Free Republic

Among Democrats, fighting is breaking out all over. The Senate’s third-ranking Democrat, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), is hurling criticisms toward the White House over Barack Obama’s handling of the recession and his myopic and politically ruinous obsession with reforming the nation’s health care system amid that economic downturn.In response, the White House took what Reuters called the “unusual step” of publicly pledging to veto an overdue plan to reform the nation’s tax code which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been in the process of negotiating with House Republicans. When Obama announced his intention to extend legal status to...

Egyptian feminist Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, 23, challenges the strict nature of Islam on her blog and Facebook pages. She went a step further in her protest against the Islamic State (IS) with a photo of Elmahdy and a veiled woman pooping and menstruating on the black IS flag. Arab nations did not print the photo because the flag states “there is no God but Allah.” Elmahdy did not explain why she took the photo, but she protests Islamic laws, and IS implements strict Sharia Law. Women must wear full veils and not leave the house without a male relative. The...

Only by overlooking important forces in markets and politics can anyone assert that Saudi Arabia is letting crude prices fall mainly to extinguish competition from North American shale oil. With oil, the Saudi regime always takes the long view. With security, however, its motivations are more immediate. The kingdom faces unusually intense threats: Islamic State (IS) militancy in Iraq and Syria, the chance that Iran won’t agree by a Nov. 24 deadline to suspend its nuclear ambitions, terrorist insurrections from restive Yemen, durability of the menacing government of Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus. Falling oil prices hurt the IS and Iran,...

A Christian militia has reclaimed a village in northern Iraq from ISIS terrorists. USA Today reported on the story of a group of Christian fighters driving ISIS insurgents from the town of Bakufa. The inhabitants of the predominantly Christian Bakufa formed a village militia, after fighting side-by-side with Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters to push ISIS from their hamlet. The freshly recruited militia might be short on combat experience, but that’s not worrying them. As one of their members says: In my opinion, faith is greater than military experience. Where the black banner of ISIS once stood, the flag of the...

Inside the Islamic State’s Capital: Red Bull-Drinking Jihadists, Hungry Civilians, Crucifixions And Air Strikes Mark Townsend Sunday 30 November 2014 The beleaguered inhabitants of Raqqa, self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State (Isis), are suffering widespread hunger, crippling inflation, chronic power shortages and poverty so acute that emergency soup kitchens have been set up. With no journalists, local or foreign, able to operate inside Syria’s sixth-largest city, courageous local activists have given the Observer a detailed account of life under the jihadists’ totalitarian regime, a rare glimpse of everyday life in the city. Their testimony reveals the evolution of a community...

The U.S. military will subject Syrian rebels taking part in a new training program to psychological evaluations, biometrics checks and stress tests under a screening plan that goes well beyond the steps the United States normally takes to vet foreign soldiers, a sign of the risks the Obama administration faces as it expands support for armed groups in Syria. Officials said the screening program, developed chiefly by the U.S. Central Command, will rely on what was described as a “common core” of screening protocols, including running trainees’ names through U.S. and foreign intelligence databases, collecting biometric data and, when possible,...

Veterans Day has come and gone, but the Media Research Center’s Dan Joseph had just one question to ask the Iraq War veterans: How do they feel about the Obama administration’s decision to pull all combat troops out of Iraq. In short, they weren’t pleased at all. One veteran called the president a “moron,” and that his friends who died over there would be rolling in their graves over Obama’s decision to withdraw from Iraq and end combat operations. Others also voiced their opposition to the decision, noting that there’s a reason why civilian control of the military comes with...

In 1991, Chinese military officers watched as the United States dismantled the Iraqi Army, a force with more battle experience and somewhat greater technical sophistication than the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The Americans won with casualties that were trivial by historical standards. This led to some soul searching. The PLA hadn’t quite been on autopilot in the 1980s, but the pace of reform in the military sector had not matched that of social and economic life in China. Given the grim performance of the PLA in the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union, something...

Forget shutting down the government. Lock down the White House instead. This morning a news story alerted me to the fact that an Army base in Texas was on lockdown after a suspicious vehicle was found.“A lockdown was ordered at a U.S. Army base in San Antonio on Sunday night in what a military spokesman described as a ‘high-security incident,’” reported Reuters, “while adding there was no threat.”But since a vehicle was involved one can assume a bomb was suspected. Since an arrest was made, perhaps more than suspected. Similarly tensions are high in Ferguson Missouri, after a combination of...

The ISIS terror group believes that if it is Allah's will, the organization will take over much of the world. But at the moment, Allah doesn't seem to be on their side. -Analysis-BERLIN — According to the ISIS terror group's five-year plan, the entire northern half of Africa, and large parts of Europe and Asia, should be conquered by 2019. Then comes the rest of the world. It's a ludicrous plan, but it nevertheless remains a firm foundation of ISIS ideology. "Conquer, stay, expand" is the slogan of the Stone Age Islamists. It's time to restore Muslim honor, says ISIS...

US Secretary of State Adivses Russian Counterpart Not To Take US President's Words At Face Value Though it went entirely unnoticed in the Western press, all major Russian news outlets – RIA Novosti, Sputnik, RT, and others – were only too happy to report on what US Secretary of State John Kerry said last week to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in private: “Just ignore Obama’s statements.” According to Mr. Lavrov, John Kerry advised him not to pay too much attention to the US President’s harsh rhetoric directed toward his state. As recently as September, during his speech to...

WASHINGTON -- The Islamic Republic of Iran would like to make one thing clear: We've got this. Up until June 10, Iranian officials had been content to shape events in Iraq quietly through their hold on local Shiite militias and the prime minister at the time, Nouri al-Maliki. Then the Iraqi government lost Mosul, the nation's second-largest city, to the growing Sunni extremist force now known as the Islamic State, or ISIS. The U.S. eventually responded: It forced a new government to take power, sent in airpower and military advisers, and launched an international effort against ISIS in both Iraq...

The Kentucky senator, seeking to define himself as a foreign-policy heavyweight ahead of 2016, will introduce a measure in the Senate next month declaring war on the terror group. “The most important” part of Rand Paul’s assessment of “questions of war,” the Kentucky senator told The Daily Beast this fall, is “how you go to war.” Now he’s putting that assessment into action with a plan to introduce a declaration of war against ISIS in the Senate next month. The move is part of Paul’s ongoing campaign to position himself as a foreign-policy heavyweight ahead of the Republican presidential primaries,...

Obama must quit his pen-palling habit with the Iranian regime's supreme leader, and make the right choice by adopting a tough stance against the Iranian regime and its allies and proxies in the region With the specter of the November 24 deadline looming on the horizon, a tough and determined position toward Iran is essential in saving the day. But President Barack Obama seems to be poised on repeating his previous mistakes in dealing with the Iranian regime. That is what his latest letter to the Iranian regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei indicates, in which he made cooperation with Iran...

President Obama has opened a new front in his hard line against the incoming Republican Congress by releasing more detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, against lawmakers' objections. The Pentagon announced Thursday that four al Qaeda fighters from Yemen, including a senior figure who facilitated travel to Afghanistan for Arab extremists, and a Tunisian extremist would be transferred to Slovakia and Georgia. The transfers leave 143 detainees at Guantanamo, which Obama has vowed to close. Republican lawmakers, who have been pressing the administration to stop releasing detainees amid reports that some former prisoners had joined the Islamic State of Iraq and...

The Islamic State group launched a major attack on the Iraqi city of Ramadi Friday, attempting to seize one of the last urban pockets under government control in troubled Anbar province. Parts of Ramadi, the provincial capital, and all of Fallujah to its east, fell to anti-government forces in January. In June, IS-led militants began overrunning more of Anbar and have gained further ground in recent weeks, raising fears that the province, which stretches from the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to the western approach to Baghdad, could fall completely. "IS launched a surprise attack from four directions...

RAF jets equipped with guided bombs have taken part in a major coalition air assault on a secret Islamic State bunker and tunnel complex. The attack, supporting a Kurdish ground offensive, took place in the early hours of Wednesday morning in a rural area northwest of Kirkuk. Tornado GR4 planes armed with Paveway IV precision guided bombs were sent in after intelligence revealed a hidden network of fighting positions and underground facilities. Aircraft from seven countries were involved in what the Ministry of Defence called a "comprehensive and closely co-ordinated attack". France confirmed two of its Rafale jets had been...

The number of people killed by terrorists worldwide in 2013 rose by 60 percent compared to the previous year – from 11,133 to 17,958 – with four Sunni Muslim extremist groups responsible for two-thirds of all fatalities, according to a comprehensive annual study. Eighty-two percent of fatalities occurred in just five countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria, although the number of countries that experienced more than 50 terror-related deaths also rose – to 24, compared with 15 the previous year. ... Four Sunni groups were responsible for 66 percent of all terror fatalities in 2013. In order of...

Gruber, who was paid half a million dollars to design Obamacare, is on tape bragging about how the Democrats relied on "the stupidity of the American voter" to pass that law. Which, ironically, was sort of a stupid thing to say on camera. By now there are so many tapes of Gruber explaining how Obamacare fooled stupid Americans that they're being released as a boxed set in time for Christmas. Gruber, who will hereafter be known as "the architect of Obamacare," said: "If you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in -- if you...

Dianne Feinstein's so-called 6,300 page "torture report" (executive summary is 500 pages "only")- after 5 years and $40 million in taxpayer money- is slated to be released very soon. Perhaps this weekend; maybe next week, after Thanksgiving. But what will be missing from the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's majority (re: Democrat) report? Participation by Republicans in the investigative process and input (when the report is released, Republicans plan to release the minority view, at the same time). And even more critically, the interviews and opinions of those directly involved in the CIA Detention and Interrogation program itself- you...