Free Republic

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton tells @MajorCBS he's still considering a presidential run, but doesn't have a "precise timeline" on his decision. On why he's considering a GOP bid: "The party has work to do to correct the damage that Trump has done." .....

The United States is now publicly discussing the "containment" of China with its Asia-Pacific vassals. On January 8, the Financial Times reported that the supreme US Marine Corps commander for Japan gave very direct statements regarding Pentagon's China strategy. Lieutenant General James Bierman thinks there are "numerous parallels" between Ukraine and Taiwan and admits the US is preparing what he dubbed "a counter-China theater" by strengthening coordination with its regional satellite states. "The US and Japanese armed forces are rapidly integrating their command structure and scaling up combined operations as Washington DC and its Asian allies prepare for a possible...

Right now, there is a clear path ahead for Liz Cheney, and it does not involve the state of Wyoming. She will deny this. And she may not even believe it now. And for the rest of this year, she will continue to represent us to the best of her ability in the U.S. House of Representatives. But I could see her traveling a different path, based on a number of steps that could very well happen. Three events have set the stage for this scenario. The first was when she voted to impeach President Donald Trump after the Jan....

Photo caption: "SDF leadership and US military advisors are going to deploy Kurdish and Arab fighters to a new battle after ISIS defeat in Deir Ezzor’s Baghuz Fawqani town."

President Trump announced a new bombing campaign in Syria on Friday to target chemical weapons. In the past, President Trump has warned many times against getting further involved in the Syrian civil war.

As President Barack Obama weighs military action in Syria, it remains unclear whether he will first seek congressional authorization. It is clear, however, that Obama once thought such authorization was necessary. “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” candidate Obama told The Boston Globe in late 2007. He added that the president can only act unilaterally in “instances of self-defense.”

According to actor and comedian Richard Belzer, American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are too uneducated to be expressing support for the U.S. military mission since they're just "19 and 20-year-old kids who couldn't get a job" and "they don't read twenty newspapers a day." Belzer, who's best known as Detective John Munch on NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit," is a frequent guest on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher." On one previous appearance, he threatened to walk off the set when told columnist Ann Coulter was also appearing, calling her a...

Durbin: Dems Want GIs Home ASAP Repeatedly pressed by "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace to reveal his party's Iraq war plan, Sen. Dick Durbin's answer was that Democrats want to bring the troops home as soon as possible. Wallace quoted President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, as having accused the Democrats, "his own party, of political desertion on Iraq. "Democratic leaders have been silent or evasive. They have not offered an alternative to the war in Iraq. It's easy to criticize," Brzezinski said, according to Wallace, who then asked Durbin: "You talk about the lack of an...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sami al-Muthafar, a former chemistry professor at Baghdad University, survived a car bomb attack in early February, walking away unscathed although several of his guards were wounded. He knows many other scientists and academics who were not so fortunate. "It is a big loss when we lose a professor or a scientist because they are the elite of society," said Muthafar, now minister of higher education. "It is too hard to replace those we lose." Some 182 Iraqi university professors and academics have been killed in violence since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Another 85 senior academics...