Free Republic

TAMPA — The emails were anguished, pleading and sent straight to the mayor. "Bob, hope all is well," Jill Kelley wrote at 5:57 a.m. Tuesday to Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, whom she knows socially. What came next offers a glimpse into Kelley's state of mind as a national scandal blew up in her front yard. "My kids are scared, and need their 'home' back," she wrote, asking for help with "paparazzi" at her Bayshore Boulevard mansion. At 6:18 a.m. Wednesday, she emailed again. "Dear Mayor Bob," she wrote, saying that her name, along with those of former CIA director David...

In working through some of the 7,000 Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department yesterday, I came across one curious one sent from aide Huma Abedin to the then-Secretary of State regarding a Koran-burning in the U.S.Here is another intriguing email: https://twitter.com/bhweingarten/status/638734489531871234 It is noteworthy that this message on a sensitive subject — presumably about a meeting between then-Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Sec. of State Clinton on weapons collections in Libya — would be left unredacted, while many other emails in the Clinton trove are redacted in toto. This may be because news reports around the September 10, 2011 email date indicate...

Full Title: Jill Kelley emails say Petraeus, Allen asked her to stop shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge from desecrating a Koran Note: Did a search and couldn't find this posted elsewhere. _________________________________________ In March 2012, a Tampa shock jock called Bubba the Love Sponge announced he was going to "deep fat fry" a Koran as a stunt. Tampa socialite Jill Kelley wrote the city’s mayor saying that then CIA Director David Petraeus and the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, had asked her about “getting this dealt with.” Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn responded that the city was "working...

TAMPA — Her business card is utterly ordinary. No big titles. No hint of connections with the military and political elite. It lists her address, her phone number and her name in elegant script: "Honorable Jill G. Kelley." But the outsized portrait of herself that Kelley presents to the world will fit on no card. It's seen in her emails to Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and others. She drops names. She mentions lunch at the White House in a casual aside, one of three visits she has made there in the last six weeks. The top U.S. general in Afghanistan...

When you read this, sip slowly, dust off the way-back machine, and think about those who have surfaced visibly to support Hillary Clinton. Including “retired” U.S. General John Allen (retired in 2012), who was previously brought out of retirement to lead President Obama’s fight against ISIS in 2014. In order to understand the scope of the relationships it takes understanding the full back story. Stay with it…. general john allen The question posed to the Tree House back in 2014 was: Why is the White House selecting a retired General John Allen, instead of a current commanding officer to lead...

Petraeus Scandal: An affair that was known to the FBI for months and kept from congressional oversight committees might explain his complicity in a false narrative of the Benghazi terrorist attack and the order to "stand down." The addition of sex to Benghazigate adds a dimension sure to keep the scandal going and one that does indeed make Watergate seem like a third-rate burglary. The affair admitted to by Gen. David Petraeus, now our former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, might have attached blackmail or the potential for blackmail to a scandal we have already called a case of...

SNIPPET: " It was found at the front door of the Islamic Center of East Lansing." SNIPPET: "The department is offering $10,000 for any information that would lead to the identification and prosecution of those responsible for this act. Those with information are asked to call Det. Sherief Fadly..."

Last week, Caleb Howe at Truth Revolt posted a brutal video of an Afghan woman being beaten to death by an angry mob for allegedly desecrating the Koran. “The crowd can be seen beating and kicking her, hitting her with sticks, and even dropping large bricks and blocks of stone on her. Her body was then burned, and thrown into a river,” he wrote. The woman, Farkhunda,is known by only one name, and she was in her late 20s to early 30s. Some sites, like the AP, have her being 27 years old, while CBS News reported she was 32. Her...

An initial investigation into the case of five U.S. soldiers caught burning Qur’ans in Afghanistan found it to be nothing more than a mistake—that the servicemen unwittingly added the books into their routine trash pickup. Nonetheless, in retaliation, Afghan security forces turned on U.S. troops, killing six. And still, Barack Obama issued a diplomatic apology.

For many years, the military was the last bastion of resistance against the bankruptcy of progressive thinking. No longer. Three vivid illustrations of what those who volunteer to defend this nation must now endure, stand as a beacon to the corruption that political correctness brings wherever it is unleashed. ...First, the Fort Hood massacre. Army brass knew that Major Nidal Hasan was a an Islamic radical, long before he killed 13 and wounded another 32 of his fellow soldiers. A report released soon after the atrocity provided a devastating indictment of political correctness. "Although neither Department of Defense nor the...

(CBS News) President Obama on Tuesday vowed to hold whoever was responsible for the killing spree in Afghanistan that left 16 civilians dead over the weekend "fully accountable," directing the Pentagon to "spare no effort" in conducting a full investigation to find out what happened. "The United States takes this as seriously as if it were our own citizens and our own children who were murdered," Mr. Obama said from the White House Rose Garden. "We're heartbroken over the loss of innocent life."

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has blamed Afghans for the burning of the Holy Qur'an by US troops, saying prisoners in the US base were using its pages to transmit messages from jails. Speaking to an audience of supporters in Meridian, Mississippi, on Friday, Gingrich claimed that Afghan prisoners were “using the Qu'ran for communication from jail, and it's a pity that the religious leaders in Afghanistan aren't condemning the people who were defacing the Qu'ran. Because it is those people who are responsible for the Qu'ran ending up being burned, because if they hadn't defaced it, it wouldn't have...

In the face of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's call for the U.S. troops who burned Korans to be tried and punished, the White House won't say what will happen to those troops. Connie Lawn with IRN/USA Radio Network asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, “Did Karzai ever express condolences for the British soldiers killed and did he explicitly apologize for the American soldiers who were killed? And what does the White House want to see done with these Americans who burned the Korans?” “I think there is an investigation into that,” Carney responded. “You surely understand that I would...

More than half of Americans support President Barack Obama's apology for U.S. troops burning copies of the Koran, an incident that triggered a spate of bloody protests and attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Monday, 56 percent of those surveyed backed Obama, who has been criticized by U.S. Republican presidential candidates for apologizing to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Twenty-three percent disagreed. While the spasm of violence that erupted following the incident on a NATO base in Afghanistan does not appear to have significantly altered Americans' perspective on the war, 66 percent of those polled...

A suicide bomber killed at least two civilians Monday after detonating explosives at the gates of the NATO base where copies of the Koran were burned, Afghan officials said. The bomber targeted a vehicle belonging to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said district governor Kabir Ahmad Rahil, adding there could be foreign casualties, although a NATO spokeswoman said no coalition troops had been harmed in the attack on Bagram airfield. Four more civilians were wounded in the attack, Rahil said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was "revenge" for the Koran burning, spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid...

Say what you like about Afghans, but they’re admirably straightforward. The mobs outside the bases enflamed over the latest Western affront to their exquisitely refined cultural sensitivities couldn’t put it any plainer: “Die, die, foreigners!” And foreigners do die. USAF Lieutenant Colonel John Loftis, 44, and Army Major Robert Marchanti II, 48, lost their lives not on some mission out on the far horizon in wild tribal lands in the dead of night but in the offices of the Afghan Interior Ministry. In a “secure room” that required a numerical code to access. Gunned down by an Afghan “intelligence officer.”...

Last October, I reported on a young Christian pastor in Iran, 35 years old with a wife and two young sons, who had been sentenced to hang for renouncing his Islamic faith at the age of 19. At the time, his appeal was being considered by Iran's Supreme Court. That court eventually upheld the lower court's ruling, but remanded it to the original court for review of several "procedural" errors. The Supreme Court gave the original judge the option of retrying the case, dismissing it, or executing the sentence. It also included a provision for annulment of the sentence if...

U.S. forces should leave Afghanistan “immediately” if its leader won’t apologize for its soldiers killing Americans, Newt Gingrich says. Stumping on Friday for Tuesday’s Georgia Republican presidential primary, Gingrich lit into President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan policies. “This is an administration that apologizes to Islam and makes war on the Catholic Church,” the former Georgia Congressman and House speaker told nearly 200 people in Savannah.

Kabul, Afghanistan — Five American service members and an Afghan-American linguist were directly involved in the burning of Korans at a NATO base, an event a week ago that plunged Afghanistan into days of violent protests, according to the preliminary conclusions of a joint military investigation. “All six will be referred to the proper U.S. authorities for further action,” said an official familiar with the joint Afghan-American investigation into the Koran burnings, who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. Significantly, the five service members found responsible so far include military

WASHINGTON — On Feb. 20, a NATO-Afghan security team at the Parwan Detention Center — adjacent to the U.S.-run Bagram Air Field, north of Kabul — began destroying files, books and documents from the detention facility library. The printed material was being burned because it contained handwritten coded messages being passed among Taliban and al-Qaida detainees. Afghan security personnel retrieved charred pages from several copies of the Quran and other Islamic holy texts. The following day, angry crowds rioted outside NATO installations in Kabul and elsewhere around Afghanistan. On Feb. 23, White House spokesman Jay Carney announced that President...