Free Republic

The U.S. will build up to five military bases for the Somali army in a project that seeks to bolster the Somalian national army's capabilities amid ongoing threats from an extremist group. Somalia’s defense minister and the U.S. charge d’affaires signed a memorandum of understanding Thursday in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. The agreement comes at a time when the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia, known as ATMIS, is scaling back its presence in Somalia.

Iran has attacked multiple US bases across Iraq and Syria, with fires seen rising from the At Tanf base in southern Syria. One american is confirmed dead from the attack on the Al Asad airbase from yesterday. A US destroyer also intercepted and shot down incoming missiles in the Red Sea. Israeli forces will be invading the Gaza Strip within the next few hours. Russian forces have once again taken heavy losses in Kupyansk and Avdiivka as offensive actions have brought catastrophic results to the Russian army… (Video at the link)

On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated that while President Joe Biden’s move to send a carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean is a good move, it was a mistake to give up military facilities in Afghanistan, and that having bases in a country that borders Iran would be useful to help isolate them.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has quietly implemented controversial adolescent health policies throughout the military health system (MHS) that kick in when children turn 12 years old. Because the official policies are hard to find and are not posted publicly at base clinics, most parents are shocked to find out that doctors prefer to treat their adolescent children in a completely parent-free setting. Parents are outraged to be treated as if they cannot be trusted to guide their own children. Here is my story detailing a quest for answers on why online medical record access is limited and why I...

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has approved new names for nine military bases, including Fort Gordon and Fort Benning and other military assests. In a memo released last week, Austin stated that the Department of Defense accepted the Naming Commission’s recommendations for the new names of the military bases. “I fully support the efforts and recommendations of the Naming Commission on this important matter, and I am committed to implementing all of the Commission’s recommendations as soon as possible,” Austin said in the memo. There is a 90-day waiting period until all recommendations made by the commission can...

As a young military service member, Richard Kingsberry said he wasn’t aware that two of the bases where he served had been named after Confederate leaders Braxton Bragg and Robert E. Lee. That realization would happen later, but it helped sparked him to join the effort to see names on military boats, installations and other places removed, saying that they sent the wrong message about the nation’s history and ideals. The effort to remove the namesakes of those who aligned themselves with the Confederacy hit a critical step as the Naming Commission recently put forth several names to replace military...

Federal panel narrows list of recommended names to 87; report due to Congress by Oct. 1 Dwight D. Eisenhower, George C. Marshall, Colin Powell and Harriet Tubman are among 87 candidates who have made the cut for the renaming of nine military installations that honor Confederate figures, including Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia. The federal Naming Commission announced this week it had narrowed its list of recommendations from the more than 34,000 it had received from the public. It stopped soliciting ideas online Dec. 1 and is preparing to submit its final recommendations to Congress by Oct. 1....

All the right moves….. We can expect the national media to go bananas as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has taken a bold step in advancement of federalism with authorization and funding for the formation of a state militia known as the Florida State Guard During an event today in Pensacola Florida, the governor announced the creation of three new state-centric armories to support the new state guard units. One in the former airbase at Homestead, one in Gainesville and one in Malabar. As noted in the release, “The establishment of the Florida State Guard will further support those emergency response...

The Kiribati islands, Cambodia, Denmark, Tanzania, the Seychelles and the UAE. One might be forgiven for thinking that little connects these distant, often far-flung, corners of the globe. For the most part, little does. All except for one thing. Each of these countries has been on China’s wish list for the establishment of military bases as the East Asian giant attempts to expand its global footprint. Most recently, headlines were awash with rumours that the UAE, a key US partner in the Middle East, had begun building a military installation for China. After a swift US intervention in the matter,...

People have tried to sneak onto Air National Guard (ANG) bases 13 different times so far since the start of 2021. ANG Director Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh told Air Force Magazine that, as of Friday, Feb. 19, the service has seen 13 attempted or successful infiltrations of their bases. Loh did not disclose the locations where the security breaches occurred, due to security concerns. Loh said nine of the incidents have occurred at “installation-control points” at the bases. “Most of them come in, they don’t realize that they’re coming on a base, that they’re supposed to stop, and they...

The House Armed Services Committee unanimously passed its version of the defense budget for 2021. Lawmakers passed the$740 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in a 56-to-zero vote on Wednesday. The bill underwent a 14-hour mark-up session before reaching its final form in the House. This is just part of the already extended process of passing the defense bill this year as the coronavirus forced the House mark-up session to be postponed from its originally scheduled date in April. Despite this delay, Democrat lawmakers in both the House and Senate reportedly used the recent nationwide “If there was ever a...

A pair of top Democrats has introduced a bill aimed at blocking President Trump’s plan to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Germany. The bill, introduced by Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) in their respective chambers, would prohibit funding to implement a withdrawal in Europe unless several conditions are met. “The current U.S. troop presence in Germany is in the U.S. national security interest. Full stop,” Menendez said in a statement. “The administration has made no effort to explain how our country is stronger because of this...

Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell says he's "OK" with renaming military bases that are named after Confederate Army officers, declining to side with President Donald Trump and other Republicans opposed to the move. The Kentucky senator said he'll live with whatever lawmakers decide as they debate an annual defence policy bill for the military in the coming weeks. Trump has blasted the calls to rename the military bases. "Hopefully our great Republican Senators won't fall for this!" he said in a tweet last week.

The DNA of life on Earth naturally stores its information in just four key chemicals—guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine, commonly referred to as G, C, A and T, respectively. Now scientists have doubled this number of life’s building blocks, creating for the first time a synthetic, eight-letter genetic language that seems to store and transcribe information just like natural DNA. In a study published on 22 February in Science, a consortium of researchers led by Steven Benner, founder of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Alachua, Florida, suggests that an expanded genetic alphabet could, in theory, also support life....

Damascus (AFP) - The Syrian army on Tuesday night intercepted two Israeli missiles fired towards a district near Damascus, Syria's official SANA news agency said, but a monitor said nine pro-government fighters died in the strike. According to SANA, "anti-aircraft defenses intercepted two Israeli missiles launched against (the district of) Kissweh and destroyed them". The agency had earlier reported "explosions" in the southern suburb, while state television broadcast images of fires in the area targeted by the strikes. Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP that the missiles had targeted a weapons depot...

In case anyone wondered what the Kim regime was up to yesterday, the North Korean state-run media would like to clear up the confusion. The simultaneous launch of four mid-range ballistic missiles was a practice run for the war than Kim Jong-un insists is coming, a little target practice using Uncle Sam as a bulls-eye. The firing range practice got a significant response from the US that raises the stakes for both China and South Korea: North Korea was practicing to strike United States military bases in Japan with its latest barrage of missiles, state media in Pyongyang reported...

Russia is considering plans to restore military bases in Vietnam and Cuba that had served as pivots of Soviet global military power during the Cold War, Russian news agencies quoted Russian Deputy Defence Minister Nikolai Pankov as saying on Friday. "We are dealing with this issue," the agencies quoted Pankov as saying in Russia's parliament.

Forget looking the other way as illegals stream across the southern border. The Obama administration is now looking at having the federal government supply housing to thousands of illegals on several military bases, according to The Washington Examiner. The new surge of illegal immigrant youths has forced the federal government to look at an emergency plan to house them at six military bases at at least two federal worker centers, according to the administration. The Pentagon is beginning "site assessments" at bases as far north as North Dakota and Massachusetts. According to the newspaper, Alabama Republican Rep. Martha Roby unveiled...

WWIII over CIA backed rebels? No thanks. We needed a President and Secretary of State who could stymie Russia on the diplomatic front. We needed a President who was up to the task of managing the world stage. We needed a Commander in Chief who would be either feared or respected by our allies and enemies alike. We don't have that. Instead, we're faced with Middle Eastern chaos, a rapidly expanding global terrorist force, and a refugee crisis that is spreading to every corner of the globe. The President's response has, so far, consisted of a feckless UN speech and...

WWIII over CIA backed rebels? No thanks We needed a President and Secretary of State who could stymie Russia on the diplomatic front. We needed a President who was up to the task of managing the world stage. We needed a Commander in Chief who would be either feared or respected by our allies and enemies alike. We don’t have that. Instead, we’re faced with Middle Eastern chaos, a rapidly expanding global terrorist force, and a refugee crisis that is spreading to every corner of the globe. The President’s response has, so far, consisted of a feckless UN speech and...