Free Republic

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Sunday shrugged off the brutal dismembering of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, just days after a United Nations report described how a team of Saudi assassins called Mr. Khashoggi a “sacrificial animal” before his murder. The U.N. report urged an F.B.I. investigation into the slaying. But in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Trump said the episode had already been thoroughly investigated. He said the Middle East is “a vicious, hostile place” and noted that Saudi Arabia is an important trading partner with the United States. “I only say they spend $400...

Media hysterics take note. Honest commentary on the Trump administration's 2019 diplomatic, economic and military clash with Iran's vicious dictatorship requires historical context. Here's critical historical Fact One: Since 1979, the year the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his initially broad coalition toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the revolutionary Islamic Iranian regime Khomeini established has been at war with the United States. My sources include Khomeini and his fanatics who commandeered dictatorial power in 1980 after marginalizing non-Islamists in the anti-Shah coalition. Contemporary sources include the disgustingly corrupt clerics and Revolutionary Guard Corps officers who mastermind regime rackets, graft, oppression, war-making...

Iran is making good on its threats. Last Thursday’s bombing of two oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz was just the latest in a string of attacks that have taken place in the maritime choke point in the past month. Thirty percent of global petroleum exports transit the Straits of Hormuz annually. On April 22, Alireza Tangsiri, the Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval force, announced that if the U.S. went ahead with placing a full embargo on Iranian petroleum exports, Iran would close the Straits of Hormuz. “If we are prevented from using it, we will...

President Donald Trump cannot want war with Iran. Such a war, no matter how long, would be fought in and around the Persian Gulf, through which a third of the world's seaborne oil travels. It could trigger a worldwide recession and imperil Trump's reelection. It would widen the "forever war," which Trump said he would end, to a nation of 80 million people, three times as large as Iraq. It would become the defining issue of his presidency, as the Iraq War became the defining issue of George W. Bush's presidency. And if war comes now, it would be...

During the Obama presidency, the U.S. administration was wary of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had come to power in Egypt after the country’s first-ever free elections. Despite his declared support for democracy and change in the Arab world in the wake of the Arab Spring, then-President Barack Obama did not take a strong position and reject the coup against President-elect Mohamed Morsi. The coup, as we know, led to the military’s return to power in the largest Arab country — along with tyranny, repression, corruption and mismanagement. That is the conclusion that David D. Kirkpatrick arrives at in his excellent...

The Hong Kong demonstrations reveal that President Trump was right in many ways to identify China early on as a threat to the United States. He saw them as an economic threat and dishonest trading partner. To a lesser degree, he saw them as a military threat. He was right, although ultimately, their military — including space and cyber warfare — are probably the largest threat. To be clear, China is a bigger, long-term threat economically and militarily than anyone else, including Russia which has aging nukes but otherwise is a virtual third-world economy and a vastly weakened military. Modern...

China and Russia declare “solidarity” with Iran after Gulf tanker attacks “Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed solidarity with Iran…even as the U.S. Navy revealed evidence the Iranians were behind the terrorist attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman.” The two oil tankers were Japanese and Norwegian. The U.S. military released a video it says “shows Iran’s Revolutionary Guard taking an unexploded mine from the hull of one of two oil tankers attacked in the Gulf of Oman.” Tehran’s usual response was denial, and it also accused the U.S. of “waging...

...twenty-one sailors from the M/T Kokuka Courageous who had abandoned their ship after discovering a probable unexploded limpet mine on their hull... At 4:10 p.m. local time an IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) Gashti Class patrol boat approached the M/T Kokuka Courageous and was observed and recorded removing the unexploded limpet mine from the M/T Kokuka Courageous (video attached). The United States has no interest in engaging in a new conflict in the Middle East. However, we will defend our interests.

President Donald Trump's son is planning to campaign against the only Republican congressman who has called for his father's impeachment. Donald Trump Jr. will be heading to Michigan to fight Rep. Justin Amash in a primary battle, people close to the Trump Organization executive told CNBC on the condition of anonymity. This comes after Trump's son tweeted out a poll showing Amash losing to his only challenger so far in the race, state legislator Jim Lower, and hinting he will be heading to the Wolverine State to take on the four-term lawmaker. "See you soon Justin... I hear Michigan is...

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday warned that if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu carries out his plan to annex communities in Judea and Samaria, he would if elected ensure no US taxpayer funds support the move. ​“If Prime Minister Netanyahu makes good on his threat to annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a President Buttigieg would take steps to ensure that American taxpayers won’t help foot the bill​,” he said during a speech at Indiana University, according to The New York Post. Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said that in the same way an American patriot...

He said it a Brooklyn press conference on Tuesday. Mayor Bill de Blasio, in addressing the increase in hate crimes in New York City under his watch, said, “I think the ideological movement that is anti-Semitic is the right-wing movement.” DeBlasio made the outrageous comments at a Brooklyn press conference on Tuesday. Anti-semitic incidents in 2019 are up 90 percent more than they were in June of 2018. A reporter had stated that there is also anti-Semitism “on the left – in the BDS movement around the world.” But Hizzoner the Mayor disagreed. He continued, “I want to be very,...

Lawyer George Conway called President Trump out for a cycle of "bizarre, irrational, self-defeating" and overall not "presidential" behavior on Sunday. Conway responded that Trump is "not 'presidential' at all, period." "You're mentally unwell. You engage in bizarre, irrational, self-defeating behavior which prompts criticism of you, which triggers more bizarre, irrational, self-defeating behavior. You would have been fired from any other job by now," Conway said. Lawyer George Conway called President Trump out for a cycle of "bizarre, irrational, self-defeating" and overall not "presidential" behavior on Sunday. Conway, husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, is a frequent critic of...

I am troubled by this administration's almost obsessive embrace of Saudi Arabia. I am even more troubled by conservative media's failure to challenge that embrace. Most conservative media outlets state the following narrative regarding Saudi Arabia: "Saudi Arabia is no longer our enemy. It has become our ally. Thanks to President Trump's hard resolve to fight radical Islamic terrorism, King Salman has appointed his son, MbS, to institute widespread reforms, prosecute pro-terrorist elements, and consolidate an 'Arab NATO' alliance that is intended to contain terrorism and its sponsors in Iran and Turkey. Those who oppose Saudi Arabia now are useful...

The New York Post reports that two military veterans walked out of a private meeting with Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez earlier this week after the freshman congresswoman began bashing US foreign policy. However, AOC's office claims the two men are lying. “She knocks the country, she knocks the president. And that’s not what America is about,” Silvio Mazzella, a Vietnam War veteran and treasurer of Community Board 11, told the New York Post.Another veteran, "Anthony Vitaliano — an Army veteran who worked in the NYPD for 38 years, and commanded the Bronx’s homicide detectives," was sitting right next to the congresswoman...

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said it condemns any position adopted by an international body that supports prolonging occupation of Palestinian territories, including a U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The OIC summit in Mecca said in its final statement on Saturday that it opposes all illegal Israeli measures aimed at changing facts in occupied Palestinian territories including Jerusalem, and undermining the two-state solution. It urged member countries to take “appropriate measures” against countries that move their embassies to Jerusalem. …

He’s right, although all complaints about Barr’s summary ultimately have to reckon with the fact that (a) he released nearly the entire Mueller report within three weeks of its submission, (b) the baseline finding, that there wasn’t probable cause to believe Trump conspired with Russia, tore the heart out of Russiagate suspicions, and therefore (c) it’s hard to believe that Barr’s characterization of Mueller’s findings mattered much to public opinion. Nothing seems to matter much to public opinion when it comes to Trump, after all.Although I think I know what Amash would say to all of that: Who cares?...

CAIR justifies San Diego synagogue attack and Muslim children singing about beheading Jews in Philadelphia The shock over the story about children singing at the Muslim American Society Islamic Center in North Philadelphia about chopping off the heads of Jews and “liberating the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque” in Jerusalem, is not going away; and it shouldn’t. It signifies that the culture of the Palestinian territories is expanding in America. For that matter, so are the presences of CAIR supporting Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar as Congresswomen, who are brazenly expressive of their anti-Jew, pro-Palestinian perspectives. The wider hope of...

In Washington, D.C., he's been labeled "loser," accused of being a secret Democrat, and ostracized from the legislative caucus he co-founded, but on Monday night Rep. Justin Amash (R–Mich.) found himself in friendlier territory—and embraced the opportunity. At a town hall in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Amash's constituents gave him applause and praise—but also fired pointed questions from left, right, and center political perspectives—during a nearly two-hour meeting marking the congressman's first public appearance since tweeting that he believed President Donald Trump had engaged in "impeachable conduct." It was the sort of spectacle that's all too rare in politics today; a...

Women’s March co-chair Linda Sarsour claims that the President of the United States is putting people’s “lives in danger” when he tweets. Sarsour and other Women’s March activists are now lobbying Twitter to ban President Donald Trump from its platform. Representatives from the Women’s March brought several boxes of petitions to Twitter headquarters last week, calling on the company to ban the President of the United States from its platform. Sarsour expressed her dismay to see that President Trump had called out Iran on Twitter last week, in which he stated, “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the...

In President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address to the country, he warned the nation about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, and the dangerous political influence that a permanent armaments industry could have on government. This warning came from the same five-star general who led the Allied forces to victory in World War II. If anybody should have been aware of these dangers, it was Eisenhower. We need a reminder of that warning now, as allies of the military-industrial complex clamor for a continuation of U.S. involvement in Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen.