Free Republic

Life often takes us in unexpected directions, but Maria Sue Bell’s life has been more rollicking and full of surprises than most. Back in 1984 and 1985, Bell served in the Army National Guard and was on Army Active Duty until Jan. 31, 1986. In a warning sign of what was to come, the criminal complaint against Bell says that she “received an Other Than Honorable (OTH) Discharge deemed Good for Service in lieu of a Court Martial,” although the reason for this has not been disclosed and has now been overshadowed by far more serious misconduct: Bell was sentenced...

The group are wiping out rivals and taking areas of strategic interest to Turkey and Bashar Al Assad's government. Al Qaeda-linked militants in Syria are strengthening their grip on territory in western Aleppo’s rebel-held countryside, nearly 18 months after taking most of the neighbouring province of Idlib. A sudden campaign by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham last week caught Turkey and allied rebels by surprise (when they moved their forces to attack the Kurds near Manbij)... “Tahrir Al Sham chose the right moment to attack.”

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) “knowingly” siphoned off millions in American taxpayer-funded humanitarian assistance into the coffers of the al-Qaeda wing in Syria, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) reported this week. In post-Islamic State (ISIS) caliphate Syria, the al-Qaeda-linked Ha’yat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group has surfaced as the strongest jihadi group in the region. On Tuesday, the Pentagon OIG’s Lead Inspector General for Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the official name of the U.S. mission against ISIS, revealed: Since late 2017, USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] OIG investigations have uncovered numerous instances of...

The company that earned the no-bid contract to build the failed Obamacare website also runs the Army’s disastrous Human Terrain System in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has been accused of fraud, sexual harassment and racism. The much-maligned Human Terrain System (HTS), launched in 2007, sends academics from social science fields like anthropology and linguistics into war zones to help soldiers understand the local population. The Army spent $58 million on the program in 2013, down from $114 million in 2011. CGI Federal, the U.S. arm of the Canadian CGI Group and the designer of the failed Obamacare website, attempted a...