Free Republic

New information regarding the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic outpost and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya and on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt has been brought forward by former U.S. military personnel who were on duty that fateful night. These whistleblowers reveal that the attackers in Benghazi were led by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, under the command of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani. “Qassem Suleimani, a fanatical Islamic revolutionary, has rapidly become one of the world’s top terrorist suspects, as well as a powerful and sinister force within Iran” according to The Telegraph. U.S....

The Chinese military is guilty of “irresponsible actions” toward American forces stationed at Djibouti’s Camp Lemonnier on the Horn of Africa, a senior U.S. military intelligence officer said. The home of U.S. military operations in the region and the biggest U.S. base on the continent, Camp Lemonnier is near the People’s Liberation Army’s first overseas military base, and the proximity has been a continuing source of tension. Rear Adm. Heidi Berg, director of intelligence at the U.S. Africa Command, told a small group of African-based journalists in a telephone media roundtable that China tried to “constrain international airspace” by barring...

I will be discussing the alarming escalation of aircraft incidents currently in the news. While the United States copes with many threats in the world today, what I am about to report is by far a chilling development. China has actually fired military-grade lasers targeting U.S. aircraft flying near a U.S. military base in Africa. Sarah Sanders told reporters the following: “There will be near-term and long-term consequences.” This is not the only instance in which Beijing has targeted U.S. aircraft flying over the east African country of Djibouti. According to U.S. defense officials, the lasers were fired from the...

Ships carrying Chinese troops are heading to Djibouti to set up Beijing's first overseas military base, reports state media. China says the support base will be used for peacekeeping and humanitarian aid in Africa and West Asia. It will also be used for military co-operation, naval exercises and rescue missions, Xinhua said.

Everyone wants a piece of Djibouti. It’s all about the bases. ... the New Jersey-sized nation. Yet its quiet stability within the volatile Horn of Africa has made the country of just 875,000 people a hub for the world’s superpowers. ... The stars and stripes flutters alongside the runway where military and passenger planes touch down: Camp Lemmonier, America’s only permanent military base in Africa, hosts 4,500 troops and contractors who conduct missions against al-Qaeda in Yemen and al-Shabab in Somalia. The outpost, leased for $60m a year, shares an airstrip with the international airport, ... Djibouti also hosts France’s...

A senior Chinese military official toured a Chinese warship docked in Djibouti during the weekend and met with the country's president, according to China's defense ministry, underscoring Beijing's efforts to expand its military operations in Africa. Djibouti, an East African country located near vital shipping lanes and terrorism hotspots in Yemen and Somalia, also hosts military bases for the United States and France. Some security analysts have raised concerns that China, which is reported to be in talks about constructing a base in Djibouti, could be seeking to exert more influence in the strategic country, a move that could disrupt...

The skies above the U.S. military's counterterrorism hub on the Horn of Africa have become chronically dangerous, with pilots forced to rely on local air-traffic controllers who fall asleep on the job, commit errors at astronomical rates and are hostile to Americans, documents show. Conditions at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, the base for U.S. pilots flying sensitive missions over Yemen and Somalia, have become so dire that American warplanes and civilian airliners alike are routinely placed in jeopardy, according to federal aviation experts and documents obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act. Unlike other major U.S....

Imagine a small country, the size of Massachusetts, with no arable land, irrigation, or permanent crops, nor any forests. The rocky desert is everywhere, falling all the way to the sea. To ‘cheer one up’, there is the lowest point on land, in Africa (and the third lowest on earth); an eerie crater lake called ‘Lac Assal’ (−155 m). And there are countless rock formations, bare, hostile, and frightening. This tiny country has one of the most strategic locations on earth, at least from the West’s geopolitical interest’s point of view. It lies between Somalia, Ethiopia and what is often...

Safety concerns have shuttered one of the United States' most important -- and most secretive -- bases for drone operations, forcing the American military to move its fleet of unmanned craft away from the international airport in the tiny desert country of Djibouti. Djibouti, whose capital city goes by the same name, is an arid country of just 8,880 square miles (23,000 square kilometers) tucked between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. Its port lies at the nexus of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, along one of the world's busiest shipping routes. And, since 2002, the U.S. military has...

DJIBOUTI CITY, Djibouti — Around the clock, about 16 times a day, drones take off or land at a U.S. military base here, the combat hub for the Obama administration’s counterterrorism wars in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. Some of the unmanned aircraft are bound for Somalia, the collapsed state whose border lies just 10 miles to the southeast. Most of the armed drones, however, veer north across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, another unstable country where they are being used in an increasingly deadly war with an al-Qaeda franchise that has targeted the United States....