Free Republic

‘GREAT CONFIDENCE’: President Joe Biden has no intention of firing Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley over published revelations that he sought to limit former President Donald Trump’s ability to launch a nuclear strike and told his Chinese counterpart he would warn him in advance of any U.S. military action aimed at China. “I have great confidence in General Milley,” Biden told reporters at the White House, effectively signaling his job is secure for now. Milley, who serves at the pleasure of the president, would normally serve a four-year term, which would expire in September of 2023. “The president knows...

Thornberry Fears Bureaucracy Hamstrings Cyber Vs. ISIS WASHINGTON: Why does the internet still work in Raqqa? That simple question about the Syrian capital of Daesh, the self-proclaimed Islamic State, posed today by retired fighter pilot Rep. Martha McSally, goes to the heart of how the military will use — or refrain from using — cyber weapons. It goes to deep suspicions that President Obama’s swollen National Security Council staff is micromanaging the military. No less a figure than House Armed Services Committee chairman Mac Thornberry voiced deep concern that we are bureaucratizing the cyber force at birth. All too often...

The AP review of Clinton's calendar — her after-the-fact, official chronology of the events of her four-year term — identified at least 75 meetings with longtime political donors and loyalists, Clinton Foundation contributors and corporate and other outside interests that were either not recorded or listed with identifying details scrubbed. The AP found the omissions by comparing the 1,500-page document with separate planning schedules supplied to Clinton by aides in advance of each day's events. The names of at least 114 outsiders who met with Clinton were missing from her calendar, the records show.

Politics: In an unprecedented revolt, 50 military intelligence analysts are charging high-ranking officials with cooking the books on Islamic State's growth and strength for political reasons. It's high time for house-cleaning. Fifty intelligence analysts whose job is to honestly assess what's going on in the Middle East have charged their reports about Islamic State's rise were systematically altered by senior officials to the opposite of what they meant: "Happy talk" about the terror group being "on the run" and merely a "JV" version of al-Qaida, according to a report in the Daily Beast. In a letter to the Pentagon Inspector...

The Pentagon is preparing for a longer bombardment of Syria than it originally had planned, with a heavy barrage of missile strikes followed soon after by more attacks on targets that the opening salvos missed or failed to destroy, officials said. The planning for intense attacks over a three-day period reflects the growing belief in the White House and the Pentagon that the United States needs more firepower to inflict even minimal damage on Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, which have been widely dispersed over the last two weeks, the officials said.