Free Republic

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)A documentary filmmaker who spent time with the Free Syrian Army said that moderate rebels are “laughing” at President Obama’s plan to arm them against the Islamic State, claiming they simply “don’t take this seriously.” Matthew VanDyke, an American filmmaker and a friend of executed journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, spoke with Fox News’s Shepard Smith about the White House’s plan to arm and train thousands of rebels affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, a more moderate rebel group that’s friendly with the West, in order to encourage them to fight the Islamic State. VanDyke warned that removing the...

Matthew VanDyke didn't go into Libya to be in the middle of a war. The 31-year-old freelance journalist from Baltimore thought Moammar Gadhafi would be ousted from power by the time he arrived in early March. He would report on the changes sweeping the country and help friends he had met on previous visits build a new country. But VanDyke hasn't been heard from since mid-March, when he called his mother and girlfriend on a cellphone with a scratchy connection while on a truck headed from the rebel stronghold of Benghazi to the town of Brega. (snip) The journalist decided...

Hollie McKay February 27, 2015 Just 12 miles north of the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul, an American filmmaker and self-styled revolutionary is running a boot camp for Christians willing and able to fight for their lives and faith against the murderous Islamic terror organization. Matthew VanDyke, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who escaped a Libyan prison after going there to help overthrow Col. Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, is helping to train hundreds of long-persecuted Assyrian Christians in everything from firearms to close quarters combat. VanDyke, who founded the security contracting firm company Sons of Liberty (SOLI), is working with an unnamed...

Just 12 miles north of the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul, an American filmmaker and self-styled revolutionary is running a boot camp for Christians willing and able to fight for their lives and faith against the murderous Islamic terror organization. Matthew VanDyke, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who escaped a Libyan prison after going there to help overthrow Col. Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, is helping to train hundreds of long-persecuted Assyrian Christians in everything from firearms to close quarters combat. VanDyke, who founded the security contracting firm company Sons of Liberty (SOLI), is working with an unnamed U.S. military veteran to get...

Assyrian Christians in the Nineveh Plain, with the help of a group of Americans, are building a fighting machine to stand toe-to-toe with the Islamic State group to preserve their homeland, their history and their heritage. The Nineveh Plain Protection Unit, or NPU, is a battalion of 350 to 500 men trained by Sons of Liberty International, an American-led nonprofit group aimed at “stepping in where governments in the international community have failed.” SOLI founder Matthew VanDyke of New York, a filmmaker who became a freedom fighter in the Libyan civil war and spent six months as a prisoner of...