Tag: ISIS

Sen. Blackburn Urges President Trump to Protect Kurdish Allies as America Looks to Leave Syria

Jason M. Reynolds

U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) on Thursday sent a letter urging President Donald Trump to protect the United States’ Kurdish partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Blackburn posted a copy of the letter on Twitter, tweeting, “This morning, I joined @SenDuckworth in writing a letter to the president to express the importance of protecting our Kurdish friends as the administration plans its withdrawal of American troops from Syria.” “The protection of our Kurdish friends and allies is in the national security interest of the United States,” said Blackburn. “The Kurds have been a reliable partner in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and we must not abandon them now.” Nashville is home to the largest Kurdish population of any city in the United States, Blackburn said. The letter comes as the administration considers a withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Syria. Blackburn and Duckworth are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The White House officially announced Dec. 19 that nearly 2,000 U.S. troops would leave Syria, Townhall reported. “Five years ago, ISIS was a very powerful and dangerous force in the Middle East, and now the United States has defeated the territorial caliphate. These…

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Trump Assails Intelligence Chiefs as ‘Extremely Passive and Naive’

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U.S. President Donald Trump assailed his intelligence chiefs Wednesday, calling them “extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!” He added, “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!” Trump’s unusual broadside on Twitter against the heads of the country’s intelligence agencies came a day after they disputed some of his views on Iran and world trouble spots in testimony before a congressional hearing on global threats. Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspel said Iran was “technically” in compliance with the 2015 deal between it and world powers to curtail its nuclear weapons development and at least a year away from developing such a weapon. Trump tweeted that since the U.S. withdrew from the pact, Iran is “MUCH different, but a source of potential danger and conflict.They are testing Rockets (last week) and more, and are coming very close to the edge. There economy is now crashing, which is the only thing holding them back. Be careful of Iran.” The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong! When I became President Iran was making trouble all over the Middle East, and…

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FLASHBACK: Ilhan Omar Asked Judge for Lighter Sentences for Nine Minnesota Men Plotting to Join ISIS

Anthony Gockowski

Shortly after her historic election as the nation’s first Somali-American lawmaker, then State Rep. Ilhan Omar, now a member of Congress, asked a judge for lighter sentences in the trial of nine Minnesota men charged with planning to join ISIS. In a November 2016 letter unearthed by conservative media this week, Omar wrote to Judge Michael Davis requesting “compassion” and a “restorative approach to justice” in his sentencing. “Incarcerating 20-year-old men for 30 or 40 years is essentially a life sentence. Society will have no expectations of the to be 50 or 60-year-old released prisoners; it will view them with distrust and revulsion. Such punitive measures not only lack efficacy, they inevitably create an environment in which extremism can flourish, aligning with the presupposition of terrorist recruitment,” Omar said in her letter. She was one of 13 individuals to write letters to Davis, who also received a letter from Minneapolis City Council member Abdi Warsame. “The best deterrent to fanaticism is a system of compassion,” Omar continued. “We must alter our attitude and approach; if we truly want to affect change, we should refocus our efforts on inclusion and rehabilitation.” Throughout her letter, Omar argued that the young men were…

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Three Michigan Residents Arrested After Pledging Their Support to ISIS

Anthony Gockowski

Three Michigan residents were arrested Monday afternoon for conspiring to provide material support to ISIS and pledging their allegiance to the terrorist organization, the Department of Justice announced this week. According to a DOJ press release, Muse Abdikadir Muse, Mohamud Abdikadir Muse, and Mohamed Salat Haji were arrested Monday by members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. Muse Abdikadir Muse was taken into custody at the Gerald R. Ford Airport in Grand Rapids where he was attempting to board a flight to Mogadishu, Somalia with intention of joining ISIS. His two coconspirators drove him to the airport and were arrested shortly after. MLive reports that undercover investigators began monitoring the three in April 2016 in response to questionable Facebook posts they had made, and began communicating with the ISIS aspirants via social media. One of the agents posed as an ISIS recruiter, and was told by Muse Abdikadir Muse that he “wanted to join ISIS in Raqqa, Syria,” and that “he planned to die with a gun in his hand fighting for ISIS,” according to a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan. The complaint reveals that the three men exchanged numerous Facebook…

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American Militia Catch Texas School Teacher Allegedly Fighting for ISIS in Syria

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by Grace Carr   American-backed forces say they apprehended a former Texas school teacher Sunday who was fighting for the Islamic State. U.S.-supported militia apprehended the Houston man, Warren Christopher Clark, 34 (pictured left), fighting on a battlefield in Syria, The New York Times reported. He allegedly previously sent a résumé and cover letter to ISIS, seeking to teach young students about the group’s violent ideology. “Dear Director, I am looking to get a position teaching English to students in the Islamic State,” Clark allegedly wrote in a letter to ISIS, according to documents recovered by American forces. Clark has reportedly been associated with ISIS since after June 2015, according to The NYT. Prior to pledging allegiance to ISIS, Clark taught English in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, documents reveal. Clark previously substitute-taught at Fort Bend Independent School District in Sugar Land, Texas. Roughly 250 Americans have traveled to Syria or Iraq to join ISIS since fall 2015, according to a December 2015 report from George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. U.S. authorities have charged 71 Americans with ISIS-related activities since March 2014, according to the report. Few Americans who defected to ISIS have been caught and brought back to the U.S. Only four Americans have been captured fighting in Syria and Iraq,…

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EXCLUSIVE Lara Trump Commentary: President Trump Kept His Promises in 2018

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by Lara Trump   With 2018 now in the history books, it’s worth reflecting on the incredible progress America has made in the past year as a result of the many promises President Donald Trump has fulfilled. The economy, for instance, is booming again for the first time in almost a generation, just as Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail in 2016. The 4.2 percent growth rate in the second quarter of 2018 caught even experienced economists off guard, dwarfing predictions that assumed sluggish growth had become the “new normal” for America. The economy just kept humming after that, allowing economic growth to exceed 3 percent for the first full year since George W. Bush was in office. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is down to its lowest level since 1969, and thanks to the favorable labor market, wages are rising at the fastest pace in nearly a decade. The miraculous economic turnaround that was born during President Trump’s first year in office reached maturity in 2018, fueled by pro-growth policies like the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, new trade deals that give American workers a level playing field, and the elimination of costly and ineffective regulations. While the booming…

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Commentary: Trump is Smarter Than the Generals

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by Christopher Roach   A bipartisan consensus among the foreign policy elite holds that America needs to maintain its de facto overseas empire. This includes both preserving stability, as well as fomenting deliberate instability, including regime change in places like Syria. This consensus among elected officials, defense contractors, general officers, talking heads, and various experts is not shared by the vast majority of Americans, who elected Barack Obama and Donald Trump on their promises to end “stupid wars” and put America first. The American people have good instincts on these matters. The Confused Syria Campaign Our Syria campaign has been a confused affair from the beginning. In the waning days of the Arab Spring, Obama supported various rebel factions seeking to oust Bashar al-Assad, as he had earlier in Libya and Egypt. Syrians soon found themselves in the midst of a brutal civil war, and in this vacuum—as in Iraq only a decade earlier—jihad tourists from all over the Middle East soon joined the fray. The various enemies of the Syrian regime included the so-called “moderate” rebels, Kurds, and Sunni extremists, the latter of which were divided between al Nusra and ISIS. There are no obvious good guys here, and…

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White House Says US Will Start Withdrawing Troops From Syria

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by Wayne Lee   The White House said Wednesday the United States has begun withdrawing troops from Syria, shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted the U.S. has defeated the Islamic State terror group there. “We have started returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign,” White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said in a statement. She added the defeat of ISIS does not mean the military campaign by coalition forces is ending in Syria. “The United States and our allies stand ready to re-engage at all levels to defend American interests whenever necessary, and we will continue to work together to deny radical Islamist terrorists territory, funding, support, and any means of infiltrating our borders,” Sanders said. Later on Wednesday, Pentagon spokesperson Dana White said in a statement that “the coalition has liberated ISIS-held territory, but the campaign against ISIS is not over.” ISIS an acronym for the Islamic State terror group. “We will continue working with our partners and allies to defeat ISIS wherever it operates,” she said, giving no details as to a timeline, noting “force protection and operational security reasons.” Just last week, U.S. special presidential envoy for the global…

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Marco Rubio Dings Journalist Who Said Donald Trump Radicalized More People Than ISIS and Then Was Invited Back on CNN

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by Hanna Bogorowski   GOP Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida took to Twitter on Tuesday to condemn comments made by GQ Magazine correspondent Julia Ioffe, who has been in the headlines for making claims about President Donald Trump and his supporters, saying it’s wrong for people to think inflammatory language is only coming from the right. Ioffe said on CNN’s The Lead With Jake Tapper Monday afternoon that Trump has radicalized more people than the Islamic State (ISIS). This president has radicalized so many more people than ISIS ever did, she said. Ioffe continued the anti-Trump rhetoric Monday night with CNN’s Don Lemon, saying she believes a silent majority of Trump supports believes racism is okay. It’s also kind of the silent majority of Trump supporters that think this is okay, they continue to support this president despite what he said, she added, referring to what she called Trump’s half-hearted condemnation of racists after the deadly mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Rubio responded to Ioffe’s comments on Twitter, referring to her as a journalist in quotes, and adding that it’s inaccurate for people to believe incendiary rhetoric is not apparent on the left as well. So many keep pretending inflammatory…

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Muslim Celebration of ‘Unity and Power’ at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minnesota, With Chants of ‘Allahu Akbar’

Anthony Gockowski

More than 20,000 Muslims are expected to gather at U.S. Bank Stadium Tuesday morning in celebration of the Islamic holiday known as Eid al-Ahda commemorating the sacrifice of Abraham. As such, the holiday, known as the “Feast of Sacrifice,” often involves the ritual sacrifice of an animal, though organizers of Tuesday’s event set to be held in the new Minnesota Vikings stadium have assured the public that no animals will be slaughtered inside the stadium. The two-day event was first announced to the public August 7 on Somali TV of Minnesota when a group of local imams gathered outside the stadium, calling the celebration an opportunity to display the “unity and the power of our community.” In attendance at the press conference was Dr. Waleed Idris al-Maneese, who leads the Islamic University of Minnesota and serves as the imam of a Bloomington mosque. His mosque has produced at least five Islamic extremists who have gone on to fight with either ISIS or al-Shabaab, according to WND. Leo Hohmann, an author and journalist who has spent much of his career covering radical Islam, had former imam Dr. Mark Christian translate Maneese’s comments made during the press conference. According to Christian, Maneese…

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Commentary: Another Willy Horton Moment: Iraqi ‘Refugee’ in California Was Part of Terror Group

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ISIS fighter in US claimed 'refugee'

by CHQ Staff   Omar Abdulsattar Ameen, 45, an Iraqi “refugee” admitted under the Obama – Ryan refugee program was arrested Wednesday in Northern California on a warrant alleging that he killed an Iraqi policeman while fighting for the Islamic State organization. Ameen and other members of ISIS are alleged to have killed the officer after the town of Rawah, Iraq, fell to the Islamic State in June 2014, according to court documents. According to our friends at NewsMax, Ameen was arrested by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force at a Sacramento apartment building based on a warrant issued in May by an Iraqi federal court in Baghdad. U.S. officials plan to extradite him back to Iraq under a treaty with that nation, and he made his first appearance in federal court in Sacramento on Wednesday. Court documents unsealed Wednesday afternoon and reported by Sam Stanton, Darrell Smith and Julia Sclafani of the Merced (California) Sun-Star describe Ameen as a “terrorist” and leader of al-Qaida forces that captured and executed soldiers, and as a close associate of well-known terror leaders in the region. Documents reported by Stanton, Smith and Sclafani say Ameen was part of a four-vehicle convoy that drove…

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Islamic Extremists Attack Russian Orthodox Church In Chechneya And Pay With Their Lives

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ISIS

by Joshua Gill   Police in Chechnya killed four Islamic militants Saturday when the group raided a Russian Orthodox church with guns, axes and Molotov cocktails. Shots rang out during Saturday’s service and cries of “Allahu Akbar” could be heard as congregants scrambled to close and bolt the doors, Father Sergiy, the priest at Archangel Michael Church in Chechnya’s capital of Grozny, said, according to The Associated Press. The terrorists killed one congregant outside the church building, wounded another inside the church as they attempted to gain entry, and killed two officers when police arrived on the scene, according to The New York Times. Policemen gunned down all four attackers. Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechneya’s leader, said the gunmen initially took hostages. He issued a statement condemning their attack and threatening anyone daring to carry out similar acts. “I once again very seriously declare that you can try to commit any actions aimed at undermining the security of the residents of Grozny and other settlements,” Kaydrov said, according to NYT. “But anyone who makes the first step along this path will be immediately destroyed.” Islamic militants, some loyal to ISIS, have carried out sporadic attacks throughout Muslim majority Chechneya in the past, especially in…

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Pentagon Preparing for Shift in Syrian Strategy

Tennessee Star Staff

The United States is preparing to shift its approach in Syria, pledging to help with the initial recovery following the collapse of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate. U.S.-backed forces liberated the terror group’s Syrian capital of Raqqa in October. Since then, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have focused their efforts on eradicating remnants of Islamic State.

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Former NYPD Commissioner: NYC Attack ‘ISIS Inspired’

Tennessee Star Staff

An explosion targeting the Port Authority bus station in downtown Manhattan Monday was allegedly carried out by an Islamic State-inspired Bangladeshi immigrant, former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton told MSNBC. Update: Bill Bratton is on @MSNBC’s #MorningJoe confirming that this was a terrorist attack in the name of ISIS near the Port Authority. https://t.co/v7r55XlYiy — Holly O’Reilly…

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Bill Hennessy Commentary: Assessing Antifa as a Military Strategist

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  by Bill Hennessy   If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal, we can flee from him. If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve. Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory. ~ Sunzi, The Art of War (Public Domain Books) Antifa activists regularly describe themselves in terms of a ‘defense force;’ but back in their ‘Occupy’ days, they were ‘the 99%’ and ‘revolutionaries;’ and before that, they were the ‘Black Bloc.’ Through it all, they were and are self-proclaimed ‘social justice warriors.’ So let’s take them at their word, and examine Antifa within a military construct – without the blinding rage and disgust they so richly deserve. Pretend both Antifa and the wretched white supremacists in Charlottesville are neither good nor bad. Neither your enemy nor your…

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Bill Hennessy Commentary: ‘Common Knowledge’ Masks the Islamist Element Underpinning ‘Statue Wars’

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Tennessee Star

  You probably believe the narrative. Because that narrative is strong right now. It has become common knowledge. Common knowledge in the formal, game theory sense of the word. In game theory, common knowledge is something everyone knows everyone knows. And everyone know everyone knows. And everyone knows how everyone else will behave because of that knowledge. Common knowledge doesn’t have to be true. In a common knowledge game, truth doesn’t matter. All that matters is conformity. Behaving or speaking in opposition to common knowledge does no good. Because the culture will punish you for speaking the truth if the truth counters common knowledge. People who point out the truth during a common knowledge game get punished. For example, people who ate whole eggs during the cholesterol common knowledge game were punished. People who ate high fat, low carbohydrate diets during the fat-is-bad common knowledge game were punished. Punished by family. Punished by friends. Punished by doctors. Punished by strangers in hotel restaurants. People who go along with common knowledge games usually suffer in the end. Like people who ate high carbohydrate diets and got fatter and fatter. But those who behaved according to the common knowledge weren’t punished. They…

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Aziz Sayyed Practiced Knife Skills For Beheadings And Planned To Bomb Buildings In Huntsville, Prosecutors Say

Wendy Wilson

A Huntsville, Alabama man arrested on a terrorism charge last month told people he wanted to practice beheadings and was learning how to make an explosive device to bomb public buildings, a prosecutor said in court this week. Aziz Sayyed, 22, downloaded ISIS beheading videos in February and in April obtained plywood that he allegedly used to practice knife skills for beheadings, said Madison County Assistant District Attorney Jay Town at a bond hearing Wednesday. According to WHNT News 19, Town also said Sayyed made statements he watched videos to learn how to make an explosive similar to the one used in the May 22 attack at the Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in England, which killed 22 people and injured more than 200. The prosecution alleges in court filings that Sayyed admitted he wanted to plant explosives in Madison County public buildings and had specific plans to bomb a law enforcement center in Huntsville. Authorities said materials to make bombs were found in his apartment after his arrest. Investigators said after his arrest that Sayyed is a U.S. citizen born in North Carolina. His arrest came after a tip from a citizen. A Madison County judge is still considering whether…

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Pentagon: ‘Rookie’ ISIS Fighters Are Accidentally Blowing Themselves Up In Mosul

Tennessee Star Staff

Inexperienced Islamic State fighters in the city of Mosul are accidentally blowing themselves up in preparation for combat, an Army spokesman told reporters Thursday. Army Col. Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, said there is serious discord among the terror group’s last “few hundred” fighters left in Mosul. “We have reflections of serious internal…

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James Mattis Irks Leftist Media, Saying of ISIS, ‘We’re Going to Kill Them All’

Tennessee Star Staff

ANALYSIS/OPINION: U.S. retired general and Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, has said the policy of the American military now in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq is moving from one of attrition to one of annihilation. The Leftist media doesn’t like this so much. The Washington Post in particular yesterday was upset that Mattis…

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Donald Trump Cites Fight Against Terrorism in Ramadan Greeting

Tennessee Star Staff

In another stark departure from his predecessor, President Trump used the words “terrorist” or “terrorism” three times Friday in a statement wishing Muslims a joyful Ramadan, a traditional month of fasting. “This year, the holiday begins as the world mourns the innocent victims of barbaric terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom and Egypt, acts of depravity…

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Commentary: Obama Holdovers Successfully Sabotaging Trump’s War Against ISIS

Tennessee Star Staff

  by George Rasley, ConservativeHQ.com Editor This week the Obama holdovers that have been foolishly allowed to remain in the White House and our national security and foreign policy departments scored a double victory in their ongoing coup against President Trump. And in the process of undermining the President they gravely undermined his strategy to defeat the Islamic State and its campaign of terrorism against the West. The first victory was to advance their effort to poison the relationship between the United States and Russia by revealing that the President, using his clear constitutional authority, had shared intelligence with the Russians about Islamic State plans to use laptop computer bombs against airliners. During the recent presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump said on a number of occasions that one of the goals of his strategy against the Islamic State would be to engage the Russians more actively in the fight. And, in their faux outrage at the President’s decision to share intelligence with the Russians the Leftwing media and their enablers on Capitol Hill seem to have forgotten that it is the Russians who have suffered one of the most devastating Islamic State airliner bombings. Metrojet flight 9268 was just 23 minutes…

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Mike Pence: ISIS Is Guilty of Genocide Against Christians

Tennessee Star Staff
Mike Pence

The Trump administration is raising alarms about the Islamic State committing genocide against Christians, a conclusion that President Obama’s team reached reluctantly only last year. In a speech Thursday that didn’t receive much press attention in Washington, Vice President Mike Pence told the World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians that atrocities are being committed against…

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OFF THE RECORD

Chris Alto
Tennessee Star - Off the Record

OOOPS…Corker caught on tape Last Saturday during Bob Corker’s talk to the TN GOP State Executive Committee members, an observer just happened to switch on their phone when Corker was asked to comment about the state’s lawsuit against the feds over the refugee resettlement issue.  If you’ve ever taken the time to contact Corker’s Senate office with a comment that is something other than a compliment or praise for the Senator, you likely received a circuitous non-response which is sometimes referred to as being “blown off.” In typical Corker fashion, he throws out a bone to conservatives in the crowd because he thinks they haven’t yet figured out that he is not a conservative.  What conservatives in Tennessee do know is that when Corker first went to D.C. in 2007, he was openly against illegal immigration (not to confuse illegal immigration with refugee resettlement which is legal immigration). He was so against it that he said, that to be “fair to American citizens,” illegal aliens should have to leave and then re-enter before they could apply to be here legally….. Then after spending too many years in Washington, he supported the 2013 “Gang of Eight” illegal immigration amnesty bill. On Saturday,…

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