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"Our U.S. Army contacts in the area have told us...There was no Syrian “chemical weapons attack.” Instead, a Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria ammunition depot that turned out to be full of noxious chemicals and a strong wind blew the chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where many consequently died. This is what the Russians and Syrians have been saying and – more important –what they appear to believe happened."

President Trump said Thursday night that the United States had carried out a missile strike in Syria on Thursday night in response to the Syrian government’s chemical weapons attack this week that killed more than 80 civilians. A senior military official said that 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles had hit Al Shayrat airfield in Syria. The missiles were aimed at Syrian fighter jets and other infrastructure but did not target anything that may have had chemical weapons. He said that no Russian planes were at the airfield and that the cruise missiles did not target any Russian facilities.

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton spoke out Thursday about how she would respond to Tuesday's chemical attack in Syria, promoting U.S. action to prevent further attacks with civilian casualties. Speaking at the Women in the World summit in New York City, Clinton said that the U.S. "should have been more willing to confront [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad]," before Russia got involved in the country's civil war and with Iran's participation limited to ground-based assistance.

Barack Obama‘s CIA Director John O. Brennan targeted Trump supporters for enhanced surveillance, intelligence sources confirm to GotNews’ Charles C. Johnson. The surveillance took place between Trump’s election on November 8 and the inauguration in January, according to White House and House intelligence sources. The focus was on General Mike Flynn, billionaire Erik Prince, and Fox News host Sean Hannity — all of whom had close ties to Trump before and after the November election and had helped the future president with managing his new diplomatic responsibilities. Hannity was targeted because of his perceived ties to Julian Assange, say our...

MIGRANTS attempting to march across Europe have been waving placards saying ‘open or die’ after being stopped by closed borders and barbed wire.A group of men waving the menacing home-made banner grew angry as they were stopped in their tracks at the border between Macedonia and Greece. Macedonia is the latest country to erect a border fence. The tiny, landlocked state has begun building a fence along its border with Greece, blocking a key transit route for migrants travelling from Turkey to northern and western Europe. Macedonia insists it will allow those fleeing war-zones to continue to pass through, meaning...

The latest estimates say that the Assad regime has hundreds of tons of mustard gas, a blister agent, and large stockpiles of sarin and possibly VX, both of which are nerve agents -- all of which can be launched by Scud missiles, artillery, or aircraft, according to Charles Blair, a specialist in chemical and biological weapons at the Federation of American Scientists. "I've heard that Syria has 100 to 200 missiles with nerve agents loaded and ready to go, but that seems extreme," said Blair, noting that the nerve agents are usually stored separately from the weapons and that exact...

As many as 13,000 people, most of them civilian opposition supporters, have been executed in secret at a prison in Syria, Amnesty International says. A new report by the human rights group alleges that mass hangings took place every week at Saydnaya prison between September 2011 and December 2015. Amnesty says the alleged executions were authorised at the highest levels of the Syrian government.

Barack Obama’s plan for military intervention in Syria was abruptly derailed by David Cameron and British members of parliament, US secretary of state John Kerry claimed on Thursday. The American president said he would bomb the Syrian regime if it used chemical weapons but he did not follow through on his promise. The failure to enforce his stated “red line” after President Bashar al-Assad used sarin gas in a Damascus suburb in August 2013 is seen by some as the worst stain on Obama’s legacy. The British parliament’s vote against air strikes has long been cited by Obama and others...

Syria would be divided into informal zones of regional power influence and Bashar al-Assad would remain president for at least a few years under an outline deal between Russia, Turkey and Iran, sources say. Such a deal, which would allow regional autonomy within a federal structure controlled by Assad's Alawite sect, is in its infancy, subject to change and would need the buy-in of Assad and the rebels and, eventually, the Gulf states and the United States, sources familiar with Russia's thinking say.

John F. Kerry was late to his own party. Staffers, journalists and other officials were gathered in the ornate Benjamin Franklin salon at the State Department on Dec. 14 for early Christmas festivities. But the secretary of State was nowhere to be seen. Kerry was on the telephone to various world leaders, trying to find out about a major diplomatic meeting — from which the United States had been excluded. The gathering, which sought to broker a resolution to the devastating Syrian conflict, took place six days later in Moscow and involved the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey.

A top US commander warns Caribbean and South American countries are unable to track 100 foreign fighters that could return from Syria. Americas The war in Syria has attracted roughly 100 foreign fighters from the Caribbean who could easily make their way to the United States, said the top U.S. military commander for the southern hemisphere. With little ability to track and monitor foreign fighters when they return, it would be relatively easy for those fighters to “walk” north to the U.S. border along the same networks used to traffic drugs and humans, according to Gen. John Kelly, commander of...

A U.S. service member was killed by an improvised explosive device in northern Syria on Thursday, the Pentagon announced in a statement. The service member was killed near Ayn Issa, a town roughly 35 miles northwest of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa. The death marks the first time a U.S. service member has been killed in the country since a contingent of Special Operations forces were deployed there in October 2015 to go after the extremist group.

The weekend report of a German-owned, Ukrainian-chartered ship carrying weapons to Syria should raise questions and alarm bells.  Der Spiegel reported that the Atlantic Cruiser, owned by the German company Bockstiegel, had been chartered by the Ukrainian White Whale company to pick up Iranian-origin cargo in Djibouti.  White Whale said the cargo was "mainly pumps and similar things," according to the German shipping agent.  However, the ship was refused entry for refueling at the port of Limassol, Cyprus after the crew told the Cypriots that the cargo was "weapons and munitions."  The Cruiser tried then to sail for Tartus, Syria,...

US National Intelligence Director James Clapper on Thursday warned that America must be ready for a “large, Armageddon-scale” cyber attack, in remarks made at an annual conference of members of the US intelligence community in Washington DC. “Cyber threats to US national and economic security are increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication and the severity of impact,” Clapper warned. “Although we must be prepared for a large, Armageddon-scale strike that would debilitate the entire US infrastructure, it’s not our belief that that’s the most likely scenario.” […] In a sign of the rising concern over the trend of cyber warfare in...

NORTHERN IRAQ – On the Western side of Mosul, lies a forgotten front crucial to choking off ISIS' lifeline to Syria. Fox News recently made the eight hour trip west from Mosul to the front outside the devastated city of Sinjar and found a small outpost where a handful of men hold off near-daily attacks from ISIS fighters. One soldier manning the post was David Shumock, a 62-year-old Floridian and former U.S. Air Forces pararescueman. The American fights side-by-side with the Kurdish Peshmerga, and serves as medic and trainer to his comrades, as well. Shumock has called the dusty, makeshift,...

From:brentbbi@webtv.net To: john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2015-12-21 12:09 Subject: Re: HRC, Obama and ISIS That's good, sooner it's clarified the better, and the stronger the better. Re the Trump ISIS video, if we don't have the proof campaign should assign 100 people to look for it ASAP, there is probably something on tape somewhere. p.s. On the UN last week, support it yes, but be careful. I love Kerry like a bro' and support him always as HRC should and does. But be careful about the U.N., support but don't go too far. Putin did not agree to anything about removing Assad...

Clinton's secret arms dealing -- and how it led to disaster in Libya. Hillary Clinton led the charge in the Obama administration to go to war in Libya. Her objective was to overthrow the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Not one to be deterred by opponents in the Pentagon and Congress to her reckless interventionist plans, Hillary decided to end-run them. Her State Department helped facilitate what Andrew P. Napolitano in his scathing article has called “Hillary’s secret war.” When the secret war began to backfire, as arms ended up in the hands of anti-American jihadists, Hillary Clinton and other...

The long-awaited dream for most conservatives finally arrived, and Donald Trump did not disappoint. For the better part of the last year and a half, most if not all Republicans and Tea Party faithful had dreamed of a Trump-Clinton throw-down on a debate stage. Last night in Las Vegas did not disappoint us..... The brawl at the Thomas and Mack Center actually began rather quietly, for the first few questions regarding the Supreme Court and the appointment of a new Justice. The sparring politicians were polite with no interruptions or insults. Each allowed the other to make their case about...

Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has called on Muslims to kidnap Westerners, particularly Americans, who could then be exchanged for jailed jihadists including a blind Egyptian cleric convicted in 1995 of conspiring to attack the United Nations and other New York landmarks. In a wide ranging audio interview, the al Qaeda leader expressed solidarity with the Muslim Brotherhood which is facing a violent crackdown by the army-backed government in Egypt and urged unity among rebels in their fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In seven months of secret debriefings, Saddam Hussein admitted that he faked having weapons of mass destruction but planned on developing a weapons of mass destruction program with nuclear capability within a year. Saddam made the admissions in videotaped interviews with George L. Piro, an FBI agent who was assigned by the FBI with the CIA’s approval to try to develop his cooperation. For my book "The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to the Next Attack" — being published this week — Piro described the debriefings, which have never been previously revealed. [To get Ronald Kessler's new book, go...