Free Republic

In his prime-time speech to the nation on the eve of the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, President Obama vowed to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State insurgency in Iraq and Syria with airstrikes and 475 U.S. boots on the ground – but he also made a particular point of declaring that the Islamic State terrorists “are not Islamic.” “Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not Islamic,” Obama said, speaking from the state floor of the White House residence. “No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been...

The UN says it has received reports from Iraq that "reveal acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale". Deputy Human Rights Commissioner Flavia Pansieri said Islamic State (IS) was believed to have committed systematic and intentional attacks on civilians.

A wave of violence ripped across Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing at least 57 people and injuring nearly 200 in a coordinated attack designed to wreak havoc in the Iraqi capital just days after American forces left the country.

They gathered in Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church for an evening Mass. They are members of an increasingly besieged and forgotten minority in Iraq, Catholic Christians. Their herosm and love for the Lord has inspired them to continue to practice the ancient faith in the midst of what is a steadily deteriorating situation for them in this land they have called home for centuries. Our Lady of Salvation Church is no stranger to violence. Churches have been bombed before in Iraq, including Our Lady of Salvation. The Christian faithful have had to contend with an increasingly hostile culture. However,...

Excerpt - BAGHDAD, Jan 5 (Reuters) - An Iraqi soldier deliberately shot and killed a U.S. army officer and a sergeant during a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol in the northern city of Mosul on Dec. 26, two Iraqi Army generals said on Saturday. U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel James Hutton said the incident was under investigation but gave no details. It is believed to be the first reported incident in which an Iraqi soldier has deliberately killed a U.S. serviceman. ~ snip ~

AP photographer Bilal Hussein was on the radar screen of US forces prior to his being detained in a chance encounter April 12, 2006. He was a stringer working in Fallujah who filed numerous reports and photos that seemed to need a high degree of cooperation from the terrorists. He has been in custody for 19 months and will soon face trial by the Iraqi government on charges related to his activities with Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and Ramadi. Evidence against him is expected to be given to the Iraqi government this week. Geoff Morrell, Pentagon Press Secretary had this...

SDEROT - Do Americans really understand what terrorism is, what it does to a society, and how it can be defeated? Five young Israeli soldiers -- nineteen- and twenty-year-olds stationed in Sderot, a small town bordering the Gaza Strip -- say Americans have much to learn. These members of the Israel Defense Forces should know: part of their job is to protect and comfort the traumatized youth who live here in the city where Kassam rockets fall from the sky. -snip- "Terrorism is a fact of life here," says Yuval's twenty-year-old commanding officer, Rehut Eisenberg. Unlike Americans who recently suffered...

Van Nuys, Calif. — Carolyn Blashek is constantly sending her gratitude to the men and women serving in the military overseas. Blashek founded Operation Gratitude after she tried to join the military, but was told she was too old. Her goal: to show people in the service that they have not been forgotten back home by sending personal care packages directly to members of the United States armed services all over the world. The care packages include a variety of items from sunscreen to socks, candy to toothpaste. But, you may be surprised to know what the most important item...

June 7: A new online propaganda effort by jihadists focuses on stirring anti-war sentiment among Americans. NBC's Lisa Myers reports.

Some news photos are so rich in symbolism they're almost like Renaissance paintings in how much they communicate. Such an Associated Press photo appeared on the front page of the New York Times's national edition. It’s a picture of the scene after a bombing in Baghdad yesterday. Adding to the chaos of the bombing which killed at least 21 people and injured at least 66 was a shooter, maybe targeting people in the crowd. Amid all the Iraqis who are running from the gunfire was a U.S. soldier, standing tall, perhaps looking in the direction of the gunshots, not...

Christians in a Baghdad neighborhood are being required to pay a "protection tax" because Muslims have begun enforcing an Islamic law demanding either the tribute – or conversion to Islam, according to Christians in Iraq. The report from the Assyrian International News Agency follows on complaints from Iraqi Christians that they have been caught in a no-man's land between the Coalition forces and Muslim militants in Iraq, watching as their churches have been bombed, and men and women assaulted and killed. The newest report said Muslims in the Dora neighborhood are forcing Assyrians, who also are known as Chaldeans and...

BAGHDAD (AP) - Iranian intelligence operatives have been training Iraqi fighters inside Iran on how to use and assemble deadly roadside bombs known as EFPs, the U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday. Commanders of a splinter group inside the Shiite Mahdi Army militia have told The Associated Press that there are as many as 4,000 members of their organization that were trained in Iran and that they have stockpiles of EFPs, a weapon that causes great uneasiness among U.S. forces here because they penetrate heavily armored vehicles. U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell would not say how many militia fighters...

Baghdadis are outraged over the alleged use of children in car bombings, a Slogger source reports. Three days after the original allegations emerged, Slogger sources report that “people are still upset about this criminal bombing,” in which al-Qa'ida-related groups are claimed to have placed children in the back seat of a car rigged with explosives in order to pass more easily through a security checkpoint on Tuesday, Around the city, sources report that Ghazaliya has been surrounded by Iraqi Army and by Kurdish Pesh Merga, for four days now. The Iraqi forces and Kurdish troops are reportedly conducting widespread arrest...

BAGHDAD, March 20 — Insurgents detonated a bomb in a car with two children in it after using the children as decoys to get through a military checkpoint in Baghdad, an American general said Tuesday. Speaking at a news briefing at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbaro, deputy director for regional operations at the Joint Staff, said American soldiers had stopped the car at the checkpoint but had allowed it to pass after seeing the two children in the back seat. “Children in the back seat lower suspicion,” he said, according to a transcript. “We let it move through. They...

A plan by the Bush administration to release detailed and possibly damning specific evidence linking the Iranian government to efforts to destabilize Iraq have been put on hold, U.S. officials told FOX News. Officials had said a "dossier" against Iran compiled by the U.S. likely would be made public at a press conference this week in Baghdad, and that the evidence would contain specifics including shipping documents, serial numbers, maps and other evidence which officials say would irrefutably link Iran to weapons shipments to Iraq.U.S. officials charge Iran is supplying explosives used to make the roadside bombs causing 70 percent...

Four American soldiers were abducted during a sophisticated sneak attack last week in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, the U.S. military confirmed Friday. It said three were shot to death and a fourth was mortally wounded with a gunshot to the head when they were found in a neighboring province, far from the compound where they were captured. Two of the four were handcuffed together in the back seat of an SUV near the southern Iraqi town of Mahawil. A third dead soldier was on the ground nearby. The fourth soldier died on the way to the hospital, the...

IRAQI officers loyal to Saddam Hussain filmed their cold-blooded murder of two British bomb disposal officers who were captured after a roadside ambush.An inquest was told that Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth, 36, and Sapper Luke Allsopp, 24, thought that they were being taken to hospital for treatment, but instead they were moved to a compound run by Saddam’s military intelligence. The harrowing ordeal lasted for hours until Iraqi agents killed the pair. The soldiers were buried in a shallow grave. At the inquest yesterday the coroner, Andrew Walker, severely criticised army chiefs for failing to ensure that the soldiers avoided...

<p>Fox News reporting a new video is out. It shows two dead american soldiers burned and being dragged through the streets.</p> <p>There is a belief that they are the bodies of troopers Tucker and Menchaca.</p>

Things have actually been going a bit better in Iraq these days.  Fewer American soldiers are dying and the Iraqis are slowly taking on more power and responsibilities.  This presents a quandary for the media.  You see, as part of their Bush-bashing template, they need to continue to push the war in Iraq as an un-winnable failure.  The Democrats are counting on failure in Iraq to carry them to victory this fall. That's right...the Democrats are actually invested in American failure in Iraq.  They need more American troop deaths to put them over the top at the polls in November. ...

A court on Thursday sentenced an Iraqi woman and six other people to death for their roles in the triple hotel bombings that killed 60 people in Jordan's capital last year. The 35-year-old woman, Sajida al-Rishawi, is the only defendant in custody. She confessed on Jordanian television shortly after the blasts that she intended to carry out a suicide attack on one of the Western hotels. Six others, including another Iraqi woman, were sentenced in absentia and remain at large. They are believed to be hiding in Iraq. The late al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had claimed...