Free Republic

Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) is taking criticism after a video showed her taking about the "crazy" people in her state and promising to advise liberal activists on how to "stop your state from becoming Arizona." Carlson reported that in April 2006, Sinema wrote that illegal immigrants who die trying to sneak into the U.S. are morally equivalent to Americans dying in the Iraq War. Sinema drew the comparison in an email to a Yahoo! group called "Local to Global Justice, which reads in part: To state that immigration is not a war or is not equal in magnitude to war,...

Khashoggi never had much time for western-style pluralistic democracy. In the 1970s he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, which exists to rid the Islamic world of western influence. He was a political Islamist until the end, recently praising the Muslim Brotherhood in the Washington Post. He championed the ‘moderate’ Islamist opposition in Syria, whose crimes against humanity are a matter of record. Khashoggi frequently sugarcoated his Islamist beliefs with constant references to freedom and democracy. But he never hid that he was in favour of a Muslim Brotherhood arc throughout the Middle East. His recurring plea to bin Salman in his...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s threat to remove any mayors chosen in local elections next March deemed to be “contaminated by terrorism” is a rejection of democracy and an attempt to scare voters away from the main pro-Kurdish party, one of its members of parliament said. Turkish authorities stepped up pressure on the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) following the breakdown of a ceasefire with Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in July 2015. The government says the HDP is, in effect, the political wing of the PKK. The crackdown gained momentum after a failed coup a year later that...

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) – Syria’s Kurds “have been great partners,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday evening in Washington DC, as he addressed a conference of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA.)Pompeo affirmed that the Kurds would be party to negotiations over Syria’s political future.“We are now driving,” he said, stressing that last word, “to make sure that they have a seat at the table.”Pompeo is the most senior US official to affirm a long-term commitment to Syria’s Kurds.Previously, Amb. James Jeffrey, who was appointed Pompeo’s Representative for Syria Engagement in late August,...

Xelil Åžirvan, a commander of a group of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, told Sputnik that a US military base had been detected near the town of Al-Qa'im in northwest Iraq on the border with Syria. "According to our data, the United States has set up a new military base in the strategically important region of Al-Qa'im in Anbar province on the Iraqi-Syrian border. Americans are building up their military presence in the region, which is why Iraqi government forces have sent more military reinforcements to Al-Qa'im to boost border protection," he said. A spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led...

Iraqi social media star and model Tara Fares has been shot dead in Baghdad….The former Miss Baghdad, and first runner-up for Miss Iraq, was killed on Thursday after gunmen opened fire on her Tara was a Christian and “famous for her bold clothing and posts on social media.” Those attributes sealed her fate, along with that of other women in her country who fly in the face of the Sharia, such as the human rights activist, Suaad al-Ali, who “was shot and killed in an outdoor market by an unknown gunman” two days before. Last month, “two well-known women in...

The World Court, the highest United Nations tribunal, on Wednesday ordered the United States to ensure that sanctions against Iran do not impact humanitarian aid or civil aviation safety.

A new attempt by Hamas to entice Israeli children to play with incendiary balloons includes choosing colorful balloons and attaching lights and toys to them, Yediot Ahronot reported. According to the report, a cluster of balloons recently found in the Eshkol Region was attached to an explosive toy. The balloons, found late at night, were colorful and included colorful flashing lights. Kibbutz Be'eri's secretary, Yaniv Hagi, told Yediot Aharonot: "Incendiary balloons land in our kibbutz at all hours of day and night. They arrive with flashing and sparkling lights, and some of the balloons have smiley faces on them, so...

Iran feels it can target Israel, the US or Saudi Arabia when the time comes. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fired six ballistic missiles “east of the Euphrates” in Syria to retaliate for an attack on the IRGC in Ahvaz on September 22. The attack shows Iran’s reach throughout the region and that Iran is willing to strike wherever it pleases and knows that air defense systems in Iraq and those by the Coalition in eastern Syria will not interdict it. The targeting of ISIS in Syria by Iran is a major escalation, primarily because the missiles overflew Iraq...

This is the reality: A career diplomat crossing European borders in a rented car while carrying a professionally-made bomb, which bears a design favored by jihadists. In Luxembourg, he hands over the bomb to two would-be terrorists, long-standing residents of Europe who just look like any ordinary young married couple. They accept it with a clear mission in mind: to bomb a political rally in the largest convention center in France, located in the suburbs of Paris. If the plot is successful, it will kill many among the tens of thousands of people in attendance, among who were hundreds of...

Over the past decade, the mass media has made a concerted effort to alter the public’s perception of two very different foreign policy “scandals”: the Cox Report and the infamous “16 words” in George W. Bush’s most recent State of the Union Address. The differences between how the so-called mainstream media – CBS, NBC, ABC, Time Magazine, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report and the New York Times – could not be more obvious. Whereas the media single out George W. Bush for blame over the “16 words,” they deflect criticism of Bill Clinton’s role in transferring nuclear secrets to...

The State Department is temporarily closing the U.S. Consulate in the southern Iraqi city of Basra and evacuating all diplomats stationed there, following a rocket attack early Friday morning. Although there were no casualties, concerns back in Washington grew. The decision comes out of concern for the safety of U.S. personnel stationed in that Iraqi city near the border with Iran. In a statement released Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cited "repeated incidents of fire" from Iranian-backed militias. "I have made clear that Iran should understand that the United States will respond promptly and appropriately to any such attacks,"...

The former Miss Baghdad, and first runner-up for Miss Iraq, was killed on Thursday after gunmen opened fire on her in the capital’s Camp Sarah neighborhood, according to a statement by Iraq’s Interior Ministry, which is investigating the incident. Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Saad Maan told an Iraqi TV station that two motorcyclists shot Fares while she was inside a vehicle. The 22-year-old, a Christian whose father was Iraqi and mother Lebanese, was living in Erbil, but visited the capital occasionally. She was famous for her bold clothing and posts on social media.

President Trump on Tuesday took aim at Iran in a defiant address to the United Nations, calling on world leaders to join the U.S. in isolating Tehran over its "aggression." Trump used a large portion of his address to tout his administration's plans to launch a "campaign of economic pressure" aimed at starving Iran of money it would use "to advance its bloody agenda" in the Middle East and beyond. The president noted his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Obama-era nuclear agreement between Iran and other world powers and stressed that many sanctions would be reimposed on Iran...

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi authorities have deprived Turkish soldiers, deployed in northern Iraq to combat Kurdish militias, from visas to return to their bases as means to cut down the number of troops which Baghdad had repeatedly demanded to pull out. Watheq al-Hashemi, director of al-Nahrain Center for Strategic Studies, an Iraqi government-affiliated think tank, told Almaalomah website that the Iraqi government has unilaterally decided not to grant Turkish soldiers on leave at their homeland visas to return to the Turkish military base in Bashiqa region, north of Iraq. According to Hashemi, the measure, adopted over the past months, has helped...

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – A Saudi-owned newspaper has claimed that Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has moved to Afghanistan via Iranian territories. Quoting Pakistani security and other extremist group sources, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported that Baghdadi arrived in Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan after crossing Iranian territories via the eastern city of Zahedan. According to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, IS manages a location to host its fighters in Zahedan in cooperation with the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Al-Baghdadi has been reported killed or wounded on a number of occasions. Last month, Baghdadi was reported to be...

Nations that struck the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, except for the United States, meet on Monday in what many diplomats fear may prove a quixotic effort to keep the agreement alive after U.S. sanctions targeting Iranian oil exports resume in November. Ministers from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Iran will gather in New York at 8 p.m. EDT on Monday (0000 GMT Tuesday) to grapple with U.S. President Donald Trump’s May 8 decision to withdraw from the deal and restore the full force of U.S. sanctions on Iran. Their delicate, and perhaps unrealistic, task is to build a case...

All of this diplomatic traffic is about the impending Syrian military operation into the Idlib province of Syria where around three million are living. The Syrian army, backed by Russia, is aiming to eliminate the jihadist terrorists, which have been controlling the province since early 2017. Turkey has 12 military outposts around Idlib, as part of a three-way agreement with Russia and Iran. Turkey has three main concerns: First, a large-scale operation without distinguishing civilians from terrorists can create a huge catastrophe. Second, it can kick another influx from Syria towards Turkey, complicating the already difficult refugee problem in the...

The Trump administration has made clear that its top priority in the Middle East is to thwart Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions. So why is it so reluctant to lift a finger against Tehran’s most audacious gambit in Syria? That gambit is the reconquest, by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Russian allies, of Idlib Province, the last major rebel holdout in western Syria and home to about three million people. A humanitarian catastrophe is expected to follow, entailing mass casualties and another tidal wave of refugees.

President Trump reportedly wanted to immediately and publicly acknowledge that U.S.-led forces engaged Russian mercenaries in Syria earlier this year, killing hundreds of them, but senior National Security Council staff, led then by H.R. McMaster, intervened, saying it would be unnecessarily antagonizing to Moscow. The president is said to have wanted White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to immediately acknowledged and “take credit” for fending off the Russian mercenaries.