Free Republic

Jeb Bush is taking extreme fire for answering, in response to a question that set the predicate of “knowing what he knows now,” that yes,he would still have gone into Iraq in 2003, as his brother did when president. (Now he says he did not hear the “knowing what I know now” part of the question.) Far be it from me to defend Governor Bush, of whom I have a not-very-high opinion that continues to sink, but on the merits, the case must still be made that the original eviction of Saddam was in many respects a good call. (Okay,...

Ted Cruz is breaking from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) about whether or not he would have ordered the U.S. military into its eight-year war in Iraq. “Knowing what we know now, of course we wouldn’t go into Iraq,” the Texas Republican told The Hill on Tuesday. “At the time, the intelligence reports indicated that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction that posed a significant national threat to this country. That’s the reason there was such widespread bipartisan support for going into Iraq,” he added. “We now know in hindsight, those intelligence reports were false.” “Without that predicate,...

King Salman of Saudi Arabia has withdrawn from a carefully orchestrated summit with the US that President Barack Obama hoped would assuage Gulf anxieties about the conclusion of a nuclear agreement with Iran. Until Sunday the monarch had been expected to join other heads of state from the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries at an unprecedented meeting at the White House and a day of talks at the presidential retreat at Camp David. Now the only leaders attending will be the emirs of Qatar and Kuwait. The summit, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, follows months of tension and intensive...

Kuwait City, 5 Feb. (AKI) - The US air raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Abu Layth al-Libi in Pakistan is reported to have also killed three other leaders from the terrorist network. According to the Kuwaiti daily, al-Watan, two Kuwaitis and a Libyan also died in the missile attack conducted by a Predator aircraft on January 25 in Mir Ali, in North Waziristan on the border of Afghanistan. The daily said the attack was aimed at what was believed to have been an al-Qaeda summit meeting. Abu Obeida Tawari al-Obeidi and Abu Adel al-Kuwaiti were reportedly there with al-Libi.Abu Adel...

Get a bunch of lefties together, mix liberally with wine, and the bombs start exploding. Public Citizen, the consumer group founded by Ralph Nader, gave its first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award to Phil Donahue on Thursday night at the National Press Club. There were plenty of tributes for the talk show host, but it was impossible for the room full of pumped-up progressives to get through the evening without finding plenty of people to criticize -- including Barack Obama. "We have a president that many of us, particularly here on the left, we really want to cheer," investigative journalist Seymour Hersh...

State Department apparently reverses course on controversial decision. The Iraqi nun who was denied entry to the United States because, apparently, the State Department feared she would illiciltly overstay her visa has finally been granted one. Dominican Sister Diana Momeka will be joining a delegation that includes Yazidi and Turkmen Shia in mid-May. Nina Shea, a religious freedom advocate with the Hudson Institute, confirmed to National Review that Sister Diana will receive a visa. The nun is expected to testify before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, Nicholas Frankovich reported. Other details of her itinerary have not yet been set: Last week, American advocates...

ACN photo: Sister Suhama “At night we often hear gunfire. But luckily we are quite a bit away from the fighting,” Father Steven says. In fact, the town of Alqosh is only 10 miles away from the front line, where the heavily armed Kurdish Peshmerga forces and ISIS fighters are facing off.When the weather is good, you can see the Christian towns on the Nineveh Plane that are now under ISIS control. “Back there is my village Batnaya,” the Chaldean priest says, pointing in the direction of the once Christian community. “I was the last to leave Batnaya. The jihadists...

The U.S. military is helping Iraqi forces pushback ISIS at a vital oil refinery. The Baiji refinery is located between Kirkuk and Mosul, and it has been the target of ISIS militants since the extremist group first made major advances last summer. Baiji is Iraq’s largest oil refinery, and as such, is strategically important to the country for revenues and for domestic fuel supplies. “It actually also sits on a corridor that runs from the Tigris River valley to the Euphrates River valley. And so it's geographically significant as well as significant economically,” the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs...

Dorin Cioba the leader of three million Roma around the world, landed in Israel on Wednesday. Roma are widely known as Gypsies. On his first visit to Israel, Cioba, who is president of the International Romani Union, plans to visit the Roma community in Jerusalem as well as the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. The photographer Roni Ben-Ari invited Cioaba to Israel for the opening of her exhibit that documents the life of Gypsies in the city of Lugoj, Romania. The exhibit opens on Thursday at the Museum of Israeli Art in Ramat Gan. "This is the first time that I...

The Islamic State is continuing to wipe out the Yazidi religious minority in northern Iraq – by means of rape: Those women who survive are rejected by their families. Some commit suicide. The tragedy that has befallen the Yazidis is far from over. Last week, it was reported that the extremist Islamic organization had recently murdered 300 Yazidis and that thousands of women are still being held captive and are serving as bargaining chips. Recently, ISIS released several of these women, who then found shelter in refugee camps in the Kurdish-held enclave in Iraq. They described some of the tribulations...

Erbil, Kurdistan Region – The radical group of Islamic State has allocated several camps in the areas under its control in Mosul and Ramadi in northern Iraq and in the city of Raqqa in northeastern Syria, to train minors dubbed as “Ashbal al-Khilafa” (Cubs of the Caliphate) to carry out “jihadist” operations”, pro-IS media outlets reported. The so-called Caliphate’s Cubs are also trained to slaughter, assassinate, and physically and psychologically torture others. The youngsters are reportedly subject to training sessions of one month and a half, and are then dispersed among the suicide squads and bomb-making workshops.

About 300 Yazidi captives of Islamic State were executed by the Islamist group west of the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul in Iraq on Friday, Iraqi and Yazidi officials said, according to the BBC. According to a statement released by the Yazidi Progress Party, the captives were killed in the Tal Afar district, near Mosul. Iraq's vice president, Osama al-Nujaifi, said the alleged massacre was "horrific and barbaric," BBC reported.

<p>Now and then I get letters and e-mail messages asking why I am so "obsessed" with Jews and Israel. The question amuses me. It would be one thing if I often wrote about Mali, or Honduras, or Borneo, or any other nation or country most people remember only as a name from geography class.</p>

About 123 U.S. soldiers arrived in Turkey to train moderate Syrian rebels, bringing with them weapons which are being transferred to İncirlik Airbase in the southern province of Adana, Hurriyet Daily News reported Friday. The daily said 83 of the U.S. soldiers were deployed at İncirlik Airbase and 40 others were transferred to the Hirfanlı base in the Central Anatolian province of Kırşehir. Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said that Syrians who will be trained at Hirfanlı are expected to be transferred to the southern province of Hatay where they will briefed on the use of arms, including anti-tank weapons,...

Isis militants slaughter more than 300 Yazidi captives in northern Iraq after thousands were taken captive from villages Isis militants slaughter more than 300 Yazidi captives in northern Iraq after thousands were taken captive from villages Hundreds of Yazidi prisoners have been killed near Mosul in northern Iraq Yazidi Progress Party condemned the 'heinous criminal acts' by extremists More than 300 Yazidi prisoners have been slaughtered by Islamic State militants near Mosul in Iraq. According to the Yazidi Progress Party, hundreds were murdered by Isis on Friday in the Tal Afar district, although it is not known how they were...

Position yourself in Me now Completely and cease ALL striving for I have already overcome FOR you ! As you step into the coals of My very spirit I shall paint you into My Portrait of Love and Worship for this is where you belong and you shall find yourself now as part of the very DNA Particles from the building blocks of My Manifold Wisdom completely and entirely of My makeup and knowing, the Eyes of Understanding all that is before you for you have eaten from The Tree of Life and the Salve of My Nectar so that...

Netanyahu has achieved close coordination with the most important Arab leaders that include Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates The Israelis will destroy several Iranian nuclear facilities and my educated guess is that they will do so before the end of this year. Israel has no margin of error when it comes to nuclear reactors in nations that threaten its existence. While President Obama does everything in his power to enable Iran to create its own nuclear weapons, it is a good idea to recall that in June 1981 the Israelis destroyed a reactor in Iraq. It...

ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has according to Radio Iran died after suffering serious injuries in an air strike in western Iraq. Media reports on April 21 said Baghdadi suffered life-threatening injuries during the attack by the US-led coalition in March. Baghdadi's injuries led to urgent meetings of Islamic State leaders, who initially believed he would die and made plans to name a new leader, said media reports. In October 2011, the US State Department had listed Baghdadi as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and announced a reward of up to USD 10 million for information leading to his capture...

<p>Interesting, not because it’s a surprise that Ron Paul’s son feels this way — remember this? — but because this is a subject that every Republican in the field, Rand included, would probably prefer to avoid during the primaries.</p> <p>Or am I wrong about that? Could this be a smart play for Paul, especially given how it’ll make Jeb Bush squirm?</p>

The head of the Islamic State is reportedly injured so badly he can barely move, Kareem Shaheen at The Guardian reports. "Sources tell us Baghdadi is still alive, but still unable to move due to spinal injury sustained in the March air strike," Shaheen tweeted. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who last year declared himself caliph of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh), was reportedly wounded in a US-led airstrike in March. Martin Chulov at The Guardian, who last week broke the news of the airstrike, also says his sources tell him Baghdadi is still alive and being...