Free Republic

All the narratives are wearing off. Vietnam was a pointless war and we lost. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Afghanistan was a waste. And we gained nothing from any of those wars. Saudi Arabia has nuclear weapons and the 19 terrorists from 9/11 were all Saudis. Did we go to war with them? Nope. North Korea has nukes. Little rocket man hasn’t blown us all up yet but we were told he was going to. Pakistan and China have nukes as well. And big bad Russia has nuclear weapons. We were told Putin was going to...

A top diplomat representing the Taliban terror organization ruling Afghanistan demanded representation for the group at the United Nations this week, insisting the Taliban’s participation in the global organization was a “necessity and a right.” Suhail Shaheen, who has represented the Taliban in negotiations with the U.N. in the past and now runs the group’s embassy in Qatar, noted that the Taliban has been the uncontested government of Afghanistan for nearly four years and insisted that the group deserves some say in the operations of the United Nations. “The presence of a representative from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan at...

Taliban took in $3.4 billion in revenue over past year, boosting cash supply in wake of Biden admin's Afghan withdrawal ... The Taliban took in $3.4 billion in revenue over the last year, boosting its cash supply by 14 percent amid the return of Afghanistan as a central safe haven for terrorist organizations across the Middle East, according to a U.S. government watchdog group. The repercussions of the Biden administration’s disastrous 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan continue to reverberate across the war-torn country, with multiple al Qaeda affiliates accessing American-supplied "weapons seized from the former Afghan National Army," according to...

Well, he’s back, folks. Bowe Bergdahl wants to appeal his desertion conviction because—you guessed it—Donald Trump is no longer president. Bergdahl claims the former president’s rhetoric prevented him from having a fair trial. The case stems back when Bergdahl abandoned his post in Afghanistan 12 years ago, which led to his capture by the Taliban. They held him for five years. Katie covered this fiasco of a story, noting that six US servicemen were killed trying to look for him. He was released in 2014 in a prisoner exchange, where we got this deserter for the price of releasing five...

Half a million weapons obtained by the Taliban in Afghanistan have been lost, sold or smuggled to militant groups, sources have told the BBC - with the UN believing that some have fallen into the hands of al-Qaeda affiliates. The Taliban took control of around one million weapons and pieces of military equipment - which had mostly been funded by the US - when it regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, according to a former Afghan official who spoke to the BBC anonymously. As the Taliban advanced through Afghanistan in 2021, many Afghan soldiers surrendered or fled, abandoning their weapons...

The Trump administration appears to be continuing its previous policy of engagement with the Taliban, which led to the 2020 Doha Agreement that paved the way for the Biden administration’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Last week, the US State Department erased Sirajuddin Haqqani’s $10 million bounty, while former American Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalizad, the architect of the Doha Agreement, returned to the Afghan stage. In late March, Khalilzad and hostage envoy Adam Boehler flew to Kabul on behalf of the Trump administration. During his brief visit, Khalilzad secured the release of George Glezmann, an American tourist who was detained...

I've never heard anything good about the United States Institute for Peace. It's been in bed with neocons, coupmeisters, and the Soros color revolution crowd for years. The quasi-government agency that runs like a private NGO is always sneaky and non-transparent. So it didn't surprise me a bit to learn that USIP showed unusual resistence to anyone poking into their spending from DOGE. Did you hear how the staff as USIP acted when DOGE showed up? They literally BARRICADED themselves in their offices, cut the phone lines and power to elevators, sabotaged office equipment and the Head of USIP had...

ELON: U.S. INSTITUTE OF PEACE TRIED TO DELETE TALIBAN FUNDING RECORDS—DOGE RECOVERED IT.. Elon says the U.S. Institute of Peace deleted 1TB of financial data linking them to funding Taliban and Iraqi leadership—but DOGE wasn’t fooled. According to Elon, the agency attempted to scrub the records, but DOGE engineers recovered the entire archive thanks to “their shocking incompetence with tech.” The data reportedly includes detailed financial transfers tied to groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. ... The names government things are always the opposite of what they actually do. "United States Institute of Peace"? Of course it was full of treason,...

Moscow once listed the Afghan hard-line movement as a terror group, but President Vladimir Putin now describes it as a “trusted ally.” The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office requested Monday that the Supreme Court ends a ban on the Taliban’s activities in the country. Moscow’s foreign and justice ministries submitted an appeal last week to President Vladimir Putin urging the Taliban’s removal from Russia’s list of terrorist organizations. The Taliban is a political and militant Islamist group that emerged in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, and has ruled in Kabul since the U.S. withdrew from the country in August 2021. The...

Exactly one week ago, I wrote in these pages about the release of American George Glezmann from imprisonment by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Readers might recall his gobsmacked reaction on the airport tarmac, when he was asked to comment on the situation, then his boundless gratitude to President Trump and everyone involved in getting him home after two years poured out. It's worth watching again. VIDEO AT LINK................ I also suggested near the end of the story that "considering the track record over just a few short months, this likely won't be the last U.S. hostage who Team Trump brings...

After more than two years in captivity in Afghanistan, the Taliban released American hostage George Glezmann on Thursday following negotiations between the Trump administration and Qatari officials, a diplomatic source familiar with the release told Fox News Digital.“Glezmann departed the Kabul airport Wednesday evening local time on his way to Doha where he will then be met by U.S. hostage envoy Adam Boehler along with a team from the Qatari Foreign Ministry,” Fox News Digital reports. “The release of the 65-year-old American, abducted while visiting Kabul as a tourist on Dec. 5, 2022, comes after Boehler met with officials from...

Snip>> As an atheist and member of an ethnic minority group in Afghanistan known as the Hazara, he said returning home under the rule of the Taliban — which swept back into power after the Biden administration pulled out of the country — would mean he would be killed. He only went to the U.S. after trying for years to live in Pakistan, Iran and other countries but being denied visas. Omagh was deported after presenting himself to American authorities and asking to seek asylum in the U.S., which he was denied. “My hope was freedom. Just freedom,” he said....

Credit: FBI Director Kash Patel / X The top terrorist responsible for the tragic Abbey Gate bombing—an attack that took the lives of 13 brave U.S. service members during Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan—has been apprehended and is now in FBI custody on American soil. Speaking to a packed chamber, President Trump addressed the nation on Tuesday night: President Donald Trump: America is once again standing strong against the forces of radical Islamic terrorism. Three and a half years ago, ISIS terrorists killed 13 American service members. and countless others. In the Abbey Gate bombing during the disastrous and...

Elon Musk and the DOGE crew are now a few weeks into their work, and the examples of brazen waste, fraud, and misuse of taxpayer funds are exploding forth like a gusher. At the first agency targeted, USAID, an early revelation was that much of the left-wing press has been quietly underwritten by the taxpayers in the form of hundreds of phony premium-priced subscriptions to such outlets as The New York Times, Associated Press, Politico, and Reuters. On February 5, the White House put out a document titled “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep,” listing a dozen or so...

A former senior policy adviser to President Barack Obama has been arrested and accused of child sex crimes in Great Britain. According to court documents, Rahamim 'Rami' Shy, a 46-year-old resident of New Jersey, stands accused of arranging a child sex offense, in addition to charges of possessing indecent images of children, according to a report from The Daily Mail. Shy, a US citizen, who lives in New Jersey, worked for the White House under president Barack Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, was arrested in late February by Bedfordshire Police. He was charged the following day and appeared...

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio exposed the Biden administration’s apparent lie about the Taliban holding more American hostages than originally believed, escalating his rhetoric against Afghanistan’s terrorist leaders on Saturday. Rubio responded to reports that the Taliban could have additional Americans detained in Afghanistan by threatening a “BIG bounty” on those responsible for the heinous act. “Just hearing the Taliban is holding more American hostages than has been reported,” Rubio wrote on X. Trump’s top diplomat followed up his bombshell reveal by saying, “If this is true, we will have to immediately place a VERY BIG bounty on their...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has hinted at the possibility of the U.S. government offering substantial rewards for information leading to the capture of top Taliban leaders. This statement comes amid reports that the Taliban might be holding more American hostages than previously known.Rubio mentioned on the social media platform X that if these reports are verified, the U.S. might introduce bounties potentially larger than those once offered for Osama bin Laden. “Just hearing the Taliban is holding more American hostages than has been reported,” Rubio stated. “If this is true, we will have to immediately place a VERY BIG...

On January 15, 2025, three men entered two churches in Fairfax, Virginia, and began taking photos and videos of the properties. One of the men asked questions about the churches’ security systems, specifically whether their cameras could live-stream and if they were monitored continuously. When challenged by staff, the group left in a Lexus SUV. Their behavior, consistent with reconnaissance tactics often used to plan attacks, raised significant concerns among church leaders and law enforcement. This incident is not isolated. Just days earlier, a similar situation unfolded in Southern California, where individuals displayed nearly identical behavior, including taking photos and...

A Florida jury found CNN liable for defaming a security consultant featured in a 2021 report on the exorbitant fees being demanded on the black market to evacuate Afghans during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal. The jury also awarded $5 million in damages. CNN also was found liable for punitive damages, with an amount to be determined in the next phase of the trial. Zachary Young, a Navy veteran, sued the network following a report in 2021, claiming that the segment made it appear as though he was involved in illicit activities. The jury awarded $4 million in damages related to...

It is common knowledge that the Afghanistan withdrawal was a complete disaster, but lots of people do not know that the Biden administration has been sending cash to the Taliban every week since then. When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, our troops were ordered to leave behind $7 billion worth of military equipment which ended up in the hands of the Taliban. According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the Taliban also likely gained access to approximately $57.6 million in funds that the United States had provided to the former Afghan government. But that was just...