Free Republic

By a 3-2 majority, the highest military appeals court has upheld Army Ranger 1st  Lt. Michael Behenna's conviction for the unpremediated murder of a detainee and al-Qaeda-operative in Iraq named Ali Mansur. While Michael still could receive clemency, his legal appeals are now officially exhausted. Barring clemency, Michael will remain at Leavenworth military prison until 2024. What a blow. What a disgrace.I just finished reading the majority opinion. It is a chilling document. It contains analysis of whether Michael had "the right to act in self-defense" when the detainee he was questioning about IED attacks that had recently killed two...

LTC West speaks about his actions in Iraq.

Amid all the stories about the ongoing violence in Syria, the most disturbing is the possibility that Syrian President Bashar Assad could either deploy the arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that his government claims it has, or provide it to terrorists. There are suggestions that at least some of Assad's supposed stockpile may have come from Saddam Hussein's frantic, 11th-hour efforts in 2002 to hide his own weapons of mass destruction arsenals in nearby Syria. Various retired Iraqi military officers have alleged as much. Although the story was met with general neglect or scorn from the U.S. media, the...

There is a degree of panic, and rightly so, over whether the Syrian tyrant Basher al Assad will use chemical weapons against either his own people or foreign attackers. His regime has this week threatened to do the latter, thus finally confirming what was long suspected but never openly admitted, that Syria possesses chemical weapons. It is believed to have believed to have mustard gas as well as nerve agents such as tabun, sarin and VX. The fear is either that the Assad regime uses them or that they fall into the hands of Hezbollah, al Qaeda or other Islamic...

For how long have people with common sense had to listen to the pure garbage being produced in mass quantities by the "left-wing," "progressives," "anti-war," "occupy," "peace activist," yada, yada, yada crowd? These thugs, censors, and condescending bigots have been claiming for years that Syria has no weapons of mass destruction (see here and here), even though some of us have been warning to the contrary for years (see here and here). Well... guess... what... the Associated Press announced today that: The Syrian regime threatened Monday to use its chemical and biological weapons in case of a foreign attack, in...

When I learned world geography, the nation of Syria-Iraq was a single country like Czecho-Slovakia. I think its time to unify Syria-Iraq again.

In the 1980s, it was Afghanistan to which international Islamic fighters came, helping the mujahedeen successfully take on the Soviet army and its puppet regime in Kabul. Then came Bosnia in the 1990s and Iraq in the 2000s, in both of which veteran jihadists fought a sectarian war on behalf of outgunned Sunni minorities.In 2012, they’re flocking to Syria With funding from private organizations in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, they are making their way across the frontiers from Iraq and Jordan, hooking up with opposition elements in Syria and taking the battle to Damascus and the heart of the...

With the days and weeks of the Syrian government appearing numbered, the Central Intelligence Agency is scrambling to get a handle on the locations of the country’s chemical and biological weapons, while assessing the composition, loyalties, and background of the rebel groups poised to take power in the event President Bashar al-Assad falls. Whether or not sensitive weapons technology was moved to Syria is a hotly disputed question in the intelligence community. James Clapper, now the Director of National Intelligence and formerly the director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, said in 2003 that he believed materials had been moved...

A string of bomb attacks across Iraq killed at least 50 people on Monday and wounded 144 more, police and hospital sources said, in one of the bloodiest days in the past weeks. Violence in Iraq has eased since the height of sectarian slaughter in 2006-2007, but insurgents still carry out deadly attacks, especially around the capital, and deadly car bombs on Sunday shattered a lull in violence in the lead-up to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which started on Saturday. …

In other words, the independent panel in the Fort Hood jihad massacre said it's OK to slaughter US soldiers in the cause of Islam just as long as ....... you don't offend Islam. Major Hassan was a self-proclained soldier of allah. He came out as a jihadi on grand rounds. The other doctors who worked with him would whisper among themselves that he was a ticking time bomb, but were reluctant to report him lest they be labeled racistislamophobicantimuslimbigots. And this dhimmi panel agreed. Regardless of the facts: Below, Major Hasan's Islamic power point presentation, made on grand rounds. Hasanonislam.bmp...

Obama administration officials tell The Daily Beast that the CIA has sent officers to the region to assess Syria’s weapons program. James Clapper, now the Director of National Intelligence and formerly the director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, said in 2003 that he believed materials had been moved out of Iraq in the months before the war and cited satellite imagery.

Syrian security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad pounded rebel hideouts in Damascus today in retaliation for the blast that killed three top anti- insurgency leaders. The troops used helicopters and heavy artillery against the rebels, while snipers took up positions on rooftops on the outskirts of the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mailed statement. “The regime has gone mad,” Rima Flaihan, spokeswoman for the Local Coordination Committees in Syria, said in a telephone interview today from Jordan. “The regime is in a horrid state of savagery, seeking revenge for the killings of the military...

Syrian rebels took control of all border crossings between Iraq and Syria on Thursday, Baghdad's deputy interior minister told AFP. "All the border points between Iraq and Syria are under the control of the Free Syrian Army," Adnan al-Assadi told AFP by telephone. "The border points and all the outposts are under the control of the Free Syrian Army. "The Syrian army are focusing on Damascus." Assadi also said there was fighting under way between the Syrian army and rebels across the border from the northern Iraqi region of Sinjar. The top official said Iraqi border guards had witnessed the...

Rebels attacked Syrian forces Thursday on two spots along the nation's porus border with Iraq, killing 21 soldiers and seizing control of one of the four major border posts, a senior Iraqi army official said. The assaults against Syria's government unfolded throughout the day, putting the Iraqi army on high alert to prevent any violence from spilling across the border. "We have security concerns because the border crossing now is out of the Syria government's control, and nobody can anticipate what will happen," said Iraqi Army Brig. General Qassim al-Dulaimi. Al-Duliami said about a half-dozen rebels stormed the Syrian border...

War On Terror: As the regime of Bashar Assad disintegrates, the security of his chemical arsenal is in jeopardy. The No. 2 general in Saddam Hussein's air force says they were the WMDs we didn't find in Iraq. King Abdullah of neighboring Jordan warned that a disintegrating Syria on the verge of civil war puts Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons at risk of falling into the hands of al-Qaida. "One of the worst-case scenarios as we are obviously trying to look for a political solution would be if some of those chemical stockpiles were to fall into unfriendly hands," he...

As the news stories mount regarding Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s decision to move his chemical weapons stockpile from storage to areas closer to rebel locations, there is one thing the mainstream media is not commenting on: How Syria acquired what is reported to be one of the world’s largest arsenals of bio-chemical WMD? More to the point, what they are not reporting is this: From where did the Assad regime acquire their bio-chemical WMD? In 2006, former Iraqi general, Georges Sada, who served under Saddam Hussein before he defected, wrote a comprehensive book detailing how the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard...

This is an update to the December 2011 Article. The major change is that the consolidation of Operational Commands point toward 11 total ISF Corps in Wartime [10 Frontal/1 Reserve] and the 4 developing IA Peacetime Corps being the basis of the Wartime Army structure. Diyala, Samarra, and Kirkuk Operational Commands are consolidating into the Tigris Command. Karbala, Wasit, and Mid-Euphrates Operational Command have consolidated into the Furat Awsat Command. Instead of expanding commands at the corps/army level, the ISF appears to be reducing them to a peacetime IA Corps structure. Additionally, Kurdish elements are not being integrated – instead...

Link only due to Bloomberg content

Last week's publicized defection of the Tlass family marked a potential turning point for Syria's al Assad regime. The Tlass family formed the main pillar of Sunni support for the minority Alawite regime. The patriarch of the family, former Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass, had a strategic, brotherly bond with late Syrian President Hafez al Assad. cut But blood still runs thick in clan politics, and as Sunni blood was spilling into Syria's streets in the current uprising, the Tlass family likely felt growing pressure to side with its fellow Sunnis. Perhaps more critical, the Tlass family assessed it was time...

What does Kevin O'Reilly know about Fast and Furious, when did he know it, and why was he spirited off to a job in Iraq that he was not in line for? Why did his Iraq office change the phone number the day after Pajamas Media called and asked to speak with O'Reilly? Virginia Ramadan was expected to ascend to the directorship of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau for Iraq (INL-Iraq). She didn't. O'Reilly did. O'Reilly was serving as a White House National Security advisor during the time of Fast and Furious. One of the star participants, Alcohol...