Free Republic

SNIP The other lawmakers in attendance (beside Sen. Richard Lugar R-IN) were Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-TX), Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ), Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Rep. Buck McKeon (R-NY), Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA). Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough held a conference call with...

The latest atrocities in the Syrian civil war, which has killed more than 100,000 people, demand an urgent response to deter further massacres and to punish President Bashar al-Assad. But there is widespread confusion over the legal basis for the use of force in these terrible circumstances. As a legal matter, the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons does not automatically justify armed intervention by the United States. There are moral reasons for disregarding the law, and I believe the Obama administration should intervene in Syria. But it should not pretend that there is a legal justification in existing law....

Small teams of special operations forces arrived at American embassies throughout North Africa in the months before militants launched the fiery attack that killed the U.S. ambassador in Libya. The soldiers' mission: Set up a network that could quickly strike a terrorist target or rescue a hostage. But the teams had yet to do much counterterrorism work in Libya, though the White House signed off a year ago on the plan to build the new military task force in the region and the advance teams had been there for six months, according to three U.S. counterterror officials and a former...

The United States has begun launching drone strikes against suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen under new authority approved by President Obama that allows the CIA and the military to fire even when the identity of those who could be killed is not known, U.S. officials said. The policy shift marks a significant expansion of the clandestine drone war against an al-Qaeda affiliate that has seized large ­pieces of territory in Yemen and is linked to a series of terrorist plots against the United States.

When historians sit down decades from now to address the events of the early 21st century, they will have no trouble explaining why Americans elected Barack Obama president. They elected him out of a firm conviction that the United States was not involved in enough wars.Problem solved. Today, American forces are fighting in four different countries. No. 4 is Yemen, where we learn the administration is carrying out an intense covert campaign against anti-government militants, using fighter aircraft and drone missiles. It is being handled by the Pentagon in conjunction with the CIA, and according to The New York Times,...

Are you asking yourself why the U.S. has joined a military effort that effectively opens up the third leg of a war in the Middle East? Are you asking the great question progressive media refuse to ask? That question, of course, is how a president could justify a war where there was no aggression towards America when as a US senator, the elected official had nothing good to say about any war. One Middle East expert, Michael Scheuer, tackled such questions in a blog post and Scheuer did not go easy on our commander-in-chief. Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s...

Some of the critical players in President Obama’s national security team doubt his strategy in Afghanistan will succeed and have spent much of the last 20 months quarreling with one another over policy, personalities and turf, according to a new book.

Cheney, daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, said the remark "suggests an alarming fatalism on the part of President Obama and his administration." Here's the full statement: "Americans expect our President to do everything possible to defend the nation from attack. We expect him to use every tool at his disposal to find, defeat, capture and kill terrorists. We expect him to deter attacks by making clear to our adversaries that an attack on the United States will carry devastating consequences. Instead, President Obama is reported to have said, 'We can absorb a terrorist attack.' This comment suggests an...

Bob Woodward’s new book Obama’s Wars includes a new revelation about the president’s outlook on domestic terrorism — and some aren’t too happy about it. As the Washington Post reports today, the president sat down with Woodward in July and discussed his views on another terrorist attack in the U.S.: Woodward’s book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said: “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can...