Free Republic

A US$5000 bounty has been put on the head of the Afghan soldier who shot dead three Australian Diggers. Some 10,000 posters and handbills are being distributed across Oruzgan Province, offering the reward for information leading to the capture of Sgt Hekmatullah who murdered 40-year-old Lance Corporal Stjepan Milosevic, 23-year-old Private Robert Poate and 21-year-old Sapper James Thomas Martin.

ABC reporter Arlette Saenz reported for The Note on Joe Biden’s speech Sunday in the Green Bay area, including this statement: "In Afghanistan, we have lost 1,980 fallen angels as of yesterday, and I’m precise because every single one of those lives deserves to be recognized. Wrong: The U.S. death toll in Afghanistan at the end of August was 2,101. Biden somehow subtracted from the Defense Department count, ignoring three civilian casualties and 118 soldiers who died elsewhere after medical evaluation. Did they not deserve to be recognized? Saenz led with Biden attacking Paul Ryan for failing to admit in...

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- The training of Afghan Local Police recruits by U.S. special operations troops has been halted because of 45 NATO deaths this year, military officials said. The training break was called to allow for more extensive background checks on Afghan police and military recruits, past and present, NATO spokesman Col. Thomas Collins told CNN. Insurgents have increasingly been infiltrating the ranks of recruits and gunning down their trainers, the report said. In the past month alone, 15 U.S. soldiers were killed by Afghan recruits, The New York Times said. Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Seddiqi...

The senior commander for Special Operations forces in Afghanistan has suspended training for all new Afghan recruits until the more than 27,000 Afghan troops working with his command can be re-vetted for ties to the insurgency. The move comes as NATO officials struggle to stem the tide of attacks on NATO forces by their Afghan colleagues. The attacks, which have killed 45 troops this year, have forced NATO officials to acknowledge a painful truth: Many of the incidents might have been prevented if existing security measures had been applied correctly. But numerous military guidelines were not followed — by Afghans...

August 16, 2012: Seven American soldiers were killed Thursday when their helicopter crashed in Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter, although the insurgency often exaggerates its victories and is quick to claim responsibility for any incident involving foreign troop deaths. The area where the helicopter went down is an insurgent hotbed and supply route, lying north of Kandahar city near volatile Zabul and Uruzgan provinces. This story is still developing. R.I.P.

A senior U.S. Army soldier was killed along with a couple of majors by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, and three special forces soldiers were gunned down by an Afghan commander who had won their trust and invited them to dinner. The suicide bomber struck Wednesday as a group of U.S. military and civilian officials from the 4th brigade, 4th Infantry Division were in Sarkowi in Kunar Province, which is located in eastern Afghanistan. The suicide attacker detonated an explosive vest near the group. Killed in the attack were Command Sgt. Maj. Kevin J. Griffin, 45, of Laramie, Wyo., the...

"We can understand why Obama is doing this," syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said about the president's 'kill list.' "Why they clearly leaked this to the press. They want obama to look tough, hawkish and part of that is what is happening around the world. You look at massacres in Syria, he is standing by. You look at negotiations with Iran over it nukes, they're going nowhere. There is a collapse in Baghdad. Look at the way that the Russians are treating the United States. Putin dissing Obama personally by not showing up at the G8 summit or the NATO summit...

A US soldier has killed 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, after entering their homes in Kandahar. Sky sources said the Afghan victims also included women and elderly men. Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Asadullah Khalid, who is investigating the incident, said the soldier entered three homes, killing 11 people in the first one. The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) coalition confirmed the incident but did not release the number of killed or injured. Sky defence reporter Mark Stone said: "Details are still sketchy and various death tolls have emerged. "It appears to be an isolated incident and...

ABC News’ Jake Tapper and Luis Martinez report: Two days ago President Obama authorized the deployment to Uganda of approximately 100 combat-equipped U.S. forces to help regional forces “remove from the battlefield” – meaning capture or kill – Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and senior leaders of the LRA. The forces will deploy beginning with a small group and grow over the next month to 100. They will ultimately go to Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with the permission of those countries. The president made this announcement in a letter...

Barack Obama was a principled opponent of the Iraq War from its beginning. But when he became president in January 2009, he was handed a war that was won. The surge had succeeded. Al-Qaida in Iraq had been routed, driven to humiliating defeat by an Anbar Awakening of Sunnis fighting side-by-side with the infidel Americans. Even more remarkably, the Shiite militias had been taken down, with American backing, by the forces of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. They crushed the Sadr militias from Basra to Sadr City. Al-Qaida decimated. A Shiite prime minister taking a decisively nationalist line. Iraqi Sunnis...

Iraq's defense chief has said his military will not be fully ready to defend Iraq from external threats until 2020 to 2024, according to a U.S. inspector's report released on Sunday. Lieutenant General Babakir Zebari has repeatedly warned that Iraq's security forces, rebuilt after the 2003 invasion that ousted strongman Saddam Hussein, would not be ready for years. President Barack Obama announced on October 21 that American troops would fully withdraw from Iraq by year-end, as scheduled under a 2008 security pact between the two countries. Both Iraqi and U.S. military leaders have said the army and police are capable...

If there were questions about al-Qaida’s role in post-Gadhafi Libya, VICE reporter Sherif Elhelwa provides some answers in a new story with eyewitness descriptions. Al-Qaida flags, Elhelwa reports, are popping up around Benghazi. At the city courthouse, which played a prominent role in the Libyan revolution, residents are flying the late terrorist’s Osama bin Laden’s colors. Similarly, Elhelwa recounts a regular evening sight: “Islamists driving brand-new SUVs and waving the black al Qaeda flag drive the city’s streets at night.”

The bodies of 53 people, believed to be supporters of ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, has been found in a hotel that was under the control of anti-Gadhafi fighters, Human Rights Watch said Monday. The rights group said it found the bodies clustered together at Hotel Mahari in Sirte on Sunday. About 20 residents were putting the bodies in body bags to prepare them for burial when Human Rights Watch found them. "We found 53 decomposing bodies, apparently (Gadhafi) supporters, at an abandoned hotel in Sirte, and some had their hands bound behind their backs when they were shot," said...

While Libya’s former rebels and many Western nations welcomed the end of the country’s long and brutal dictatorship, many sub-Saharan Africans are mourning the death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, celebrated as much for his largesse as for his willingness to stand up to the West.... “We are the 1 percent who are not celebrating,” said Salim Abdul, who helps run a major mosque in Uganda’s capital named for the former Libyan leader, who provided the money to build it. “He loved Uganda,” said Mr. Abdul in an interview at the mosque, in Kampala. He noted that Colonel Qaddafi had committed...

(Reuters) - Russia believes that Muammar Gaddafi should have been treated as a prisoner of war according to the Geneva Conventions and should not have been killed, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday, calling for an investigation into his death. "We have to lean on facts and international laws. They say that in a course of armed conflicts international humanitarian rules written in Geneva conventions are enforced," Lavrov said in a radio interview. Gaddafi died in unclear but bloody circumstances shortly after the fugitive former strongman was captured by transitional government forces on Thursday, two months after he was...

President Obama has dispatched 100 troops to Central Africa on a humanitarian mission to help track down a fugitive wanted for crimes against humanity. The contingent of special-operations forces began arriving Wednesday in Uganda to help train its army to search for Joseph Kony and what remains of his Lord’s Resistance Army that has terrorized Central Africa for more than 20 years. (SNIP) More troops will be sent to South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. President Obama said the “combat-equipped” troops will provide information advice and assistance to national forces and would not...

Thug. (TPM) — Teamsters union president James Hoffa would say it all again if he could, he told TPM Monday. Hoffa riled up Fox News and the right wing Monday with a Labor Day speech in Detroit in which he called Republican members of Congress “sons of bitches” and said union workers are ready to “go to war” with the tea party next year and “take out” Republicans at the ballot box. Hoffa said he’d say the exact same words all over again. “I would because I believe it,” he said. “They’ve declared war on us. We didn’t declare war...

Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links Mr al-Hasidi...added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader". His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries". Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, 5 years later released from GITMO and then...

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Hundreds of Islamist militants were among the prisoners freed from a notorious Tripoli prison this week, according to a former Libyan jihadist. The freed militants had been imprisoned in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison by Moammar Gadhafi's regime during the height of the insurgency in Iraq, according to Noman Benotman, once a senior figure in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Benotman said he believes as many as 600 militants may have been among the prison population at Abu Salim. It's not known how many prisoners were held in the vast facility. Human Rights Watch said Gadhafi's prisons...

For Barack Obama, "leading from behind" has never looked so ... decisive. With Libyan rebels celebrating in downtown Tripoli, and Muammar el-Qaddafi apparently in hiding, the president's supporters are claiming vindication for a much-criticized approach to regime change in the Arab world. Obama's strategy amounted to staying resolutely behind the scenes throughout the five-month NATO air operation. To wit: Don't say the United States is openly engaged in ousting Qaddafi. Don't even concede the United States is going to war. Take cover behind a political imprimatur for action from the Arab League and United Nations, and let Europe lead the...