Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama said Friday he is weighing a range of options for countering the violent Islamic insurgency in Iraq, but he warned government leaders in Baghdad the U.S. will not take military action unless they move to address deep political troubles. "We're not going to allow ourselves to be dragged back into a situation in which, while we're there we're keeping a lid on things, and after enormous sacrifices by us, after we're not there, people start acting in ways that are not conducive to the long-term stability and prosperity of the country," Obama said from the...

IRAN has sent special forces and elite troops to Iraq to bolster efforts by the government to halt the advance of militants. A 150-man unit of the Quds Force, the elite section of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, has deployed to Iraq, supported by a team of Saberin, Iran's equivalent of the SAS. They will assist Iraqi forces as they regroup after the loss of Mosul and Tikrit. With troops already fighting in Syria to defend the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Iran's decision to send soldiers into Iraq underscores its concern that another key ally is under threat.

This isn't related to the core enumerated powers questions in Bond but struck me as sufficiently interesting that it was worth posting about separately. In his post about Bond, Mark Tushnet writes: This isn't Justice Thomas's problem but James Madison's [but] Justice Thomas quotes Madison to the effect that treaty cannot "dismember the empire." Really? Suppose Vladimir Putin lets the United States know that he's going to bomb the bejeezus out of the "red" states of the United States unless we negotiate a treaty returning Alaska to Russia. Work out the scenario as you wish, but I doubt that it's...

The Ukrainian government said Wednesday it is developing a plan to impose martial law in eastern Ukraine, signaling its resolve to continue pushing with the fight against a pro-Russian separatist rebellion that has raged for weeks. The move would allow the government to evacuate civilians from militant-controlled areas, freeing up Ukraine's armed forces to begin a full-scale military operation to regain control. Ukraine has accused rebel forces of hiding behind civilians, which has slowed the government's advance. As the government has stepped up its fight in the past week, there have been increasing incidents of civilians being hurt. "This is...

SHANGHAI - China signed a long-awaited, 30-year deal Wednesday to buy Russian natural gas worth $400 billion in a financial and diplomatic boost to diplomatically isolated President Vladimir Putin. Negotiations on the price for the gas had continued into the final hours of a two-day visit by Putin to China, during which the two sides had said they hoped to sign a deal. The agreement calls for Russia's government-controlled Gazprom to supply state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. with 38 billion cubic meters of gas annually, Gazprom spokesman Sergey Kupriyanov told The Associated Press. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller told Russian news...

If Israel really wants to bomb Iran's nuclear sites, maybe it better do that in the next three months - because in September the United States will start sending Iraq F-16s to build its Air Force. Except for some helicopters and small planes, Iraq has not had an air force since the United States buried it in 2003. Until the United States withdrew from Iraq two years ago, the US Air Force protected the skies of Iraq. But for now, the sky is open for Israeli jets to fly back and forth over Iraq if they choose. To strike Iran,...

Unit commanders got orders to prepare for a "peacemaking operation". This comes from the Facebook account of the head of the Ukrainian Center for Military and Political Studies Dmytro Tymchuk. "According to operational data of the Informational Resistance group, Russian troops, deployed in the 100 km area from Ukraine's state border, are moving up to the border in Luhansk region area. According to the data we possess, the commanders of the Russian military units got instructions to be prepared for a "peacekeeping operation" in the territory of Ukraine",- Dmytro Tymchuk reports.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of attempting to "re-establish Russian greatness," warning world leaders they are perhaps not dealing with a rational foreign-policy thinker. "Putin wants to re-establish Russian greatness, not in Cold War terms - in 19th-century-empire terms," Clinton said during a question-and-answer session at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's annual Fiscal Summit on Wednesday. Some of Putin's recent comments have stirred concern within foreign-policy circles. Over the past weeks, he has repeatedly referred to regions making up southeast Ukraine as "Novorussia," or "New Russia," and he has said Russia has a right to...

The Iranian military says that it has fully reverse engineered a downed U.S. drone and armed it with missiles "to attack the U.S. warships in any possible battle." The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) made the announcement on Sunday as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei toured an IRGC military compound to view the new drones, according to reports in Iran's state-run media.

Lockheed Martin's prototype laser weapon succesfully disabled military-grade speed boats in under thirty seconds on Wednesday. ADAM, or Area Defense Anti-Munitions, is a laser weapon initiative that is designed to provide affordable defense against short-range threats. Although still in a prototype phase, ADAM managed to burn through multiple layers of the rubber hull of military-grade speed boats in less than thirty seconds from a mile away.

MOSCOW, May 08. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine has deployed 15,000 strong military force near Russia's borders, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said. "The 15,000-strong grouping of Ukrainian forces has been deployed in the border areas. Military conscription has resumed (in Ukraine)," he said. "At the same time, NATO amasses its grouping of forces in Eastern Europe," Antonov noted.

(Reuters) - The White House said on Wednesday that it has seen no evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin has pulled Russian troops back from the Ukrainian border, and said it wants a referendum on secession to be canceled, not merely postponed.

MOSCOW, May 7 (RIA Novosti) - Ukrainian troops have opened fire with mortars on Russian journalists from the LifeNews channel near the eastern city of Slaviansk, a statement on the broadcaster's website said Wednesday. "Ukrainian troops opened massed intense fire on Russian reporters in Donetsk region," the statement said. "Minutes before the mortar attack [reporter] Alexei Kazannikov informed us that not far from the roadblock Ukrainian troops had camouflaged several Grad rocket systems. Reports were coming about Kiev planning to use multiple rocket launchers against self-defense forces," the statement added.

The navy chief of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said that if war with the United States breaks out, the Iranians will target American aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. The remarks by Adm. Ali Fadavi of the hard-line Guard navy sharply contrast moderate President Hassan Rouhani's outreach policies toward the West. Fadavi also said the Guard navy has already carried out an exercise targeting a mock-up of an American warship.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The head of U.S. air forces in the Pacific said Monday that Russia's intervention in Ukraine had been accompanied by a significant increase in Russian air activity in the Asia-Pacific region in a show of strength and to gather intelligence. Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle said the activity had included Russian flights to the coast of California, and around the U.S. Pacific island of Guam. Carlisle said the number of long-range Russian patrols around the Japanese islands and Korea had increased "drastically." He said there had also been "a lot more ship activity as well."

Simferopol (Undefined) (AFP) - Several dozen Russian planes including what appeared to be strategic bombers and fighter jets have been spotted in the sky above the Moscow-controlled peninsula of Crimea, witnesses and experts said. According to Russian media, President Vladimir Putin is poised to visit Crimea on Friday after overseeing the main military parade on Red Square when Russia celebrates its victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. A local aviation expert told AFP on Sunday that he had sighted a number of planes over the peninsula's main city of Simferopol on Saturday, including supersonic heavy strategic bombers and...

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter - the jet that the Pentagon is counting on to be the stealthy future of its tactical aircraft - is having all sorts of shortcomings. But the most serious may be that the JSF is not, in fact, stealthy in the eyes of a growing number of Russian and Chinese radars. Nor it is particularly good at jamming enemy radar. Which means the Defense Department is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to a fighter that will need the help of specialized jamming aircraft that protect non-stealthy - "radar-shiny," as some insiders call them -...

Vatican City: Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said on Saturday that Russian military aircraft had crossed the country's airspace seven times "to provoke Ukraine to start a war." "Russian military aircraft today overnight crossed and violated Ukrainian airspace seven times. The only reason is to provoke Ukraine to start a war," he told journalists at a briefing in Rome, following a meeting with Pope Francis and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

Nearly 100,000 Russian forces have massed on Ukraine's border, a top Ukrainian defense official told an American audience Thursday, giving a number far higher than US military estimates. "Almost 100,000 soldiers are stationed on the borders of Ukraine and in the direction ... of Kharkiv, Donetsk," Andriy Parubiy, chairman of Ukraine's national security council, said via a webcast from Kiev. "Russian troops are not in Crimea only, they are along all Ukrainian borders. They're in the south, they're in the east and in the north," Parubiy said.

In the wake of a March 16 referendum in which Crimeans voted to join the Russian Federation, Ukrainian leaders refused to cede any part of the peninsula, calling on their troops to prepare for war. "Crimea was, is, and will be our territory," said Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh in a statement delivered at the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center on March 17. Former heavyweight boxing champion and leader of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform Vitali Klitschko announced that Ukrainian troops would remain at their bases, even after March 21, the end of a peace treaty signed by the interior ministries...