Free Republic

On Tuesday, Islamist terrorists affiliated with the Somali group al-Shabaab attacked an upscale hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, killing at least 21. It wasnÂ’t the groupÂ’s first attack in Kenya. The radical group, which at one point was affiliated with al Qaeda, has used KenyaÂ’s heavy Somali refugee presence as cover for a number of attacks in Kenya and against Kenyans, most famously at the Westgate Mall in 2013. That Kenya remains a contributor of both soldiers and police to AMISOM, the African Union Mission in Somalia which seeks to defend the country against al-Shaabab, only puts it further in the...

MSNBC continues to maintain its red wall of silence on Joy Reid. But the ugliness just keeps rising. The old blog posts by the progressive personality reek of every bigotry that the left claims to condemn. And, as Bre Payton at the Federalist notes, there's even a call to ethnically cleanse Jews from Israel. Iran's pres strikes again Says "move Israel to Europe" "You believe the Jews were oppressed, why should the Palestinian Muslims have to pay the price? You oppressed them, so give a part of Europe to the Zionist regime so they can establish any government they want....

<p>The White House demanded that the military draft plans for strikes on Iran after attacks in Iraq last year, sparking concern at the Pentagon and State Department, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, January 13.</p> <p>The report said the move came after a mortar attack launched by an Iran-linked group on the Baghdad diplomatic quarters home to the US embassy in September. No one was hurt by the shells, which landed in an open lot.</p>

FULL TITLE: Trump touts 'long overdue' Syria pullout, says US 'will devastate Turkey economically' if they attack Kurds President Donald Trump on Sunday tweeted that the "long overdue pullout from Syria" is starting, and threatened that the U.S. will "devastate Turkey economically" if they attack Kurdish forces in the war-torn country. Trump said the removal of troops, which he announced via Twitter in December, is happening "while hitting the little remaining ISIS territorial caliphate hard, and from many directions." The president also vowed that the U.S. "Will attack [ISIS] again from existing nearby base if it reforms." Trump promised the...

The Trump administration intends to transfer a U.S. citizen held in Iraq as an enemy combatant for over six months to an unnamed foreign country within 72 hours, it revealed in a court filing on Tuesday afternoon. The detainee has declined to consent to the transfer, according to the government, and a hearing has been set for Thursday morning. The government did not name the country, but a U.S. official confirmed to The Hill that officials are seeking to transfer him to Saudi Arabia. The detainee, known publicly only as John Doe, also holds a citizenship there, The Hill has...

Gol-e-Zard Cave lies in the shadow of Mount Damavand, which at more than 5,000 metres dominates the landscape of northern Iran. In this cave, stalagmites and stalactites are growing slowly over millennia and preserve in them clues about past climate events. Changes in stalagmite chemistry from this cave have now linked the collapse of the Akkadian Empire to climate changes more than 4,000 years ago... It appears that the empire became increasingly dependent on the productivity of the northern lands and used the grains sourced from this region to feed the army and redistribute the food supplies to key supporters....

The substantial request for military support included air raids, logistics and transportation so Turkish forces could finish off the remaining fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in Syria, senior US officials were quoted as saying by the WSJ on Friday. "The Turkish requests are so extensive that, if fully met, the American military might be deepening its involvement in Syria instead of reducing it," the newspaper reported. The unidentified American officials told the Journal there was little chance Washington would agree to Ankara's requests in full. US President Donald Trump announced...

About the only people having a Happy New Year in the Muslim world aren't the Christians who are huddling and waiting out the storm, but the Islamists who use a different calendar but are having the best time of their lives since the last Caliphate. The news that the Obama Administration has brought in genocidal Muslim Brotherhood honcho Yusuf Al-Qaradawi to discuss terms of surrender for the transfer of Afghanistan to the Taliban caps a year in which the Brotherhood and the Salafists are looking up carve up Egypt, the Islamists won Tunisia's elections, Turkey's Islamist AKP Party purged the...

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan started his first day on the job Tuesday with a welcome memo that asserted the Pentagon “remains focused on safeguarding our nation” under the direction of President Trump. “As acting secretary of defense, I now look forward to working with President Trump to carry out his vision alongside strong leaders including the service secretaries, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the combatant commanders, and senior personnel in the Office of the Secretary of Defense,” Shanahan wrote. “The Department of Defense continues to be one of our nation’s bedrock institutions. Our foundational strength lies in the remarkable...

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrian President Bashar Assad authorized Iraqi forces on Sunday to attack the Islamic State group inside Syria without waiting for permission from authorities in Damascus, the state news agency SANA said, as the two allies coordinate their fight against extremists ahead of a planned U.S. withdrawal from Syria. ... On Saturday Assad received a letter from Iraq’s Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi calling for both countries’ coordination in “fighting terrorism.” ... In Tehran, Iran and Syria signed Sunday a long-term strategic and economic agreement as the war winds down in Syria where Iran and Russia were the main...

On its face, Trump’s announcement that he is pulling US forces out of Syria seems like an unfriendly act toward Israel. But it isn’t. On its face, President Donald Trump’s announcement that he is pulling US forces out of Syria seems like an unfriendly act towards Israel. But it isn’t. Trump’s decision to pull US forces out of Syria is of a piece with outgoing US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley’s address on Tuesday to the UN Security Council regarding the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Both statements reflect the depths of the administration’s friendship and support for the State...

US forces are reportedly evacuating their military base near al-Hasakah; The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) still press their operation against ISIS in the Hajin pocket.

(arabic - use google translate) "A security source in Arbil, Kurdistan, the establishment of US forces a new base, is the fifth of its kind in the region........" "In the Shaklawa district northeast of Arbil, within the plan to increase the number of US troops stationed in the northern regions of the country." Local officials in Anbar province, west of Iraq, revealed in previous statements to Al-Maaloumah that American forces had established two new bases in Qaim district adjacent to the Iraqi-Syrian border.

The Department of Defense on Friday tweeted about the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, saying that it's carefully planned and organized. The department described the course of action as being “deliberate, well thought-out, mutually supportive, and controlled,” while also guaranteeing “our troops’ safety and protection.”

President Trump’s foreign policy accomplishments in his first two years are staggering in their success and demonstrate an evolving set of principles upon which the president is acting. From muting the North Korean missile and nuclear threat, to mostly defeating ISIS in Iraq and Syria, to countering Russia by insisting that NATO member nations to pay their fair share to defend themselves, President Trump is hitting on all international relations cylinders. We now have an emerging Trump Doctrine, some of which is captured in his own National Security Strategy. It has the following tenets: 1. America First in everything we...

On December 19, 2018, President Trump declared correctly that “we have won against ISIS,” and announced that the remaining 2,000 American troops in Syria would be withdrawn. The president has made the right decision. Having won the war against ISIS, he does not want to lose the peace by getting into a military conflict with the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s forces, or with the Iranians or the Russians, or even with the Turks for that matter. As the father of an Army officer who is in theater right now, I think I have a right to an opinion. And in...

A narrow majority of U.S. voters support President Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and reduce the country's military presence in Afghanistan, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they back the moves in Syria and Afghanistan, which came as a surprise to the president's own national security advisers when it was announced last week. By contrast, 48 percent said they oppose the troop withdrawals and reductions, the poll found. Trump announced he would completely remove the approximately 2,000 troops in Syria battling ISIS, while he said he...

About six hours before Meloy's discovery, President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump were quietly whisked out of the White House under the cover of darkness on Christmas night for a trip to Iraq.

President Donald Trump responded to media complaints on Thursday because he signed Make America Great Again hats for the troops overseas. CNN & others within the Fake News Universe were going wild about my signing MAGA hats for our military in Iraq and Germany. If these brave young people ask me to sign their hat, I will sign. Can you imagine my saying NO? We brought or gave NO hats as the Fake News first reported!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 27, 2018

NBC News has finally, a full day after being called out for printing the fake news, admitted that its article published on Christmas alleging President Donald Trump snubbed the troops during the holidays this year is incorrect. NBC has altered its headline and story, changing their meaning to remove the original anti-Trump thrust, and added an extended editor’s note beyond the original editor’s note appended when it was first discovered to be an inaccurate piece. The new editor’s note admits in no uncertain terms that NBC News printed fake news, and that it was only leaving the article up in...