Free Republic

Rep. Liz Cheney is using her platform on the special committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack to take direct aim at Donald Trump — and become a foil to the former president and de facto leader of the GOP. Since she led a band of 10 Republicans to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the Capitol riot, the Wyoming Republican and political scion has become the public face of the anti-Trump GOP movement. But her new role as the vice chair of the Jan. 6 panel — one she owes to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Chairman Bennie Thompson...

<p>Screenshots from a Discord chat channel allegedly hosted by John Sullivan – a far-left, anti-Trump activist who appears to have incited violence at the U.S. Capitol while posing as a journalist – reveal he and his followers infiltrated the January 6th Save America March in Washington, D.C.</p>

Donald Trump, the Sensible Party and the Silly Parties What we have in Washington are two Silly Parties. The reason both parties are silly is because within each party the sensible people (defined below) are being outvoted by silly people (also defined below). This explains why 1) no matter which party wins an election, the downward spiral continues and 2) neither party has been able to reform itself. We need to break out of this cycle; and I think this is what Donald Trump is trying to engineer, by doing the following: Recruit as many sensible people as possible from...

The two senators are proving popular with other campaigns' donors, showing how they could eventually bring together Republicans currently dispersed across their wings of the party. After well-received debate performances last week, it is starting to look more likely that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio could be the candidates who go head-to-head for the Republican presidential nomination next spring. And already, we can see-based on where they get their money-how the senators could emerge as standard-bearers from different sides of the GOP.Cruz and Rubio, who polls show to be two of the most broadly liked candidates among Republicans, are each...

React To Contact, Break Contact and Insurgent Operational Planning I talked about Battle Drills awhile back. Recently Max Velocity talked about Reacting to Contact. We label the steps differently but basically do the same thing. I will get into it a bit but do not feel the need to write it from memory or get fancy paraphrasing FM 7-8. Either you know how to do it and I'm wasting my time or you don't and me writing about it for a couple paragraphs will not fix the problem so I'm wasting my time. For those without an Infantry or Special...

A widow revealed how her soldier husband was blown up in Afghanistan days after senior officers had apparently ‘laughed off’ his complaints that insurgents were being allowed to plant explosive devices unchallenged. Sergeant Peter Rayner, 34, phoned his wife in a ‘highly stressed’ state four days before his death and was upset that his fears were not taken seriously. She said he and his men had watched the enemy, using night-vision goggles, plant improvised explosive devices and were not allowed to attack them. He was allegedly told by one officer: ‘I am an Army Captain and you will do your...

Advocacy group helps illegal immigrants get tax refunds, even those with bogus social security cards BY Erica PearsonDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Friday, November 19th 2010, 4:00 AM A Manhattan group is helping illegal immigrants recoup unclaimed state tax refunds - even if they used fake Social Security numbers to work.The Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project got back thousands for a dozen undocumented New Yorkers who overpaid.One bodega worker from Jackson Heights had been paying taxes since 2002 but never got a refund - until the group helped him get back $670 from his 2008 return."It really helped - we have...

<p>KABUL, Afghanistan -US and NATO officials claimed Sunday that insurgents in Afghanistan are facing financial problems and are in a weakened state after a fierce summer of fighting.</p> <p>In recent weeks, US and coalition troops have launched several large scale clearing operations to drive the Taliban out of key areas in Southern Afghanistan.</p>

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Insurgent US "Tea Party" conservatives scored another big upset victory, as a political novice routed a veteran lawmaker to become the Republican contender for Vice President Joe Biden's old senate seat. With all precincts reporting, unofficial results showed Christine O'Donnell had beaten popular moderate Representative Mike Castle by a 53.1-46.9 percent margin in the Republican primary in the small US East Coast state of Delaware. "The voters in the Republican primary have spoken and I respect that decision," Castle said in a somber concession speech in which he did not endorse his rival following a bitter weeks-long...

The British hostage Peter Moore was dramatically set free yesterday after the United States handed over an Iraqi insurgent suspected of planning the deaths of five American servicemen. Mr Moore, an IT consultant, was freed by League of the Righteous, or Asaib al-Haq (AAH) — an extremist Shia group allied to Iran — after 31 months and spent his first night of freedom at the British Embassy in Baghdad. He is expected to fly home today.

The revenue comes from foreign donations, drug money, "protection" money and criminal activity like smuggling and kidnapping. And as officials note, the money goes a long way. "The insurgency is a relatively cheap war for the Taliban to fight," an August report out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said, noting that money buys "a lot" of rifles, explosives, grenade launchers and foot soldiers known as "$10 Taliban" since that's their day's pay. The Taliban do have a system for incentive pay, as the soldiers get bonuses -- double or triple pay -- for planting improvised explosive devices. And they...

The terms counterterrorism and counterinsurgency have become common currency this decade in the wake of September 11, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq. To a layman’s ear, they can sound like synonyms, especially because of our habit of labeling all insurgents as terrorists. But to military professionals, they are two very different concepts. Counterterrorism refers to operations employing small numbers of Special Operations “door kickers” and high-tech weapons systems such as Predator drones and cruise missiles. Such operations are designed to capture or kill a small number of “high-value targets.” Counterinsurgency, known as COIN in military argot,...

BAGHDAD – He told his family he was going on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Instead, the second-year college student packed a vinyl travel bag and left home in Saudi Arabia for a trip that would take him on a smuggling route across the Syrian border and into the heart of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. So began the underground life of safe houses, aliases and hit-and-run attacks of another Islamic foot soldier recruited to battle the U.S. military and its Iraqi allies.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon's top Middle East adviser said Wednesday insurgent attacks in Iraq will probably increase as U.S. forces start to leave, but there's no plan now to delay troop departures. Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Colin Kahl told The Associated Press that the military will continue to watch whether increased violence may push back deadlines for U.S. troop withdrawals ordered by President Barack Obama.

Iraqi insurgent field manual: "You don't shoot at R2D2. He's a bad ass mo-fo and he will get you"

This graphic has been around for a while but Bill Ayers chose to post it on his website today. Is Bill Ayers thankful that he's "Guilty as Hell, Free as a Bird..."

The deeper problem here is the belief that the best way to deal with insurgents is to address the "root causes" of the grievance that purportedly prompted them to take up arms. But what most of these insurgencies seek isn't social or moral redress: It's absolute power. Like other "liberation movements" (the PLO comes to mind), the Tigers are notorious for killing other Tamils seen as less than hard line in their views of the conflict. The failure to defeat these insurgencies thus becomes the primary obstacle to achieving a reasonable political settlement acceptable to both sides. This isn't to...

Home-grown 'champion of Islam' Stewart Bell, National Post April 25, 2008 TORONTO -Naeem Muhammad Khan wants everyone to "Support Our Troops," but he's not talking about the Canadian Forces in Kandahar. From his apartment in Toronto, Mr. Khan has been posting messages on the Internet calling Osama bin Laden a "hero" and "champion of Islam." The 23-year-old fundamentalist's online logo combines the black Taliban flag and the outline of an AK-47 above the "Support Our Troops" slogan. Between sips of iced coffee at Tim Hortons, Mr. Khan explained that he is a supporter of the Taliban, as well as other...

BAGHDAD - Muqtada al-Sadr is considering setting aside his political ambitions and restarting a full-scale fight against U.S.-led forces — a worrisome shift that may reflect Iranian influence on the young cleric and could open the way for a shadow state protected by his powerful Mahdi Army. A possible breakaway path — described to The Associated Press by Shiite lawmakers and politicians — would represent the ultimate backlash to the Iraqi government's pressure on al-Sadr to renounce and disband his Shiite militia. By snubbing the give-and-take of politics, al-Sadr would have a freer hand to carve out a kind of...

March 15, 2008 I fought for my land against the US. Now I fight alongside them An Iraqi tells our correspondent of his long and violent journey to the side of the alliance forces April 8, 2004: Iraqi Sunni insurgents celebrate in front of a burning US convoy that they attacked near Abu Ghraib, on the outskirts of the flashpoint town of Fallujah Deborah Haynes, Baghdad As a loyal officer under Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi major never imagined that one day he would become an insurgent, but when Iraq fell five years ago he was left bitter, jobless and desperate...