Free Republic

One of the Islamic State's top military commanders was actually trained by U.S. Special Forces in the nation of Georgia before taking up arms for ISIS in Syria, according to a variety of sources quoted in an explosive new report by the McClatchy news agency. Another member of the Obama administration’s supposed “anti-ISIS” coalition, the Wahhabi-Islamic dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, played a key role radicalizing the jihadist leader through a hard-core Islamist mosque it funded near his village. In other words, without the direct assistance of key “anti-ISIS” governments — including Washington, D.C. — the man said to be...

A day after proclaiming the death of Islamic State commander Tarkhan Batirashvili on his Instagram account, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has apparently backtracked, having deleted both the claim and the photograph used to substantiate it. The news of the death of Batirashvili, better known as Omar "the Chechen" al-Shishani, was taken with a grain of salt by many observers, who said Kadyrov had been known for making such claims in the past with other Islamic extremists only to be proven wrong. In 2013, Kadyrov had repeatedly proclaimed the death of Doku Umarov, the leader of the Caucasus Emirate — announcements...

ISIS commander Tarkhan Batirashvili--aka, "Omar the Chechen"--warns that Russia will soon be targeted by the Islamist group. According to The Moscow Times, "Batirashvili has gained a fearsome reputation throughout the conflict in Syria." Bloomberg News reports that he now seeks "revenge" on Russia over Moscow's support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He gave voice to plans for this revenge while talking on the phone with his father, who lives in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge. He told his father: "Don't worry dad, I'll come home soon and show the Russians... I have many thousands following me and I'll get more. We'll have...