transferred to nearby field hospitals. The 'cooks' immediately fled, along with their families, with the...

Isis (Islamic State) and Jabhat al-Nusar militants were close to capturing Syria's second city after hundreds of jihadists took over the newly appointed governor's office in the provincial capital, Idlib. It's believed 70 Syrian senior army officers were beheaded before government troops could recapture the building and save Idlib. ...

Up to 15 select Peshmerga are soon to be on the move, with half of each going by air and the balance accompanying a heavy, two wheeled, black powder cannon via strategic, unspecified back roads or allies. Turkey agreed to the dual pronged Iraqi Kurd deployment last week after refusing to allow Turkish Kurds to cross the border. Earlier, whilst wildly cheered on by all nine vetted fighters of the Free Syrian Army, Turki prime minister Ert, disclaimed claims that he was not doing enough...

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the...

WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, today asked for unanimous consent on his bill, the Expatriate Terrorist Act of 2014, that would strip Americans who join ISIS of their citizenship. Senator Hirono, D-Hawaii, objected. In his remarks offering the bill, Sen. Cruz discussed the rising threat of ISIS, his concerns with President Obama’s plans to arm the Free Syrian Army, and the support then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once gave to legislation, introduced in 2010 by former Senators Joe Lieberman and Scott Brown, that closely mirrors the ETA of 2014. Specifically Sen. Cruz said: “All too often the...

Sen. Rand Paul today took to the Senate floor to offer a unanimous consent request to separate the Syria rebel funding language from the Continuing Resolution. Senate Democrats objected to this request. Sen. Paul then delivered a foreign policy address outlining his opposition to arming the Syrian rebels. A video and copy of Sen. Paul's remarks as prepared for delivery can be found below. SEN. PAUL DELIVERS FOREIGN POLICY ADDRESS REMARKS: If there is one theme that connects the dots in the Middle East, it is that chaos breeds terrorism. What much of the foreign policy elite fails to grasp...

John McCain’s slip of the tongue won’t help him quell Internet accusations that he once met and took pictures with members of the terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

I hope people are watching this. Such insanity would typically end in someone being ejected from the party John McCain, the hideous terrorist aider DEMANDING the US military attack Assad's regime in Syria and send heavy weapons to the 'moderate' opposition, also known as mega extremists just like those guys in Libya we gave stinger missiles to. Another reason to NOT let McConnell back in the senate. He will continue to send the most unstable man in the country to this vital committee. STOP ARMING TERRORISTS WHO HATE AMERICA!

BEIRUT (AP) — Kurdish fighters have captured more than a dozen villages from Islamic militants in heavy fighting across northeastern Syria, an activist group and a Kurdish official said Monday. The fighting in the mainly-Kurdish Hassakeh province came as diplomats at a Paris conference tried to agree on a global strategy to fight the extremist Islamic State group, which has captured large tracts of territory in Iraq and Syria. Kurdish fighters have been battling Islamic State militants for more than a year in northern Syria. The Kurdish People's Protection Units, known by the acronym YPK, have been the most effective...

Barzani warned that inaction would lead to terrible consequences and he called on the international community to prevent another humanitarian crisis. ERBIL, Kurdistan Region— President of the Kurdistan Region Massoud Barzani called on Kurdish parties and the international community today to assist the people of Kobane against the Islamic State (IS) attacks on the town. “We appeal to all Kurdish forces to put aside their differences and unite to defend the dignity, the land and the lives of the citizens of Kobane,” Barzani said in a statement. “The defense of the land and the people of Kurdistan is the...

The Free Syrian Army is on the wrong side. Here's its bloody track record and disturbing alliances. Video House approves Obama's plan to combat Islamic State in a 273 to 156 vote Demonstrating yet again that we do not have an effective opposition party in the United States right now, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted Wednesday in favor of Barack Obama’s plan to arm and train “vetted” members of the Free Syrian Army. As expected,the Senate went along on Thursday. The Hill noted about the House vote that “vocal opposition” came from “both war-weary liberals and defense hawks who...

Yesterday, the Senate approved a bill  to arm and train Syrian rebels, who fight against Bashar Assad, so they can eliminate ISIS, which possesses hundreds of millions of dollars, and no shortage of fighters willing to die for them.  I fail to see the wisdom in this action, or what good can come of this.  It appears cowardly, and even immoral to pay others to fight for you. The New York Times penned almost 1,800 words describing and analyzing this vote, and even got the tally wrong in the original version. Correction: September 18, 2014 An earlier version of this article...

Russia on Tuesday accused the West of ignoring its warnings about the growing terrorist threat in Syria, and claimed that the moderate rebel front – the one the Obama administration wants to arm as part of its anti-ISIS strategy – “no longer exists.”The remarks by Russia’s ambassador in Geneva Alexey Borodavkin came during a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which was discussing the most recent report by a U.N.-mandated independent commission of inquiry into the conflict.The report, released late last month and roughly covering the first half of this year, recorded atrocities by the Assad regime and by...

There were few modern democrats among the armed opposition to Assad two years ago. There are far fewer now. So who can Obama trust not to turn Western-supplied weapons against us later? The young rebels and opposition activists gathered in a school to discuss how the northern Syrian town of Al Bab should be governed after the departure of Bashar al Assad’s soldiers were taken aback by the question: “Why aren’t there any women here?” It was the summer of 2012, more than 12 months into the uprising against the Syrian president, and more than a year before Abu Bakr...

Islamic State extremists are pushing to secure the border between Turkey and north-western Syria as the main gateway for recruits to join the caliphate they have imposed across much of eastern Syria and western Iraq. Large numbers of jihadists from Islamic State (formerly Isis) are moving this weekend towards the Turkish border area, about 60 miles north of Aleppo, in columns of armoured trucks that they looted from abandoned Iraqi military bases. The area is now one of the most active front lines in the group's attempt to redraw the borders of the Levant, a campaign that will have huge...

With reports indicating that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad are gaining ground in that country’s brutal civil war, moderate Syrian rebels have told a visiting journalist that the United States is arranging their training in Qatar. In a documentary to be aired Tuesday night, the rebels describe their clandestine journey from the Syrian battlefield to meet with their American handlers in Turkey and then travel on to Qatar, where they say they received training in the use of sophisticated weapons and fighting techniques, including, one rebel said, “how to finish off soldiers still alive after an ambush.” The...

Don't believe everything you read in the media: The moderate rebels of Syria are not finished. They have gained ground in different parts of the country and have broken publicly with both the al Qaeda affiliate operating there and the jihadists of the Islamic State. Meanwhile, President Bashar al-Assad's regime is showing new signs of weakness. The death of moderate armed opposition elements has been greatly exaggerated. These groups -- whom I define as fighters who are not seeking to impose an Islamic state, but rather leaving that to a popular decision after the war ends -- have recently gained...

You'll recall that I quipped that  if Obama asserts that it's nighttime - I get up and go to the window to confirm it. Well, the Big 'O' has a soulmate in the crowded universe of liars in American politics.  Hillary Clinton. Hillarys peeing on my leg but claiming that it's just raining. But I know she's peeing on my leg because we're in the middle of a drought out here - and because (ladies, cover your ears), Barack Obama calls her latest self-serving, scapegoat chatter - "Horseshit". Now, I'd say if anyone can recognize horseshit, it would probably be...