Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rebels fighting to depose Syrian president Bashar al Assad have for the first time acquired a small supply of surface-to-air missiles, according to a news report that a Western official did not dispute. NBC News reported Tuesday night that the rebel Free Syrian Army had obtained nearly two dozen of the weapons, which were delivered to them via neighboring Turkey, whose moderate Islamist government has been demanding Assad's departure with increasing vehemence. Indications are that the U.S. government, which has said it opposes arming the rebels, is not responsible for the delivery of the missiles. But some...

ALEPPO, Syria and BEIRUT, Lebanon | As evidence mounts that foreign Islamists are fighting alongside Syria's increasingly radicalized rebels, Christians in Aleppo and elsewhere are taking up arms, often supplied by the regime. "We saw what happened to the Christians in Iraq," Abu George, a Christian resident of Aleppo's Aziza district told GlobalPost. "What is going on in Aleppo is not a popular revolution for democracy and freedom. The fighters of the so-called Free Syrian Army are radical Sunnis who want to establish an Islamic state." While the 30-year-old shopkeeper said he had not received any direct threats from Syria's...

..... ....When Jacques Rogge refused that request, he did so stating explicitly (according to Israeli reports) that the opening ceremonies were not a fit place to remember the Munich massacre. At that interview, Ms Spitzer asked Rogge point-blank, ‘is it because the athletes are Israeli?’ Mr Rogge remained stone silent. He would not answer the question. ..... As if to remind us that outright discrimination aimed at Israel was not exceptional, but was rather part of the Olympic fabric, we learned several hours before the opening ceremonies that members of the Lebanese judo team were outraged that day because they...

Report: Hezbollah Leader Offers Assad Refuge, Soldiers JULY 25, 2012 9:54 AM Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s Secretary General, has offered refuge in Lebanon and elite military units to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as the latter continues his fight to remain in power. In a recent conversation between the two leaders, Nasrallah told Assad that “Hezbollah’s elite units will stand at the front and fight the rebels,” according to a report in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Gomhoriih. While Syrian diplomats continue to defect – including reports on Wednesday that officials in Cyprus and the United Arab Emirates have left their posts – and...

Egypt denied on Tuesday evening the reports that President Mohammed Morsi had sent a letter to Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres. Dr. Yasser Ali, Morsi’s official spokesman, denied the reports which appeared in the Israeli press and which said that Morsi thanked the Israeli president for his Ramadan greetings and said he is looking forward to Egypt helping to get the peace process “back to its right track.” However, according to a report on the website of the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, Ali described these reports as completely incorrect and stressed that Morsi did not send any letter to Peres. Another report...

Britain will help the Iraqi government dispose of what's left of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons, still stored in two bunkers in north of Baghdad, the British embassy in Baghdad announced Monday. The British Defense Ministry will start training Iraqi technical and medical workers this year, an embassy statement said. The teams will work to safely destroy remnants of munitions and chemical warfare agents left over from Saddam's regime. He was overthrown in 2003 following an American-led invasion. …

The families of 59 Americans killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, including eight from Bucks County, are now legally entitled to seek more than $6 billion in damages from Iran, Hezbollah and any remaining members of the al-Qaida terrorist network. U.S. Magistrate Judge Frank Maas on Monday issued a ruling, which holds the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khomeini, the late Osama bin Laden, and his al-Qaida network responsible as “entities that carried out, or aided and abetted” in the greatest terrorist attack on American soil and the murder of nearly 3,000 people. Maas's decision came on...

ALEPPO, Syria and BEIRUT, Lebanon — As evidence mounts that foreign Islamists are fighting alongside Syria’s increasingly radicalized rebels, Christians in Aleppo and elsewhere are taking up arms, often supplied by the regime. “We saw what happened to the Christians in Iraq,” Abu George, a Christian resident of Aleppo’s Aziza district told GlobalPost. “What is going on in Aleppo is not a popular revolution for democracy and freedom. The fighters of the so-called Free Syrian Army are radical Sunnis who want to establish an Islamic state.” While the 30-year-old shopkeeper said he had not received any direct threats from Syria’s...

Illustrating that the jihadist enterprise transcends all borders, American Islamist groups typically preoccupied with remaking the U.S. have been leaving their fingerprints on the campaign to exchange secular authoritarianism for religious authoritarianism in the Middle East. As these organizations labor stateside to nudge the governing class to embrace Arab Islamists at the expense of liberals — prompting Egyptian intellectual Essam Abdallah to lament that "the most dramatic oppression of the region's civil societies and the Arab Spring … is led by the powerful Islamist lobbies in Washington" — several of the groups' past and current officials have emerged as key...

Army of operatives planning for terror, destruction of the West The Quds Forces, a special Iranian unit of thousands of operatives tasked with exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution, are being told to step up preparations for terrorism for the coming of the last Islamic messiah and the destruction of the West. Ali Saeedi, the Iranian supreme leader’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, emphasized during a Friday sermon in Tehran that the Islamic republic must directly confront America so that the necessary environment is created for the reappearance of Mahdi, the Shiite’s 12th imam, who will kill all infidels and raise the...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim civil rights group that has frequently drawn fire from conservatives, has regained its tax-exempt status. The Washington, D.C.-based CAIR and its related foundation were two of about 275,000 nonprofits that lost tax exempt status last year for not filing tax returns for three years in a row. Last month, the Internal Revenue Service sent a letter to the CAIR-Foundation Inc., saying the nonprofit had regained its tax-exempt status.

Two years ago, July 29, 2010, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich delivered a singularly astute and courageous address. Reactions to that speech across the political spectrum, whether immediate or delayed, illustrated the contemporary equivalent of what the greatest historian of Soviet Communist totalitarianism, Robert Conquest, appositely characterized as "mindslaughter" -- a brilliantly evocative term for delusive Western apologetics regarding the ideology of Communism and the tangible horrors its Communist votaries inflicted. What did Newt Gingrich have the temerity to discuss? In defiance of our era's most rigidly enforced cultural relativist taboo, Mr. Gingrich provided an irrefragably accurate if...

The Obama Administration: Where Irony Goes To Die The only saving grace of having a president devoid of principles, experience, or class is that he and his sycophants, when under pressure, routinely push forward statements and ideas that are so bizarre as to be unbelievable outside a very low-brow comedy routine. For instance. Having suffered through 40 months of economic mismanagement unlike anything we’ve experienced since FDR, we’re told by the president, with no apparent sense of irony, that the private sector is “doing fine” and it is the government sector, that sector which is loss center on the national...

NAJAF, Iraq: A religious academy in Iraq has started training more than 1,500 recruits from Bahrain and other Arab countries in the use of combat weapons, physical resistance and street fighting.The training, which began yesterday at a camp about 5km away from a main road between Najaf and Karbala, is funded by Iran.Apart from members of Hawza Ilmiyya Najab, the religious academy, those being trained include citizens from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Syria and other Arab countries. Their country's national flags were flown over the main gate of the camp during the opening ceremony of the camp.Mohmmed Redha Ali Al Sistani,...

Hizbullah fighters have lately crossed the area of Hawsh al-Sayyed Ali in Hermel to Syria to help Syrian government troops in their fight against rebels, security sources said. The sources told An Nahar daily published on Friday that the militants from the 910 unit of Hizbullah’s Jihad Council are fighting alongside the Syrian forces in the areas of al-Qussair, Homs and al-Rastan. Hizbullah has also a strong military presence in the area of Zabadani, the same sources said. The main battlefront is however in Aleppo where rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad's regime have brought in reinforcements as more...

RB@RBPundit Nancy Pelosi thinks Republican Jews are only in it for the money. WOW. #tcot #p2 30 Jul 12 Reply Retweet Favorite No, really. She disgustingly said that. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims that Republican Jews are “being exploited,” and they don’t really care about Israel. What do they care about? Only tax breaks.

These are not average members of the Free Syrian Army. Abu Khuder and his men fight for al-Qaida. They are one of a number of jihadi organisations establishing a foothold in the east of the country. They hide their presence. "Some people are worried about carrying the [black] flags," said Abu Khuder. "They fear America will come and fight us. So we fight in secret. Why give Bashar and the west a pretext?" But their existence is common knowledge in Mohassen. According to Abu Khuder, his men are working closely with the military council that commands the Free Syrian Army...

WARSAW, POLAND — Fresh from a warm embrace from iconic Polish leader Lech Walesa, Mitt Romney will wrap up a three-country trip overseas Tuesday with a major speech that he hopes will send a message that he's tough and more willing to take a harder line with rogue nations than President Barack Obama is. Romney arrived in Warsaw late Monday after a day in Gdansk, where he enjoyed the most enthusiastic reception of his six-day trip, which was marred by controversies at the first two stops, in London and Jerusalem. He was greeted in Gdansk by crowds that swarmed in...

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney supports a two-state solution to solve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, he told CNN during his visit to Jerusalem. In an interview with the American news network, which took place in Jerusalem on Sunday, Romney was asked if he saw the starting point for negotiations as the borders which existed prior to the 1967 Six Day War. He responded by saying, “I'm not being that specific. I'm saying that there will be borders that have to be negotiated and what the starting point is something which will be decided by the...

WASHINGTON — Improvised explosive devices, like those that have killed and maimed thousands of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, pose a growing threat across Texas and the United States, leading to calls for urgent cooperation between U.S. military experts and civilian law enforcement officers. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, director of the Pentagon's so-called Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, alerted Congress in classified testimony this month to the mounting IED threat at home. He also highlighted the challenges his team faces trying to train stateside law enforcement agencies to detect, disarm and defeat the devices. “The domestic IED...