Free Republic

The Fezzan is an area of approximately 212,000 square miles of unforgiving desert and valleys. Situated in the south west of modern day Libya it’s not an area you’d easily traverse, let alone live in. Yet in the 1st millennium BCE a people did exactly that. They created art, irrigated the baked earth and sustained a culture. One of the earliest surviving references to the Garamantes is found in Herodotus’ Histories, written in the 5th century BCE[1]. Herodotus’ description was contradictory, they had no weapons, but they hunted a cave dwelling tribe nearby using chariots. He also went on to...

Federal prosecutors on Friday alleged that a political fundraiser offered six witnesses in a case against him $6 million for their silence. The prosecutors also accused Imaad Zuberi, who is already accused of funneling foreign money into U.S. elections, of acting as an unregistered agent for the Turkish government and for Libyan government officials, as well as other foreign countries. Zuberi later Friday pleaded guilty to counts on tax evasion, campaign finance violations and failing to register as a foreign agent. SNIP Zuberi is known to have ties to a high-profile Democratic Party donor linked to Turkish President Recep Tayyip...

Last week, though his military forces are deeply engaged in next-door Syria's ruinous civil war, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to launch a military campaign in another former Turkish Ottoman Empire colonial possession: Libya. Don't dismiss the Ottoman link as a quaint historical reference. Ottoman rule influences contemporary Libyan politics in odd but evident ways. Empire connections have some resonance in 21st-century Turkey. Imperial glory may well have psychological import for the authoritarian Erdogan. His nickname is Sultan Recep. European and Middle Eastern media paid close attention to Erdogan's threat to attack Libya's most militarily potent faction, the Libyan...

Iran’s loss may be Libya’s gain. The prospect that U.S. sanctions will drastically curb Tehran’s oil exports is feeding interest in Libya’s oil reserves and has even sparked movement toward economic and political reform in one of the region’s most unstable states. As Libya endured yet another oil blockade, which pulled nearly 850,000 barrels per day from the world’s markets, Trump administration officials worked behind the scenes over the past month to pressure key militia leaders, government officials and oil executives to cooperate or face dire consequences, multiple sources told The Washington Times. State Department and White House officials declined...

But new evidence -- and a review of the public record -- reveals that Hillary Clinton’s actions in Libya were not just disastrous policy, but a violation of U.S. anti-terrorism law. A recent report to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British House of Commons concluded that Western intervention in Libya was based on "inaccurate intelligence" and "erroneous assumptions." Advocates failed to recognize that “the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element," and the failure to plan for a post-Qaddafi Libya led to the "growth of ISIL" in North Africa. However, “inaccurate intelligence”...

Meet the one man Hillary Clinton is more afraid of than Donald Trump. His name is Marc Turi and he is an international illegal arms dealer. Marc Turi, who had a multi-million dollar bounty on his head from the US government, was acquitted of all Charges today by Barack Obama for one simple reason... He has proof that would implicate Obama and Hillary as war criminals! You see, Turi was paid MILLIONS by Hillary Clinton’s State Department to help transport illegal guns to Lybian Rebels so that they could overthrow Muammar Gadaffi.

The latest batch of Hillary Clinton's private emails includes one that shows Clinton made an effort to help evacuate the acting Libyan prime minister from Benghazi amid a crumbling security situation. The email shows Clinton received a request for supplies to help the acting prime minister leave Benghazi and transition into Tripoli, the nation's capital. Clinton seemingly greenlighted his request, and asked her aide Huma Abedin if the U.S. government could ship the requested supplies to a Libyan port.

During an appearance on CNN’s Reliable Sources Sunday, veteran journalist Carl Bernstein trashed the Benghazi committee ahead of Hillary Clinton’s testimony and insisted the Democrat will “murder them because it has been a witch hunt. It has been partisan. It's great opportunity for her.” Bernstein also praised Clinton’s debate performance as “her greatest moment in this campaign which has been a disaster for her up until the debate” but ultimately admitted “I don't think that a reset button was successfully hit. We're still back to these basic questions about her truthfulness about the server, the foundation, about the FBI investigation.”

"The government strongly opposed militant forms of Islam, which it viewed as a threat to the regime." So said the State Department's 2008 human rights report (published in February 2009) on a certain North African nation. "Although there is no explicit law guaranteeing religious freedom, in practice the government generally respected the right to observe one's religion," said the report. This did not mean, however, that it allowed the full "free exercise" of religion that is guaranteed by our First Amendment. "Although there is no law prohibiting conversion from Islam," said the report, "the government prohibits efforts to proselytize Muslims...

BENGHAZI: Militants have abducted 20 Egyptian Christians in Libya in recent days, a source close to the government said Saturday. The Ansar Al-Sharia militia kidnapped 13 of them Saturday in the coastal city of Sirte and the rest of them there over the past few days, the source said. Their identity was not immediately clear, except that they were said to be Coptic Christians. Thousands of Egyptians work in Libya, mainly in the construction and craft sectors, and they have been targeted as the country has descended into chaos. In February, the bodies of seven Egyptian Christians who had been...

Paul expanded on his remarks and offered a detailed rendering of his views on foreign policy that, regardless of their merits, are undoubtedly innovative for a man likely to seek the GOP's presidential nomination in 2016. … : I would say the objective evidence shows that Libya is a less safe place and less secure place, a more chaotic place with more jihadist groups—and really, we’ve had two really bad things happen because of Hillary’s push for this war. One is that our ambassador was killed as a consequence of not having adequate security and really as a consequence of...

The US is sending 1,000 Marines in an amphibious assault ship to Libya's coast as a “precautionary” move should the US embassy require evacuation, a US official said. Security concerns also led the US to suggest Americans in Libya "depart immediately." Adding to tensions, gunmen attacked the Tripoli home of Libya’s new prime minister, Ahmed Maiteeq, on Tuesday. Businessman Maiteeq, 42, and his family escaped harm, according to AFP. An aide to Maiteeq said "there was an attack with rockets and small arms on the prime minister's house" in Tripoli at 3:00 a.m. (0100 GMT). Maiteeq’s guards opened fire on...

(Reuters) - Algerian troops discovered a huge arms cache near the border with Libya, including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles, rockets and landmines, an Algerian security source said on Thursday. ... The source said the cache was found in Illizi in southern Algeria, about 200 km (125 miles) from the Amenas gas plant, which Libyan-based Islamist militants attacked in January, killing nearly 40 foreign contractors. The weapons included 100 anti-aircraft missiles, more than 500 MANPAD shoulder-launched rockets often used against low flying aircraft like helicopters, and hundreds of rocket launchers, rifles, landmines and rocket-propelled grenades, the source added.

India-Pakistan: Indian military authorities report a week-long series of gun battles has been taking place in the central region of the Line of Control in Kashmir. Some 30 to 40 fighters crossed the Line on 24 September, up to 12 of whom have been killed by Indian soldiers. Five Indian soldiers have been wounded. The infiltrators holed up in an abandoned village, which appears to be the location of the gun fights. Although General Officer Commanding of the Army's 15 Corps Lt Gen Gurmit Singh had said it will be premature to say whether the Pakistan Army was involved in...

First it was the Americans. Now it is the Russians' turn. Al Arabiya reports (and Itar-Tass confirms) that "Gunmen attacked the Russian embassy in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Wednesday, Al Arabiya correspondent reported. The sound of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades could be heard around the embassy, the correspondent added. No further details were immediately available." According to unverified reports on Twitter, the embassy had been evacuated before the attack (the Russian NSA appears to be more efficient than its US equivalent). The Russian embassy in Tripoli: RT adds: The Russian embassy in Tripoli, Libya, has come under fire and...

“We are currently witnessing the collapse of state in Libya, and the country is getting closer to local wars for oil revenues,” said the Swiss-based group Petromatrix. The country’s oil ministry said production has slumped to an average of 300,000 barrels per day (b/d) in August, down by more than four-fifths from its peak after the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime two years ago. “Militia groups are behaving like terrorists, using control over oil as political leverage to extract concessions,” said Dr Elizabeth Stephens, head of political risk at insurers Jardine Lloyd Thompson. Port closures and strikes have compounded the...

Barack Obama loves the troops… To hold his umbrella. POTUS deploys Marines for rain in Rose Garden with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan. (Major Garrett)

A slain Canadian jihadi gave Russian counter-terrorism agents the tip that put alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev on their radar two years ago, Bay State U.S. Rep. William R. Keating confirmed yesterday — raising questions about whether Tsarnaev’s direct link to the known militant was ever passed on to the FBI or local authorities. Keating told the Herald yesterday his staff in Russia has learned William Plotnikov, while under interrogation in the militant hotbed of Dagestan, named Tsarnaev as a fellow extremist. “That’s when the Russian government started looking at Tamerlan and he showed up on a jihadist website,”...

Thursday's CBS This Morning singled out the FBI's pursuit of three persons of interest who could provide information on the September 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Margaret Brennan touted how "what happened that night is still the topic of debate in Washington", and noted that members of Congress "want to speak to those Americans evacuated from Benghazi, but claim the White House won't release the names." ABC devoted a news brief to the FBI's investigation on Wednesday's World News, but didn't cover the development the following morning on Good Morning America. NBC apparently didn't find...

Last week in the U.S., Europe, and the Caucasus, people are asking how the terrorists got to Europe and then into the United States. Why didn't they have problems when moving into these countries, while ordinary citizens encounter enormous problems trying to enter these countries even on tourist visas. Just a week before the infamous acts of terrorism in Boston, I began to study the way in which a hypothetical terrorist could conceivably enter legally into the United States. I am not arguing that this happened in the case of Tsarnaev, but it is a fact that this route is...