Free Republic

ISIS has lost 98 percent of its territory -- mostly since Trump took office, officials say /snip The massive gains come after years of "onerous" rules, when critics say the Obama administration “micromanaged” the war and shunned a more intensive air strategy that could have ended the conflict much sooner. “The rules of engagement under the Obama administration were onerous. I mean what are we doing having individual target determination being conducted in the White House, which in some cases adds weeks and weeks,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, the former head of U.S. Air Force intelligence....

President Donald Trump’s new national security strategy is set to be released on Monday. A copy of the document obtained by The Daily Caller reveals a stark contrast between President Trump’s America First National Security Strategy and former President Barack Obama’s most recent national security strategy in 2015. Renewed Focus On Islamist Terrorism Trump’s new national security strategy places an emphasis on stopping Islamist terrorism and calls it out by name. Obama’s 2015 national security strategy referred to Islam just twice: once because it’s part of ISIS’ name and once to say the administration rejected “the lie that America and...

On a morning when you would have expected the Morning Joe panel to be all about Trump’s CNN wrestling tweet, a Washington Post editor/columnist painted an amazingly positive portrait of the president’s actions in Syria. WaPo’s David Ignatius has just returned from a week in Syria. He was almost apologetic in prefacing his remarks: “I’m going to say something that in some ways is sympathetic to Trump.” He then proceeded to say that he was told by top US commanders that “the most daring and decisive” attack in the battle of Raqqa would not have happened if it hadn’t been...

Defeating the Islamic State was candidate Trump’s top national-security priority, one of the few policy issues on which he was consistent. While his claim to have a secret plan — and that keeping it secret was good strategy — was risible to national security experts, his policy goals were and are consistent. American effort should focus on fighting the Islamic State. Regime change to push Bashar al-Assad out of power was not only a lesser objective, but counterproductive to a stable end-state for Syria that prevents terrorism and too costly given Russia and Iran’s support for the regime. Stability is...

US and Russian military chiefs meet to discuss their plans for fight against ISIS. Just three weeks after the top soldiers of the US and Russian militaries – General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff – met in Azerbaijan, they have followed up with a second meeting in Antalya Turkey, for a summit hosted by Turkey’s top soldier, General Hulusi Akar, who is the Chief of the Turkish General Staff.Unlike the summit meeting in Azerbaijan, which discussed the full range of US-Russian military relations, the meeting in Turkey...

Ahead of a highly anticipated report the Pentagon will deliver to the White House on a new plan to defeat the Islamic State group, the biggest change employed by the military may be in the name of the enemy itself. The Defense Department now officially refers to its primary foe in Iraq and Syria as "ISIS," according to a memo the Pentagon issued earlier this month. Since the campaign began in 2014, military officials grappled with President Barack Obama's preferred "ISIL," short for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a more regionally sensitive and accurate translation of the...

In February of 2016 the U.S. State Department released more of Hillary Clinton’s emails. One of those emails originated on March 22nd 2011, the exact day President Obama launched the attacks on Libya. The released email confirms what many already knew – it was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power who convinced President Obama to go to war in Libya

Donald J. Trump tried to quash the latest controversy engulfing his campaign, suggesting on Friday that he was not serious when he said that President Obama and Hillary Clinton were the “founders” of the Islamic State terrorist group. After making the suggestion at a rally on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump doubled-down on the assertion on Thursday, insisting in multiple interviews that he really did mean it when he said that the president and Mrs. Clinton were responsible for ISIS. But in an early-morning Twitter post, Mr. Trump said that he was just being sarcastic.

Donald Trump charged President Barack Obama on Wednesday with being the founder of the Islamic State during a campaign rally in Florida. ADVERTISEMENT "In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama," Trump said during a campaign stop in Fort Lauderdale. "He is the founder of ISIS." Last week, his campaign tried to draw financial links between the Clinton Foundation and the terror group. Wednesday, he called Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton the group's “co-founder.” Trump has long accused Obama and Clinton for pursuing Middle East policies that created a power vacuum in Iraq that was exploited by Islamic State....

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Monday he supported the use of US ground troops to fight Islamic State militants in the Middle East. Speaking on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, the billionaire businessman said it would take American soldiers to target the militant group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. "They have great money because they have oil," Trump said. "Every place where they have oil I would knock the hell out of them. "I would knock out the source of their wealth, the primary sources of their wealth, which is oil," he told MSNBC. "And in order to...