Free Republic

"Clear to engage." "Roger that. Firing. And firing. And firing. And firing. And firing one more. Alright, sensing."

Today's Darwin award goes to these geniuses. Not sure if the kid made it out in time. It was close.

IRAN hanged some members of a Sunni rebel group in a volatile southeastern area today, but they were put to death in prison and not in public as initially planned, the semi-official Fars News Agency said. Fars had reported yesterday that 14 members of Jundollah (God's soldiers) would be executed in a park in the city of Zahedan, including the brother of its leader Abdolmalek Rigi. But Ebrahim Hamidi, who heads the judiciary in Sistan-Baluchestan province, said today the executions took place in a jail instead and that Rigi's brother would be put to death later in the week. He...

US military convoy was hit by an IED, soldiers stopped to check out the damage and suddenly ambushed by insurgent small fire, and quickly the soldiers return fire at insurgents with some help from Apaches, at the end all the insurgents are terminated and only 1 wounded us soldier who got hit by a small shrapnel by an IED. It's amazing to see the fire power these soilders respond with. Those insurgent mo-fo's hit them with an IED, and they respond with .50 cal's, helfire missiles, etc. It's just amazing. Video on site, click here.

With the White House deciding that photos can be taken of the flag-draped coffins of our fallen heroes returning home, it is only fitting that we get to see the video of the dead thugs who are killing them.

"I'm gonna put a hurting these m----------."

"I want you to pull that trigger until they don't get up." "Yes, sir."

Al Qaeda terrorists have been left fearing the Black Death plague after it wiped out at least 40 insurgents at an Algerian training camp, it was reported today. The horror disease, which killed 25 million people in medieval Europe, is understood to have been found in a militant’s body dumped at a roadside. Terror group AQLIM (al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb) was forced to turn its shelter in the Yakouren forests into mass graves and flee, it has been claimed. Now al Qaeda chiefs are said to fear the plague has been passed into other cells...

Click here for video. Caution: One of the Insurgents "teabags" the other. You can't see anything but, just so you know.

The Democrats have bleated for years about the detention of illegal combatants at Guantanamo, while the Left and the "international community" have demanded that captured terrorists be treated as prisoners of war. We read in the November 22-23 Wall Street Journal (page A13) that Barack Obama's selected Attorney General, Eric Holder, agrees with us that terrorists are not uniformed combatants who are entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention. Per an interview on CNN in January 2002, One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find...

...Insurgent group al-Shabaab this week advanced to the edge of the capital Mogadishu and has seized important towns such as the strategic port Kismayo in recent months.... ...As the insurgents take over more territory, human rights activists are concerned that stringent punishments will be handed out under the rebels' interpretation of Islamic law. Fears were raised by a recent case in Kismayo, when a 13-year-old girl who complained of being raped by three men was stoned to death for adultery....

As Spc. Jorge Monjaras peered out the open hatch of an Abrams tank last month, he saw a young insurgent dart out of a crowd and lob a makeshift grenade. A small blast hit his back and burned a fist-sized hole into his body armor vest but left him without a scratch. The explosion was only the blasting cap. The main explosive, a 60 mm mortar round, landed inside his hatch and moved freely at his feet. It wasn’t until the next day when he prepped the tank for a different mission that he realized how lucky he was. To...

KABUL (Reuters) - Insurgents killed nine U.S. soldiers in an assault on an Afghan army and NATO outpost in northeastern Afghanistan on Sunday, making it one of the worst days for foreign troops casualties in the country since 2001. Afghanistan is suffering from a rising tide of violence this year, with a sharp increase in Taliban attacks, especially in the east where NATO says militants have taken advantage of peace deals in Pakistan to cross the border and fight in Afghanistan. --snip-- The dead soldiers were all American, a NATO official said. Fifteen ISAF troops and four Afghan soldiers were...

The outgoing American commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said the insurgency there will last for years unless Pakistan shuts down safe havens where militants train and recruit. Gen. Dan McNeill also blamed new peace agreements in Pakistan’s tribal areas for a spike in violence in eastern Afghanistan, where U.S. forces operate along the volatile border. “If there are going to be sanctuaries where these terrorists, these extremists, these insurgents can train, can recruit, can regenerate, there’s still going to be a challenge there,” McNeill said Wednesday. Taliban militants attacked and captured a remote town from the Afghan government overnight,...

Amid all the talk about the U.S. military "surge" in Iraq, little has been said about the accompanying "surge" of Iraqi prisoners, whose numbers rose to nearly 51,000 at the end of 2007. Four years after the Abu Ghraib scandal, occupation forces are holding far more Iraqis than ever before and thousands more languish in horrendous Iraqi-run prisons. The Detention Camps Detainees are held by the U.S. command in two main locations - Camp Bucca, a 100-acre prison camp and Camp Cropper, inside a massive U.S. base near the Baghdad airport. The number of Iraqis held in these facilities has...

Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a "measureable effect" on insurgents there. Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinions on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq... The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled "Is There an 'Emboldenment' Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency...

Venezuela threatened to declare war on neighbouring Colombia last night, raising the prospect of the U.S. being drawn into conflict in South America. Venezuela's Left-wing president Hugo Chavez ordered ten tank battalions to the Colombian border and put war-planes under emergency stand-by. The tension follows Colombia's decision to send its army to strike against anti-government guerrillas hiding in the jungles of Ecuador. The surprise attack - launched without Ecuador's permission - killed Raul Reyes, a top commander in the Left-wing Colombian rebel group Farc, and about 16 of his men. President Chavez yesterday closed the Colombian embassy in Caracas, warning...

Al Qaeda's latest display of terror has made its way onto the Internet, showing horrifying images of what appear to be prisoners in Iraq being doused with an inflammatory liquid and then burned alive. -snip- As he speaks, two of the insurgents pour liquid on the blindfolded prisoners. Then they push the bound men into the pit, where they are engulfed in flames.

Muhammad Ayn-al-Nas, a 26-year-old Moroccan, started his journey in Casablanca. After flying to Turkey and then to Damascus, he reached his destination in a small Iraqi border town on Jan. 31, 2007. He was an economics student back home, he told the al-Qaeda clerk who interviewed him on arrival. Asked what sort of work he hoped to do in Iraq, Nas replied: "Martyr." Algerian Watsef Mussab, 29, who arrived in Iraq via Saudi Arabia and Syria, said he had come for combat. He complained that the Syrian smugglers who brought him to the border took his money, but he contributed...

With Mike Huckabee's continuing surge, the Republican Party now has an Iowa front-runner whose religious beliefs are virtually identical to those of George Bush. He's anti-choice, born-again, against gay-marriage, and gets political advice directly from God. So why is the Republican establishment suddenly in a state of near-apoplexy about Mike Huckabee? Shouldn't they be happy? They've been cultivating evangelicals and fundamentalists for 30 years. Now they finally have a candidate who's truly part of the movement. So what's the problem? Actually, that is the problem. The evangelical crowd was fine when it was just a resource to be cynically exploited...

Why does the GOP Establishment fear Huck? Juan Cole's got a bad case of left-wing Huckenfreude: I simply can not tell you how much I am enjoying this. The GOP has been pandering to these stupid bastards for years, and every time I pointed it out I was called “anti-Christian” or something or other. Those of us who saw what the party was becoming were told to shut up, that it was good politics. Enjoy your new GOP, folks. And here is something else to think about- are the evangelicals going to support Romney or Giuliani if you do manage...

Iranian-made weapons were among a large cache of arms and ammunition found during operations in a Shiite militia stronghold south of Baghdad, the Iraqi Army said Monday. Major General Jamil Kamel al-Shimari, a senior officer in the 8th Iraqi Army Division, said the cache was the biggest store of weapons found since the launch of Operation Lion Pounce on Saturday. Iraqi security officials said that 3,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen supported by military tanks and hundreds of US and Polish troops launched the assault Saturday to flush out Shiite militants from the city. The stockpile, which included roadside bombs, rocket-propelled...

The Longest Morning By Jeff Emanuel Published 11/1/2007 12:08:23 AM This article is the cover story of The American Spectator's new, November 2007 issue. To subscribe to our monthly print edition, click here. Samarra, Iraq THE DAY OF AUGUST 26, 2007, began like any other for the soldiers of Charlie Company, 2-505 Parachute Infantry Regiment (from the 82nd Airborne Division) -- with a mission in the city. Over a year into its deployment to Samarra, Iraq, and now working on the three-month extension announced by Secretary of Defense Gates in the spring, the company knew the city like the back...

ASADABAD, Afghanistan — A raid late Sunday night on a house the U.S. military says was housing foreign al-Qaida “facilitators” in Afghanistan’s restive northeast resulted in the killing of several insurgents and detention of five others, a U.S. military spokesman said. The operation was focused in the Asadabad District in the mountainous Kunar province, a hotbed for clashes between U.S. and insurgent militants fighting for both al-Qaida and Taliban networks. U.S. spokesman Maj. Chris Belcher said intelligence indicated a foreign al-Qaida presence in the Asadabad area, and when U.S. and Afghan forces reached the house, they called for the insurgents...

Children mass in the doorway of their Zaidon, Iraq, classroom Oct. 22 after receiving school supplies from Iraqi Police and Marines from Company I, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 6. The supply run served the dual purpose of both helping schoolchildren by providing much-needed pens, pencils and bookbags, in addition to introducing the city's new mayor, Iraqi Police Lt. Col. Ishmael, to the people. “The relationship between us and the IPs is absolutely critical. Lt. Col. Ishamel established the IPs, and they have made it possible for the kids to come back to school after four...

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President Bush has endorsed General David Petraeus's recommendation to begin withdrawing 30,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by next summer. Yet the drawdown would only restore troop levels to where they were before the surge began in January 2007. In the final months of 2006, debate in Washington centered on how fast a reduction from pre-surge levels could occur. The Iraq Study Group recommended that approximately half of the 130,000 troops then in Iraq be withdrawn by early 2008. In marked contrast to that and similar proposals, President Bush is now endorsing a step that would mean a return to the...

Anthony Giacchino had just started as a producer at The History Channel in 1996 and was looking for a topic for his first documentary film. During a chance meeting at a church service, his former high school history teacher told him about a group of anti-war activists who, 25 years earlier, were caught red-handed breaking into a draft board office in Camden. Remarkably, they won a rare and momentous legal victory for the anti-war movement. The teacher brought up the story because the pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Camden, where Giacchino's parents worshiped, was the Rev. Michael Doyle,...

Iraq to free 6,000 Sunni insurgents from jail By Colin Freeman in Baghdad, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:58am BST 02/09/2007 Up to 6,000 suspected Sunni insurgents are to be freed from Iraqi jails in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the country's government from collapsing under the strain of sectarian in-fighting. Iraq’s prison population is 85pc Sunni and a release scheme is seen as an attempt at reconciliation with Sunni parties The release scheme, which could put some hardened combatants back on to the streets, is part of a high-stakes gamble by Iraq's Shia-led government to win back the confidence of...

History, as Marx famously said (by way of paraphrasing Hegel), repeats itself -- "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." A catchy concept, to say the least. And while there's definitely something to it, it's also true that sometimes history does not repeat itself. Take American wars in Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam and Iraq. President Bush, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, recently made a case -- a flawed case -- for a kind of core continuity linking these disparate conflicts. It's not that he didn't admit there are many differences among them ("There are many differences" among...

BAGHDAD — Local citizens fed tips to Soldiers from the 1st "Ironhorse" Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, which led to the finding of four weapons caches and the detaining of two suspects in multiple operations north of Baghdad, Aug. 8 and 9. Troops from Battery B, 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment, attached to the 1st BCT, acting on a tip from a neighborhood watch volunteer, uncovered an improvised explosive devices cache near the town of Sab Al Bor, Aug 8. The cache included five complete IEDs and 12 incomplete IEDs. The cache also included 20 munitions of varying...

Nabi Sensoy, Turkey's ambassador to Washington, is complaining that Kurdish guerillas staging cross-border attacks into Turkey from Northern Iraq are armed with American weapons that were supplied to the Iraqi army. Sensoy also accused the U.S. of not applying enough pressure on Kurds in the Iraqi government to rein in the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting for an independent Kurdistan since the 1980s.Turkish officials are promising retaliatory military strikes against the PKK in Iraq, which will further destabilize the country. Turkey's military chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, is prodding the government to set political guidelines for an incursion...

 Introduction The references cited in this article strongly suggest that: 1. WMD did indeed exist inside Iraq before the war. 2. The weapons inspectors were both fooled and bribed to ignore evidence. 3. Massive amounts of WMD were removed to known locations in Syria just prior to the war. 4. Massive numbers of Saddam's audio tapes and paper documents were collected and most remain unavailable and presumably un-translated. 5. U.S. officials refused to investigate a number of likely WMD sites. 6. The U.S. intelligence community, and other branches of this government, are stonewalling the issue. Readers are urged to review...

The U.S. military is enlisting hundreds of fighters each day from tribal and insurgent groups in alliances aimed at countering al-Qaeda in Iraq, the top U.S. general in Baghdad said yesterday, calling it a "very positive development" but one that requires caution to ensure it works to promote security. Maj Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of Multinational Division Baghdad, said U.S. and Iraqi troops control nearly half of the capital's neighborhoods, but that hard fighting remains as operations continue to clear out insurgents from the rest of the city. Overall attack levels in Baghdad remain constant, he said, but...

TEHRAN, June 12 (Reuters) - Iran will make the United States "regret" its detention earlier this year of five Iranians in Iraq, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted as saying on Tuesday. Iran says the five Iranians detained by U.S. forces in Iraq in January are diplomats and have demanded their release. U.S. officials say they were involved in supporting militants inside Iraq. "We will make the Americans regret their ugly and illegal action against the Islamic Republic of Iran's consulate in Arbil, Iraq, and the abduction of the five Iranian diplomats," Mottaki was quoted as saying by the Web...

BAGHDAD, June 6 -- A Sunni insurgent group that waged a deadly street battle last week against the rival group al-Qaeda in Iraq in a Sunni neighborhood of west Baghdad announced Wednesday that the two forces had declared a cease-fire. The Islamic Army of Iraq, a more moderate and secular Sunni group, said it had reached the cease-fire with al-Qaeda in Iraq because the groups did not want to spill Muslim blood or damage "the project of jihad." Last week, the two groups fought for several days in the Sunni neighborhood of Amiriyah, leaving about 30 of their fighters dead....

There are some things today that are simply unacceptable. Offering olive branches to those who are committed to evil is one of them. History has shown that when you offer cease fires to a bunch of murderous thugs and Muslim extremists, more bloodshed follows. Just look at the problems the Israelis are continuing to have with those who seek their absolute destruction. Is it any wonder why there never seems to be any permanent resolution with that region of the world? Offering concessions to terrorists is like giving freedoms to disobedient children. You give them an inch, they're always determined...

KUWAIT CITY, May. 23, 2007 (AP) Seventy percent of insurgents fighting in Iraq come from Gulf countries via Syria where they are provided with forged passports, an Iraqi intelligence officer alleged in a published report Wednesday. "They, according to their own confessions, gather in mosques in the said (Gulf) states to travel to Syria using their passports, taking with them phone numbers of individuals waiting for them there," Brig. Gen. Rashid Fleih, the assistant undersecretary for intelligence of Iraq's Interior Ministry, told Kuwait's Al-Qabas daily in an interview. Fleih did not provide more specific details about the alleged insurgents or...

KUWAIT CITY - Seventy percent of foreign insurgents arrested in Iraq came from Persian Gulf countries via Syria where they were provided with forged passports, an Iraqi intelligence officer said in a published report Wednesday. "They, according to their own confessions, gather in mosques in the said (Gulf) states to travel to Syria using their passports, taking with them phone numbers of individuals waiting for them there," Brig. Gen. Rashid Fleih, the assistant undersecretary for intelligence of Iraq's Interior Ministry, told Kuwait's Al-Qabas daily in an interview. Fleih did not provide more specific details about the alleged insurgents or which...

Report: 70 Percent of Insurgents in Iraq Come From Gulf States Via Syria May 23, 2007 KUWAIT CITY — Seventy percent of insurgents fighting in Iraq come from Gulf countries via Syria where they are provided with forged passports, an Iraqi intelligence officer alleged in a published report Wednesday. "They, according to their own confessions, gather in mosques in the said (Gulf) states to travel to Syria using their passports, taking with them phone numbers of individuals waiting for them there," Brig. Gen. Rashid Fleih, the assistant undersecretary for intelligence of Iraq's Interior Ministry, told Kuwait's Al-Qabas daily in an...

WASHINGTON, May 13, 2007 – Coalition forces detained three suspected terrorists today, including an alleged cell leader, during operations in southeastern Baghdad, U.S. military officials reported. Those captured are suspected of being part of a terrorist cell network known for its use of explosive devices and for bringing weapons and militants into Iraq from Iran. The suspected cell leader is believed to have personally coordinated and implemented the use of bombs, officials said. One terrorist was killed during the operation, officials reported. “We continue to target the secret cell network, diminishing their capability to conduct attacks against innocent Iraqis...

Terror Arrests in Fort Dix Plot FORT DIX, N.J. May 8, 2007 - Six ethnic Albanians have been arrested in a plot to storm the Fort Dix installation in Burlington County. Five of the suspects were arrested in Cherry Hill. They will be arraigned later today in federal court. Officials say it will happen in either in Camden or Newark. Investigators say the suspects planned to use automatic weapons to storm the base and kill solders. The men were lured into a secret meeting to purchase AK-47s from an arms dealer, who was secretly cooperating with the FBI. Officials say...

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. — At least five people were arrested on charges they plotted to attack the Fort Dix Army base and "kill as many soldiers as possible," federal authorities said Tuesday. The suspects were scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Camden later Tuesday to face charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. servicemen, said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey. Five of them lived in Cherry Hill, about 10 miles east of Philadelphia and 20 miles southwest of Fort Dix, he said. "They were planning an attack on Fort Dix in which...

NEW YORK -- Six men from New Jersey have been arrested in an alleged terror plot against soldiers at Fort Dix, according investigators. Investigators said the men planned to use automatic rifles to enter Fort Dix and kill as many soldiers as they could at the N.J. base. Fort Dix was just one of several military and security locations allegedly scouted by this group, authorities said. Investigators told Newschannel 4's Jonathan Dienst that these arrests are the result of a tip to the FBI and use of an informant to track the suspects. Authorities were alerted in January 2006 after...

“Most of them don’t believe in this insurgency,” he said. “They are young people. They are having to stay home without employment. They want food. They want money. They want to be able to marry. But there are no jobs. If you offered them jobs, most of them would not be working with Al Qaeda.”

Thai security forces have shot and killed three more Muslim boys, sparking fresh, angry protests by residents. Insurgents attacked a train and wounded two passengers in the deep South. None of the youths in the troop incident was armed. Police said the paramilitary rangers were acting in self-defence. The boys, aged 13 and 14, were killed late Friday by security forces in Pattani, one of three Muslim-majority southern provinces bordering Malaysia, police said. They said the security forces opened fire after a group of five to 10 Muslim boys ran towards them as they tried to extinguish a blaze at...

CAIRO, Egypt - An Iraqi militant group has highlighted the split in the ranks of the Iraqi insurgency by having its spokesman give a television interview in which he accuses al-Qaida and its umbrella organization of killing its members and pursuing the wrong policies. "The gap has widened and the injustices committed by some brothers in al-Qaida have increased," Ibrahim al-Shimmari told Al-Jazeera television in an interview broadcast Wednesday and repeated Thursday. Al-Shimmari was filmed sitting with Al-Jazeera's interviewer in an undisclosed location. He was wearing a red-and-white checkered keffiyeh but his face was blurred by video engineering. Al-Shimmari is...

WASHINGTON, April 6, 2007 – The partnership between Iraqi and U.S. soldiers is helping to tamp down insurgent violence northwest of Baghdad, a senior U.S. military officer assigned in Iraq said today. “The key to this counterpart relationship is our partnering of one U.S. company to each Iraqi army battalion,” Army Col. Paul E. Funk, commander of the 1st “Iron Horse” Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division, told Pentagon reporters during a satellite-carried news conference from his headquarters in Iraq. Assigned to Multinational Division Baghdad, Funk and his 3,800 soldiers have teamed with Iraqi Army troops and police forces...

Heavy Fighting Engulfs Mogadishu Published: 3/30/07, 3:25 PM EDT By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - Insurgents shot an Ethiopian helicopter gunship out of the sky and mortar shells slammed into a hospital Friday during the heaviest fighting in the Somali capital since the early 1990s, leaving corpses in the streets and wounding hundreds of civilians. By official count 30 people have been killed since Thursday. But the fighting was so severe and so widespread in Mogadishu that bodies were not being picked up or even tallied, and residents said hundreds more were believed dead across the city of...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday. The vehicle was stopped at the checkpoint but was allowed through when soldiers saw the children in the back, said Major General Michael Barbero of the Pentagon's Joint Staff. "Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back," Barbero said. The general said...