Free Republic

The Texas senator is seeking an implicit contrast with the more hawkish Marco Rubio.Sen. Ted Cruz on Thursday warned against the deployment of U.S. forces in the Middle East in hopes of creating democracy, nodding to a portion of the Republican Party exhausted with military escapades abroad. Even as he emphasized the need to defeat the Islamic State group in a speech coming just a week after the San Bernardino, California, shooting rampage that's since been linked to radicalization, Cruz, a 2016 presidential candidate, chastised those rushing to place American troops on the ground to fight the enemy. "Some in...

The first American soldier to be killed fighting on the ground against ISIS was a twenty-year veteran Special Forces sergeant, it was announced today. Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler, 39, was killed during a raid in northern Iraq this week to rescue 69 Iraqis who were about to be executed by ISIS. MSgt Wheeler is believed to have been a member of the Army's top secret Delta Force, and his unit was supporting Kurdish fighters in the raid on the ISIS stronghold on Hawija. Although the US commandos were not initially planning to directly take part in the raid, when the...

Kurdish forces battled Monday to cut a key Islamic State supply line by seizing the border town of Tal Abyad, as terrified Syrians poured into Turkey to escape the fighting. Forces from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) backed by Syrian rebels advanced on the southeastern edge of the border town overnight, backed by US-led strikes against IS fighters, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Kurdish forces had seized the Mashur Tahtani area on the southeastern edge of Tal Abyad, with the US-led coalition carrying out at least five strikes overnight. "The strikes are paving the...