Free Republic

During President Donald Trump’s interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Friday, the president spoke about his positive relationship with Saudi Arabia, including how the country is paying to use American troops. Conservative Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.), who until recently was a Republican, responded to Trump’s remarks in a tweet, saying, “He sells troops.” “Saudi Arabia is paying us for [our troops]. We have a very good relationship with Saudi Arabia,” Trump said. “I said, listen, you’re a very rich country. You want more troops? I’m going to send them to you, but you’ve got to pay us. They’re paying...

Seven Russian mercenaries have been killed by ISIS-linked militants in Mozambique - including four who were shot and then beheaded. The Russians, fighting for the shadowy state-affiliated Wagner Group, were killed in two separate attacks last month, according to sources in the Mozambique military. Both attacks were ambushes in Mozambique's northern Cabo Delgado state, where ISIS first announced its presence in June this year. ... Russia has been supplying arms and military equipment to Mozambique to help in its fight against Islamist insurgent groups since signing a pact in early January 2017. However, the deal did not stipulate the supply...

“Dopey” Prince Alaweed Was Warned — Now He Sits In Prison In December 2015 Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal slammed Donald Trump for proposing a ban on Muslim immigrants in the US after the San Bernardino attacks. Donald Trump hit the “dopey prince” back twice as hard. "Detained members of Saudi elite have been hung by their feet and beaten by interrogates, source says. Among those hung upside down are Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, an investor worth at least $7 billion who is being held at Riyadh’s Ritz Carlton. Saudi princes and billionaire businessmen arrested in a power grab earlier...

March 25, 2013 Are Benghazi Survivors Hiding In A Washington, D.C. Hospital? Richard Miniter For more than six months since the September 11, 2012 attacks on America’s diplomatic outposts in Benghazi, the Obama administration has been unwilling to turn over the names or whereabouts of any survivors. They may be hiding plain sight. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) has learned that “as many as seven Americans have been or are currently being treated,” at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C.—less than 11 miles from the U.S. Capitol. Rep. Wolf cited two independent confidential sources for his information....

MOSCOW - As many as 35 Russian mercenaries are reported to have been killed in Libya while they were fighting for Khalifa Haftar, the military general most associated with the rule of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi, who launched an offensive earlier this year on the Libyan capital of Tripoli, home to the country’s internationally-recognized government, according to a Russian media. The mercenaries are thought to work for the Wagner Group, a military contractor run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman nicknamed Putin’s Chef because he holds lucrative Kremlin catering contracts. Asked by VOA about the reports of the fatalities in...

In this feature, InformNapalm volunteer intelligence community publishes unique intelligence information about 300 + 1 “Spartans” from among mercenaries of the Russian intelligence unit, known as PMC Wagner. In February 2018, this group made an attempt to advance on an oilfield near Deir-Ez-Zor held by Kurdish and American forces and was hit by a massive airstrike. All the data has been collected and analyzed by IHTAMNET M-2090 team, it was handed over to InformNapalm for publication on exclusive basis. According to the project activists, 301 mercenaries, whose data are indicated in this investigation, took part in the attack in the...

Secret Blackwater tape might not be all it's hyped up to be about Erik Prince. A few media outlets claim they have a secret audio recording that contains 3,500 words made by Prince. It is a rare item because the Blackwater owner has always tried to ban journalists from his public speeches.Blackwater has dealt with a lot of controversy during the past five years. Erik Prince is the reclusive owner of the special operations company. He rarely gives public speeches and when he does he attempts to ban audio recording and videotaping. One media outlet claims they have obtained an...

Moscow believes information that Western, first and foremost American, mercenaries are operating in Ukraine to be true, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday. “We are waiting for answers, because we … have very strong suspicions that this might be true,” Lavrov said during an English-language interview with Bloomberg. SNIP----- According to the German Bild am Sonntag newspaper, around 400 elite commandos of notorious US private security firm Academi are allegedly helping Ukrainian authorities in a punitive operation against federalists in the country’s eastern regions. The newspaper said the Academi mercenaries have taken part in attacks against federalists near Slaviansk,...

A mercenary air force that became a symbol of the U.S. occupation of Iraq is back in action—this time in Central Africa, supporting a shadowy American U.S. Special Forces commando operation targeting the Lord’s Resistance Army. In late January, a source on the ground in Central African Republic spotted a Sikorsky S-61 helicopter with the registry number N408RC carrying American Special Forces troops. The LRA, a cultish band of thieves and rapists led by warlord Joseph Kony, is most active in the forested region where Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo meet. In 2010, President...

A Reuters correspondent was shown the wreckage of a warplane in the area of Ras Lanuf in eastern Libya that rebels said they had shot down on Saturday. Reuters correspondent Mohammed Abbas wrote in a brief message from the scene: "I am at the wreckage of the aircraft in Ras Lanuf." He also reported that the faces of the corpses seemed to have been ripped off. He also said he was shown a Sudanese passport that he was told belonged to the pilot but added that it showed his occupation as accountant. Rebels have accused Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi of...

The Benghazi affair is beginning to shape up as a bi-partisan scandal — making Trey Gowdy’s life doubly difficult, of course. But the former prosecutor has been doing a bang-up job with his select committee, demolishing the mantra that there is “nothing new” to be learned about Benghazi and building a sober, far-reaching inquiry. Without Gowdy, recall, there would be no Clinton secret server, no Sidney Blumenthal trail, no new emails, and no upcoming testimony from Mrs. Clinton and her inner circle . On the latter, Gowdy is holding firm, saying he will not schedule testimony until all relevant emails...

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, has a new project. ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in this glittering seaside capital. Whisked through customs by an Emirati intelligence officer, the group boarded an unmarked bus and drove roughly 20 miles to a windswept military complex in the desert sand. The Colombians had entered the United Arab Emirates posing as construction workers. In fact, they were soldiers for a secret American-led mercenary army being built by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater Worldwide, with $529 million...

Libya’s air force said in a Facebook post that 20 US commandoes arrived at Wattiya airbase and disembarked “in combat readiness,” only to be told to leave. Pentagon sources confirmed the US had sent a special forces unit to Libya as part of a mission. The Libyan Air Force said the 20 soldiers arrived at the airbase on Monday, but left soon after local commanders asked them to go because they had no right to be at the base “without prior coordination with protection force base.” The Libyan air force published a Facebook post on Wednesday which included photographs of...

They’re Nigeria’s unlikely saviors – most being white, in their 50s and 60s and combat veterans of the former South African apartheid regime. But, tainted resumes notwithstanding, they’ve been getting the job done in northern Nigeria, hitting the Islamist terror group Boko Haram hard enough to send the jihadists into retreat, liberating dozens of villages and freeing hundreds of women and girls held as slaves and “bush wives” during a six-year-long reign of terror, reported London Telegraph. Boko Haram recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. In recent years, Boko Haram has slaughtered entire...

Updated March 27 to include responses from the FBI and the State Department. Emails disclosed by a hacker show a close family friend was funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State’s private account starting before the Benghazi attack. Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal’s account. The emails, which were posted on the internet...

Nigeria has drafted “hundreds of mercenaries from South Africa” in its fight against Boko Haram. South Africans have a long-standing reputation as being among the best mercenaries in the world, and have been present in one form or another in most African conflicts for the past two decades.

A plane carrying Americans was forced to land in Iran by the Iranian Air Force. It was allowed to leave early Saturday. It isn't known if all are still aboard. Link only.(Excerpt) "A charter airplane carrying military contractors, including Americans, took off early Saturday from Iran, hours after its pilots were ordered to land because the flight plan was out of date, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said."

Soldiers from a private US security company with a record of alleged atrocities in Iraq are supporting Ukraine’s security forces in the volatile east of the country, the German newspaper Bild reported Sunday. The report, citing Germany’s federal intelligence agency BND, said 400 of the heavily-armed men employed by the group formerly known as Blackwater were deployed in the vicinity of Lugansk where pro-Russian separatists are seeking self-rule. The BND declined to comment on the report, while the security company -- now known as Academi -- dismissed similar reports in March. Bild reported that according to a BND assessment, US...

Is it actually possible that, as you read this, the United States Navy has only one supercarrier battle group at sea? Read on - and be amazed. Look no farther than these two news items, both from today's Sunday Times of London, to see the effect of two decades of shrinkage in the size of the United States Navy and the retreat of the Royal Navy from the high seas: • For the first time in two centuries, British businessmen and others have formed a private navy to protect shipping off the pirate-ridden coast of Somali on the Horn of...

South Africa's National Assembly has approved a law requiring that citizens working as security staff abroad must seek permission from the government. It will also make South Africans seek permission to serve in foreign armies. Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said the law was to prevent mercenaries from subverting democracy across Africa but opponents say it is too stringent. South Africa is trying to get rid of a reputation as a haven for mercenaries and coup plotters. The authorities estimate at least 4,000 South Africans are employed in conflict areas, and several have been found to be involved in attempted coups....