Free Republic

Two years ago this Thursday I was honored to deliver the opening prayer at the dedication of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem, a historic event signaling our nation’s recognition of Jerusalem as the true capital of Israel. Although in 1995 Congress had affirmed a desire to move our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and other U.S. presidents including Barack Obama and George W. Bush had pledged to make the change, it was President Donald Trump who demonstrated the resolve to withstand international criticism to fulfill that promise and energize both his evangelical Christian and Jewish base of supporters....

A contractor for the Pentagon has been charged with providing classified U.S. intelligence to a Lebanese national connected with terrorist group Hezbollah, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday. The department alleges Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, began transmitting the classified intelligence around December 30, when Iraqi militiamen stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Thompson is a linguist who at the time was working at a U.S. special forces base in Erbil in northern Iraq. The classified “files contained classified national defense information including true names, personal identification data, background information, and photographs of the human sources, as well as operations cables...

A man has been charged after a five-year-old girl was allegedly raped on the premises of the US embassy in Delhi. The 25-year-old was arrested at the high-security mission in the Indian capital on Sunday after the girl’s family complained of the sexual assault, which allegedly took place on Saturday at the living quarters for local housekeeping staff , the investigating officer, Yogesh Kumar, told AFP on Thursday. Kumar said preliminary medical tests confirmed the girl had been raped. The man was charged under child rape laws, which carry the death penalty. The sprawling diplomatic compound is one of the...

The U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad was hit by multiple rockets on Sunday, two U.S. officials told ABC News. This is the first time the compound has been hit directly in years and comes just weeks after pro-Iranian militia members and their supporters assaulted the compound in Iraq. Rocket attacks on the Green Zone are very common. Last week three rockets were fired into Baghdad's Green Zone, the heavily fortified area of the capital that houses the embassy, government buildings and U.S. service members. Iraqi officials said Monday that there were no injuries. Both U.S. officials told ABC News that...

President Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in an interview that the imminent threat from Iran that provoked the United States to kill Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani involved planned attacks on four US embassies. Asked specifically what was targeted, Trump revealed: “We will tell you that probably it was going to be the embassy in Baghdad.” Pressed on whether large-scale attacks were planned for other embassies, the president said: “I can reveal that I believe it probably would’ve been four embassies.” The exclusive interview with the president will air Friday night...

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless! 3:25 PM · Jan 5, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

President Donald Trump gave the order to kill Iran's Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani a few days ago following a Hazbollah mob's attacks on the United States' embassy in Baghdad. Now that Soleimani is dead, we're learning that this isn't the first opportunity a nation has had to kill the Iranian terrorist. According to a January 2018 report from the Israel newspaper Haaretz, leaders in Israel were prepared to kill Soleimani back in 2015 but the Obama administration put an end to the plan. Just as Israel was "on the verge" of killing Soleimani, the Obama administration alerted Iranian officials...

Joy Reid was apparently unaware of the old lawyers' rule: never ask a witness a question to which you don't know the answer! Because on her MSNBC show this morning, Reid asked NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel questions regarding the strike on Soleimani . . . and got answers that must have horrified her! Reid first asked if there was any evidence that Soleimani was in Iraq to plan an attack. Engel responded that whereas there was no information concerning a specific attack, planning attacks is what Soleimani did. Moreover, the fact that he was meeting with Shiite...

As the funeral for Qasem Soleimani began Saturday, two blasts were heard throughout Baghdad. It turns out that a rocket attack took place on the heavily fortified Green Zone which houses the United States embassy, The Jerusalem Post reported. According to Reuters , the Iraqi military revealed that the rockets also fell in the city's Jadriya neighborhood and the Balad air base, which houses American troops. “Several rockets targeting Celebration Square and the Jadriya area in Baghdad, and the Balad air base in Salahuddin province, with no loss of life. Further details to come,” the Iraqi military said in a...

BREAKING: "Unconfirmed report that Qais Khazali, one of the people the US named as responsible for storming of US Embassy in Baghdad, has been killed in new Baghdad airstrike"

Liberals, and Democrats in particular, are great at creating false equivalencies. Their latest attempt at this is to equate the heinous 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya and the feckless response of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with the recent attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and President Trump's no-nonsense response. Without replaying the whole sordid Benghazi event, suffice it to say that a coordinated, orchestrated, and deadly attack against two U.S. facilities in Benghazi claimed the lives of four U.S. personnel, including a U.S. ambassador. The response before, during, and after the attack was shameful. No...

Iraqi protesters withdrew from the perimeter of the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad on the second day of demonstrations against deadly U.S. airstrikes last weekend, U.S. officials said. "All protesters withdrew from the area in front of the US embassy and left the Green Zone. The embassy is now completely surrounded and secured by security forces," the Joint Operation Command said Wednesday. On Wednesday, 250 to 300 protesters gathered outside the compound walls, where Iraqi security forces had also assembled to protect the integrity of the embassy, a senior Iraqi security official told NBC News on condition of anonymity. Video...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday night discussed the attacks on the United States' embassy in Baghdad with Fox News' Mike Emanuel. According to Pompeo, those who carried out the attacks are terrorists that are backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. "Well, what you say was Iranian-backed terrorists. Many of them are individuals that have been designated terrorists by the United States and others, coming to the American embassy and posing a risk to the American diplomats and personnel inside the embassy," Pompeo explained. "You saw President Trump direct a quick, decisive, prudent response by making sure that...

Trump threatens Iran over embassy incident, which he calls the 'Anti-Benghazi' BY BRETT SAMUELS - 12/31/19 04:49 PM EST President Trump threatened Iran after demonstrators, including members of an Iranian-backed militia, breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad on Tuesday. "Iran will be held fully responsible for lives lost, or damage incurred, at any of our facilities," Trump tweeted. "They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!" Trump declared that the embassy in Iraq was safe thanks to the deployment of U.S. military resources and a...

Iranian militia leader Hadi al-Amiri, one of several identified as leading an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, reportedly visited the White House in 2011 during the presidency of Barack Obama. On Tuesday, a mob in Baghdad attacked the U.S. embassy in retaliation against last weekend’s U.S. airstrikes against the Iran-backed Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah (KH), responsible for killing an American civilian contractor. KH is one of a number of pro-Iran militias that make up the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/PMU), which legally became a wing of the Iraqi military after fighting the Sunni Islamic State terrorist group....

raqi security forces failed to stop the siege of the US Embassy. The Iraqi protesters were carrying Hezbollah flags. President Trump blames Iran: “U.S. President Donald Trump said early on Tuesday that Iran was “orchestrating” an attack on the U.S. embassy in Iraq and will be held responsible for it. But is not only Iran responsible for this situation? Everyone seems to forget who helped Hezbollah and the Iran-backed militia that is attacking our embassy in Iraq.

On Tuesday, mourners with an Iran-backed militia stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad as the Iraqi government refused to intervene. Protesters lit the embassy on fire and shouted, "Death to America!" The attack followed U.S. airstrikes on Sunday against the Iran-backed militia after an American contractor was killed last week in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base."Iran killed an American contractor, wounding many. We strongly responded, and always will. Now Iran is orchestrating an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. They will be held fully responsible," President Donald Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning. "In addition, we...

US embassy staff and the US ambassador in Baghdad have been evacuated, according to two unnamed Iraqi Foreign Ministry officials cited by Reuters, as hundreds of Iraqi protesters swam the embassy compound. Iraqi supporters of a powerful Iranian-backed militia were attacking the outside of the fortified zone that surrounds the US embassy compound in Baghdad, protesting against American air strikes that killed 25 fighters from the group, news agencies reported.

The U.S. Embassy in Iraq is being attacked by Iraqi Shiite militia supporters, who’ve broken into the compound. According to the Associated Press, a fire has been set and sounds of gunfire were heard.    An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw flames rising from inside the compound and at least three U.S. soldiers on the roof of the main building inside embassy. It was not clear what caused the fire at the reception area near the parking lot of the compound. A man on a loudspeaker urged the mob not to enter the compound, saying: “The message was...

While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC). The focus on AntAC — whose youthful street activists famously wore “Ukraine F*&k Corruption” T-shirts — was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted. The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy...