Free Republic

Pro-regime thugs in Syria harassed and set upon the U.S. ambassador just over a week ago. The event was not publicly reported in Washington until Tuesday, when a journalist discovered a propaganda video exploiting the attack. The episode reveals an American diplomat with more fortitude and canny than his boss in the White House. U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford has distinguished himself by symbolically standing with the brutalized people of Syria as they seek freedom from the dictator Assad. Ford has done so through a radical and seldom-used diplomatic technique in the annals of the U.S. Foreign Service: showing up and...

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) -- A defiant Moammar Gadhafi threatened Friday to carry out attacks in Europe against "homes, offices, families," unless NATO halts its campaign of airstrikes against his regime in Libya. The Libyan leader, sought by the International Criminal Court for brutally crushing an uprising against him, delivered the warning in an audio message played to thousands of supporters gathered in the main square of the capital Tripoli.

BAGHDAD – Three U.S. service members were killed Wednesday in southern Iraq, adding to an already deadly month for U.S. forces here. The deaths, reported early Thursday by the Defense Department, come six months before most American forces are scheduled to withdraw from the country. Further details were not immediately available pending notification of families, the military said. Fifteen U.S. service members have either been killed or died in non-hostile incidents this month in Iraq, making it the deadliest month since 15 were killed in June 2009, according to iCasualties, which tracks U.S. military deaths. Thirty-nine service members have died...