Free Republic

Iranian-backed Iraqi militias were likely behind a deadly rocket barrage on a U.S.-led coalition base in northern Iraq in February. According to NBC the attack featured at least 14 107mm rockets, a favored weapon supplied by Iran to the militias. But this did not dissuade Joe Biden from releasing $3 billion of Iran’s fund in Iraq, Oman and South Korea. It’s like Obama 2.0 Al-Arabya reported: [The United States has agreed to the release of $3 billion in Iranian funds that have been frozen in Iraq, Oman and South Korea due to Washington’s sanctions, Iranian trade official Hamid Hosseini told...

Russian Defense officials reported its air force carried out 18 airstrikes this Thursday. They also destroyed a “terrorist” training camp. Russian Su-34 warplanes attacked and destroyed an Islamic State group command center and training camp Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported. The center is located in Maarat an Numan.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Russia's launch of airstrikes in Syria is prompting discussions within the Pentagon about whether the U.S. should use military force to protect U.S.-trained and equipped Syrian rebels if they come under fire by the Russians." U.S. officials said Thursday that senior military leaders and defense officials are working through the thorny legal and foreign policy issues and are weighing the risks of using force in response to a Russian attack. Defense Secretary Ash Carter declined to discuss the problem when asked about it this week. But U.S. officials acknowledged that this is one of the questions being...

Russia's launch of airstrikes in Syria is prompting discussions within the Pentagon about whether the U.S. should use military force to protect U.S.-trained and equipped Syrian rebels if they come under fire by the Russians. U.S. officials said Thursday that senior military leaders and defense officials are working through the thorny legal and foreign policy issues and are weighing the risks of using force in response to a Russian attack.

Russia is the target of a global plot orchestrated by the United States and involving fighters from the self-styled Islamic State (IS) and nationalist Ukrainian troops - that is the latest conspiracy theory broadcast on Russian state TV. "America is everywhere, the West is everywhere, Nato is everywhere. Everything is organised against Russia," the veteran Russian nationalist MP Vladimir Zhirinovsky railed during a talk show on Channel One, Russia's most popular TV station. There was a "certain link", he hinted, between Ukrainian troops "raiding our western regions" and IS, which he said was being armed by the US. Joining the...

Recent revelations of significant financial ties between the Brookings Institution and Qatar’s government are raising new questions about the policy positions of the influential Washington think tank—including one top scholar’s writings about an al Qaeda-linked group, known as Ahrar al-Sham, that is funded by a terrorist financier linked to the Qatari royal family.The New York Times reported earlier this month that Qatar has pledged a $14.8 million, four-year donation to Brookings, making it the “single biggest foreign donor” to the think tank. That money will help finance Brookings’ Doha Center in Qatar and its project on U.S. relations with the...

(CNSNews.com) - House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) joined forces early Wednesday evening as the House passed a continuing resolution that will fund the government after the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, and that will permit funding for Planned Parenthood (the nation's largest abortion provider), the entirety of Obamacare, and an amendment requested by President Barack Obama "to train and equip appropriately vetted elements of the Syrian opposition." The bill passed 319 to 108 with four members not voting. But there were not enough Republican members to pass the bill without...

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...

FULL TITLE: Shocking moment ISIS militants take sledgehammers to Mosul tomb of Prophet Jonah as more than 50 blindfolded bodies are found massacred south of Baghdad ======================================================== This is the shocking moment ISIS militants took sledgehammers to Iraqi tombstones - smashing them to pieces. The rebels, who are members of the Islamic State terror group, were filmed attacking centuries-old graves in the north-west city of Mosul in Ninevah province. Donning balaclavas and black coats, they swung sledgehammers into the tombs, causing pieces of dust and stone to fly through the air.

A Muslim gunman saw a jesuit priest named Fr. Frans van der Lugt in the Syrian city of Homs, opened fire on him and shot him to death. He was killed in the Bustan al-Diwan neighbourhood. Fr Frans van der Lugt He was trapped in the city, alongside numerous other Christians and Muslims, who were all suffering of mass starvation. He lived in Syria for fifty years, and refused to leave his flock. Just a few months before he was murdered, he stated: As long as there is one person from our community left here, I will stay with them....

Just hours after he stormed out of President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday, Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) announced he’s considering filing articles of impeachment against the president.

CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian court on Tuesday set Feb. 16 as the start date for one of the multiple trials of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, this one on charges of conspiring with foreign groups. Egypt's prosecutor general has charged Morsi and other top Muslim Brotherhood leaders with conspiring with militant groups such as the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as with Iran, to destabilize Egypt. Morsi is also accused of orchestrating an insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula to avenge his ouster.

A long-delayed Senate intelligence committee report released on Wednesday spreads blame among the State Department and intelligence agencies for not preventing attacks on two outposts in Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. The bipartisan report lays out more than a dozen findings regarding the assaults on Sept. 11 and 12, 2012 on the diplomatic compound and a CIA annex in the Libyan city of Benghazi. It says the State Department failed to increase security at the sites despite warnings, and faults intelligence agencies for not sharing information about the existence of the CIA outpost with...

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — The stream of U.S. weapons heading to moderate rebel groups in Syria is being offset by a fresh torrent of cash for Islamist extremists, much of it from small networks of Arab donors who see the Syrian conflict as a step toward a broader Islamist uprising across the region, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials say. The private donors, who use Twitter and other social media to collect millions of dollars from sympathetic Muslims, are providing crucial backing for Islamist militias that appear to be gaining ground in northern and eastern Syria, even as fighting stalls elsewhere, the...

Syrian government troops battled al-Qaida-linked rebels over a regime-held Christian village in western Syria for the second day Thursday... The rebels launched the assault on the ancient Christian village of Maaloula — which is on a UNESCO list of tentative world heritage sites — on Wednesday after an al-Nusra fighter blew himself up at a regime checkpoint at the entrance to the mountain village. The four-decade iron rule of the Assad family over Syria long has rested on support from the country's ethnic and religious minorities, including Christians, Shiite Muslims and Kurds. The Assad family and key regime figures are...

Washington is weighing expanding support for Syrian rebels by having the Pentagon take charge of arming the opposition instead of a clandestine effort by the CIA, officials said Wednesday. "It's under consideration," said a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "If and how (it would be done) are both questions being discussed," the official told AFP.

The religion of violence has struck again and these are the savages that Barack Obama, John Kerry, and now John Boehner (no real surprise there) are wanting us to support. Alalam is now reporting that the Obama backed and supported al-Qaeda Syrian rebels forced 24 civilians off a bus traveling from Tarus to Ras al-Ain in the northeast of Syria and beheaded them all, including a mother and her baby. Alalam reports: Al-Qaeda linked terrorists in Syria have beheaded all 24 Syrian passengers traveling from Tartus to Ras al-Ain in northeast of Syria, among them a mother and a 40-days...

Good interview and worth listening to. Obama is actively backing the radical Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida elements (approx. 20,000 strong) of the rebellion while leaving the Free Syrian Army (approx. 800,000 strong) high and dry, warns retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely. Listen to radio interview at http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/general-obamas-backing-wrong-syrian-rebels/

... “So what, we’re about to become al-Qaeda’s air force now?” Kucinich sarcastically asked The Hill. He went on to warn against attempting to “minimize” an intervention by terming it a “targeted strike.” Such a strike, he said, would still constitute an act of war. Kucinich also blasted the Obama administration for “rushing” into what he said could become a third world war, and he cast doubt on reports by rebels of governmental forces using chemical weapons. He declared that the use of chemical weapons in Syria was a “pretext.” “The verdict is in before the facts have been gathered,”...

ALTER: The Bill Clinton part is like a talk radio talking point. It's not what actually happened. What actually happened is that the government, Assad's government, made military advances. They're about to take Aleppo, a key strategic city, and that would be the end of the rebels. MAHER: You mean al Qaeda? Because we're basically arming al Qaeda. I don't understand this -- ALTER: There's a peace conference. If they don't go into that peace conference with at least some victories on the rebel side, the rebels won't show up. So the president is trying to bolster them enough so...