Free Republic

After the U.S. military battled heroically to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and to eliminate the possibility that it might become a staging area for terrorist attacks, the Obama administration has created a vacuum now being filled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an Al Qaeda affiliate, which has overrun Mosul and Fallujah, cities liberated by American soldiers. ISIS now threatens Baghdad. The administration and much of the media try to separate “fanatical Muslims” from “peaceful” ones, but the distinction is meaningless when the fanatics have the weapons and are willing to die for their cause....

About 200 Americans under contract with the Department of Defense at Balad Air Force Base in Iraq are trapped by the al-Qaida-inspired jihadists who have seized control of two cities and are now threatening Baghdad, according to WND sources. The sources, private contractors who have recently returned to the U.S. from Iraq, said Friday their former colleagues effectively have been abandoned by the U.S. military and are fighting for their lives against an army of jihadists surrounding the base who belong to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. The U.S. contractors are at Balad to help the...

In the week following 9/11/12 something big happened: the collapse of the Cairo Doctrine, the centerpiece of President Obama’s foreign policy. It was to reset the very course of post-9/11 America, creating, after the (allegedly) brutal depredations of the Bush years, a profound rapprochement with the Islamic world. Never lacking ambition or self-regard, Obama promised in Cairo, June 4, 2009, “a new beginning” offering Muslims “mutual respect,” unsubtly implying previous disrespect. Curious, as over the previous 20 years, America had six times committed its military forces on behalf of oppressed Muslims, three times for reasons of pure humanitarianism (Somalia, Bosnia,...

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - A squad of U.S. troops despatched by helicopter across the Libyan desert to rescue besieged diplomats from Benghazi on Wednesday ran into a fierce overnight ambush that left a further two Americans dead, Libyan officials told Reuters. Accounts of the mayhem at the U.S. consulate, where the ambassador and a fourth American died after a chaotic protest over a film insulting to Islam, remain patchy. But two Libyan officials, including the commander of a security force which escorted the U.S. rescuers, said a later assault on a supposedly safe refuge for the diplomats appeared professionally executed....

A high-ranking Iranian official has said Iran's military will practice sealing off the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil transport channel, in a provocative move that illustrates Iran’s capability of disrupting the world’s oil supply. The announcement Monday by Parviz Sarvari sent oil prices up about $3 to $100 a barrel based on the speculation of a disruption during the military drills, Bloomberg reported. “Soon we will hold a military maneuver on how to close the Strait of Hormuz,” Sarvari, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Committee, said in a statement reported by Reuters. “If...

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons, even in self defense. But the president said in an interview that he was carving out an exception for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated or renounced the main treaty to halt nuclear proliferation. Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to...

With an inane flourish of rhetoric, Washington is split between Friends of Rahm and Friends of Barack. “Arguably,” The Post’s Dana Milbank wrote two weeks ago, “Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter.” Judging from the maelstrom of columns, criticism, and comments Milbank unleashed (and from The Post’s front-page story Tuesday that heralded Emanuel as the White House’s “voice of reason”), the operative word in Milbank’s Carter comparison is “arguably.” Anointing Emanuel as the man who’s keeping Obama from driving the country straight into 1978, though, is a bit far-fetched. Doing so ignores the fact that...

THURSDAY, July 16 (HealthDay News) -- Deaths and injuries on America's interstates have increased since the repeal of the federal 55-mile-per-hour speed limit in 1995, a new study finds, and some believe it's time to slow down again. Researchers tracking fatalities attributed 12,545 deaths and 36,582 injuries in fatal crashes to higher speed limits implemented during the 1995-2005 study period. "Our study clearly shows that policy can directly result in more deaths as well as reducing deaths on our country's roads," said lead researcher Lee S. Friedman of the division of environmental and occupational health sciences in the School of...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's been laying on the praise so thick for his vice president that even a guy as self-deprecating as Joe Biden might wonder if Obama's messing with him. "We call him 'The Sheriff,'" Obama said recently, talking about how he's asked Biden to oversee implementation of the $787 billion economic stimulus. "Nobody messes with Joe," the president said in his first formal address to Congress. After less than two months in office, Obama also has called on Biden, 66, to act as a foreign-policy emissary, run a middle-class task force, stand in on national network morning...

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U.S Democratic Presidential candidates Chris Dodd(D-CT) (L) and Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) share a laugh during the 30th annual Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa, September 16, 2007. REUTERS/ Joshua Lott (UNITED STATES)