Obama's Failed Syria Program Cost $2 Million Per Trainee

Western politicians and the media overwhelmingly supported the "Arab Spring," which, they thought, would lead to the flourishing of freedom and democracy in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Instead, the movement led to the empowerment of groups like ISIS and the extermination of Christians, Yazidis, and minority Muslim sects.

The Obama Administration, still convinced that a peace-loving population of Muslims would rise up against their violent co-religionists, spent loads of money funding moderate Muslim soldiers. The result? There are only 95 of the program's trainees remaining in Syria. Thus, the Pentagon spent millions of dollars per trainee to fund a force incapable of standing against the weakest of jihadist groups.

Washington (USA Today)—When the Pentagon pulled the plug last month on its plan to train and field a force of moderate Syrians to combat the Islamic State, it had spent $384 million, or $2 million per fighter, for a program that produced dismal results, according to interviews and spending figures obtained by USA TODAY.

The Pentagon had tabbed $500 million in 2015 for the effort and promised to graduate 3,000 trained and equipped New Syrian Forces fighters this year, and 5,000 annually thereafter to combat the Islamic State, also known as ISIL.

The program was suspended after $384 million had been spent. Of the 180 Syrians vetted, trained and equipped, 145 fighters remain in the program. Of those, 95 are in Syria today. Two of the four training camps the Pentagon designated for the program in the Middle East never hosted a recruit. (Continue Reading.)

To understand the leadership problem we face in the West, watch this video:

ISIS Abducts at Least 90 Christians in Syria

ISIS attacked Christian villages in Syria and took at least 90 captives. These captives will either be ransomed or executed (and, in the case of the women and girls, raped). Am I an "Islamophobe" for objecting?

Reuters—Islamic State militants have abducted at least 90 people from Assyrian Christian villages in northeastern Syria, a monitoring group that tracks violence in Syria said on Tuesday.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the militants carried out dawn raids on rural villages inhabited by the ancient Christian minority west of Hasaka, a city mainly held by the Kurds.

Syrian Kurdish militia have renewed their assault on the militants, launching two offensives against them in northeast Syria on Sunday, helped from U.S.-led air strikes and Iraqi peshmerga who have been shelling Islamic State-held territory from their side of the nearby border.

This part of Syria is strategically important in the fight against Islamic State because it borders territory controlled by the group in Iraq, where last year the ultra-hardline group committed atrocities against the Yazidi community. (Continue Reading.)

To understand what Islam teaches about unbelievers, watch this:

Peaceful French Teenager Converts to Islam, Heads to Syria to Wage Jihad

When I criticize Islam, people call me a racist, Islamophobic, hate-mongering bigot. But let's be honest here. This teenager just threw his life away by joining the jihad after converting to Islam. Would it really have been "hateful" for someone to tell him the truth about Islam before he converted? Instead, politicians and the media praise Islam and block all open, honest discussion of Muhammad and the Qur'an. This special treatment for Islam leads to conversions, and these conversions produce more jihadists.

Paris—The mother had her suspicions before her 16-year-old son fled from the southeastern French city of Nice to Syria.

Her son was Christian and popular and liked football and making wood sculptures. But she had seen him change, converting to Islam and falling under the influence of an extremist neighbor, refusing to eat with the family and isolating himself in his room.

Still, the mother of four said, “I didn’t know he was going to leave.”

She has sued the French government over what happened next: Bryan (a pseudonym used in court papers) said he was going to a sleepover, but instead, accompanied by some friends, he went to an airport and boarded a flight to Turkey using his national identification card, eventually making his way to Syria.

“How could they let him leave for Turkey with his ID card? They should have called me,” said the woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Nadine, 39, because of the pending court case.

Nadine said when her son didn’t return the morning after the sleepover, she spoke with neighbors who told her where the youths had gone. She said she contacted police, but they did not take her complaint seriously.

“They listened but I had the impression that they were not really listening,” she said.

Three years ago, an administrative change by the government allowed youths with valid identification to leave the country without a parent’s permission. Since then, dozens of youths have left for Syria via Turkey. (Continue Reading.)

To understand why so many converts to Islam decide to wage jihad, watch this:

ISIS and al-Qaeda Form Alliance

If you thought things were bad when ISIS and al-Qaeda were fighting against each other, wait till you see them united in their goal of subjugating Syria.

ISTANBUL – The two most brutal terror groups in Syria reportedly have struck an alliance, in a deal that poses serious problems for the Obama administration’s efforts to prop up “moderate” rebel factions in the country.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that militant leaders from the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, the Nusra Front, agreed during a meeting in northern Syria last week to stop fighting each other.

Such an accord could present new difficulties for Washington's strategy against the Islamic State. While warplanes from a U.S.-led coalition strike militants from the air, the Obama administration has counted on arming "moderate" rebels to push them back on the ground.

Those rebels, already considered relatively weak and disorganized, would face far stronger opposition if the two heavy-hitting militant groups now are working together. One official claimed the Islamic State and Nusra already have agreed to work toward destroying one prominent, U.S.-backed rebel group.

The Islamic State, which also operates in Iraq where U.S. troops already are stationed, had fought with the Nusra Front for more than a year to dominate the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Their new agreement, according to the sources in rebel groups opposed to both, would involve a promise to stop fighting and team up in attacks in some areas of northern Syria. (Continue Reading.)

Islamic State Torturing Captured Children, Forcing Them to Learn the Qur'an

If the United States were to capture Muslim children, torture them, and force them to learn the Bible, it would be on every news program in the world, all day, every day, for months. But the world has much lower expectations for jihadists, so torturing children and forcing them to learn the Qur'an is only a minor story.

Syria—Islamic State militants beat Kurdish children as young as 14 with cables, forced them to watch videos of IS beheadings and made them intensively learn the Koran during months of captivity, Human Rights Watch reports, saying it amounts to war crime.

The children, aged 14 to 16, were abducted by the Sunni Muslim militants on May 29 as they travelled home to the border town on Kobani after taking school exams in the city of Aleppo.

Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL) released around 100 girls within a few hours, but held onto 153 boys, which they kept in a school in Manbij, 55 kilometers southwest of Kobani.

Around 50 of the boys either escaped or were released between June and September, with the final 25 let go on October 29.

Four boys who were released in late September and who escaped into Turkey were interviewed by Human Rights Watch and told the story of their ordeal.

The teenagers were divided into eight groups, each with a different classroom where they slept. Each child was given three blankets, was fed twice a day and was allowed to have a bath once every two weeks.

According to the boys, Islamic State guards beat any of the children who tried to escape, did poorly in the mandatory religious lessons or did anything else regarded as misbehaving. Especially nasty treatment was reserved for boys whose parents belonged to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which is responsible for defending Kobani from the Islamic State onslaught.

“It was really those whose families were close to the YPG who suffered most. They [ISIS] told them to give them the addresses of their families, cousins, Uncles, saying ‘When we go to Kobani we will get them and cut them up.’ They saw the YPG as kafir [unbelievers],” said one of the boys, aged 15.

Another lad was strung up in a hoist with his hands tied behind his back and a foot tied to his hands for saying “Oh, mother!” when he was busted in another boys room. He was told by his jihadist captors that he should have called out to God and not his mom.

The kids were forced to pray five times a day and if they didn’t learn the Koran to their captor’s satisfaction then they got a beating.

"They sometimes found excuses to beat us for no reason ... They made us learn verses of the Koran and beat those who didn't manage to learn them. Those who didn't conform to the program were beaten. They beat us with a green hose or a thick cable with wire running through it. They also beat the soles of our feet," one of the boys told the rights group. (Continue Reading.)

Despite U.S. Airstrikes, ISIS Is Growing

More than a thousand foreign Muslims are pouring into Syria every month to join ISIS. Where are these Muslims getting the idea that they should join a group like ISIS? Didn't they hear from President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron that ISIS is violating the teachings of Islam? It's as if these Muslims aren't getting their information about Islam from Western politicians and the media.

Washington Post—More than 1,000 foreign fighters are streaming into Syria each month, a rate that has so far been unchanged by airstrikes against the Islamic State and efforts by other countries to stem the flow of departures, according to U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

The magnitude of the ongoing migration suggests that the U.S.-led air campaign has neither deterred significant numbers of militants from traveling to the region nor triggered such outrage that even more are flocking to the fight because of American intervention.

“The flow of fighters making their way to Syria remains constant, so the overall number continues to rise,” a U.S. intelligence official said. U.S. officials cautioned, however, that there is a lag in the intelligence being examined by the CIA and other spy agencies, meaning it could be weeks before a change becomes apparent.

The trend line established over the past year would mean that the total number of foreign fighters in Syria exceeds 16,000, and the pace eclipses that of any comparable conflict in recent decades, including the 1980s war in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have attributed the flows to a range of factors, including the sophisticated recruiting campaigns orchestrated by groups in Syria such as the Islamic State and the relative ease with which militants from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe can make their way to that country. (Continue Reading.)

Western Leaders Silent as ISIS Jihadists Shoot, Behead, and Crucify 700 Syrians

We can't let anything tarnish President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, so we'll have to sit back and watch as ISIS gains momentum and slaughters anyone who gets in its way.

REYHANLI, Turkey — The cost of turning against the Islamic State was made brutally apparent in the streets of a dusty backwater town in eastern Syria in early August. Over a three-day period, vengeful fighters shelled, beheaded, crucified and shot hundreds of members of the Shaitat tribe after they dared to rise up against the extremists.

By the time the killing stopped, 700 people were dead, activists and survivors say, making this the bloodiest single atrocity committed by the Islamic State in Syria since it declared its existence 18 months ago.

The little-publicized story of this failed tribal revolt in Abu Hamam, in Syria’s eastern Deir al-Zour province, illuminates the challenges that will confront efforts to persuade those living under Islamic State rule — in Iraq as well as Syria — to join the fight against the jihadist group, something U.S. officials say is essential if the campaign against the militants is to succeed.

The Abu Hamam area has now been abandoned, and many of the bodies remain uncollected, offering a chilling reminder to residents elsewhere of the fate that awaits those who dare rebel.

Just as powerful a message for those living under the militants’ iron fist was the almost complete international silence on the bloodbath.

News of the massacre coincided with President Obama’s decision to order airstrikes to turn back an Islamic State advance unfolding farther east in Iraq, toward the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil, as well as humanitarian airdrops to help desperate Iraqi Yazidis trapped on a mountain by the onslaught.

Many Syrians in the opposition are starting to complain about unequal treatment. (Continue Reading.)

Syrian War Creates 200,000 More Refugees in Past Four Days

More fruit of the "Arab Spring," which was praised and supported by Western politicians and the media, while people who understand Islam were warning: "Not a good idea."

Istanbul (CNN)—The sudden, massive flood of refugees fleeing ISIS is unlike any other displacement in the 3½-year Syrian conflict.

As many as 200,000 people have left the area surrounding the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, in just four days as ISIS advances into the area, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday. Most have gone into Turkey, the London-based monitoring group said.

Turkey's semiofficial Anadolu news agency and the United Nations said 130,000 Syrian refugees have entered Turkey since Friday.

But the unprecedented surge that broke loose Friday has slowed, as Turkey reduced the number of open crossings from eight or nine to just two, said Ariane Rummery, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency. Processing the refugees is also taking time.

New arrivals are being searched for arms, receiving medical checks, being identified and receiving ID cards that they can use in Turkey to show their status to local authorities. (Continue Reading.)

American Convert Douglas McCain Dies Fighting for ISIS in Syria

Douglas McCain was raised as a Christian, but no one was concerned when he converted to Islam. He recently traveled to Syria to wage jihad in the name of Allah, as the Qur'an commands (see 9:29, 9:73, 9:111, 9:123, etc.). How many more converts need to die waging jihad before politicians and the media will start telling people the truth about Islam?

Douglas McCain

(CNN) — An American named Douglas McCain was killed last weekend in Syria, where he was fighting for ISIS, two U.S. officials told CNN.

The man's uncle, Ken McCain, said that his nephew had gone to fight as a jihadi and that the U.S. State Department told the family Monday about the death.

He died in a battle between rival extremist groups in the suburbs of Aleppo, Syria's once-bustling commercial capital and largest city, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group that monitors the conflict.

Like the U.S. officials, the group described McCain as an ISIS fighter and said he was killed in a battle with the al-Nusra Front, an al Qaeda-linked organization that the U.S. government has blacklisted as a foreign terror organization.

According to his uncle, Douglas McCain's journey to Syria began sometime after he converted several years ago from Christianity to Islam.

The family wasn't alarmed by his conversion, but they became aware of Facebook posts sympathetic to ISIS, an Islamist terror group, when he traveled to what they believed to be Turkey.

U.S. counterterrorism investigators had been looking into Douglas McCain's activities for some time before his death, one U.S. official said.

He was among a list of Americans who are believed to have joined militant groups and who would be stopped and subjected to additional scrutiny if he traveled, according to the official. (Continue Reading.)

For a brief introduction to jihad, watch this:

Syrian Christian Asks, "Why Aren’t Moderate Muslims Doing More to Stop Extremists in Their Midst?"

Moderate Muslims are a confusing group. When Hamas attacks Israel, moderate Muslims around the world take to the streets in protest against Israel. Moderate Muslims came out in droves against Mubarak and Assad. Yet when jihadists start massacring and raping Christians, the moderate Muslims are nowhere to be found.

Syrian Christian Reading the Bible

ALEPPO, Syria — Walking through the largely Christian neighborhoods of Aleppo city — Azizieh, Siryan, Sulaimaniyah and Midan — you can still see the posters of the two bishops kidnapped by Islamist militants last year hanging on shop windows, walls and even cars. The people here haven’t forgotten them; the event is still as painful and fresh as if it had happened just yesterday. The bishops’ kidnapping was a symbolic event, indicative of the larger collapse of interfaith communal relations in a country under the strain of a sectarian civil war, and marked the end of a long era of relative peace and safety for the Christians of Syria.

The streets themselves portray a deceptive and surreal kind of war “normalcy,” the kind where pockmarked buildings, mortar holes on the roads, shredded cars, even bloodstained sidewalks are the usual and expected sights as people go about their daily lives without a second glance. This is life now, this is reality here. What it was like before the war is no longer relevant, the memories of those distant and beautiful bygone days do not matter or factor in any more.

Fear is palpable in this city; it hangs heavy in the air everywhere you go, like a potent and nauseous perfume. You can see it in people's eyes, in the deep lines on their faces; you can hear it in the way they talk; it’s in their conversations, it’s all they ever talk about.

But fear of a new kind permeates this ancient and deeply rooted community. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are very real threats that haunt the collective conscience of Syria’s Christians. The terrible fate that befell their co-religionists across the border in Mosul has driven these points home in a rather blunt and frightening way. The genocidal, nihilistic death cult of the Islamic State (IS) is hell-bent on destroying everything that is not exactly it, and has been on an unstoppable rampage which has left a trail of decapitated bodies and mass graves in its wake, usually those of ethnic and religious minorities. The militants make no secret of their genocidal campaigns of mass murder and medieval violence; on the contrary, they openly celebrate with glee and revel in them. It is not a means to an end; for them, it is the end itself.

Yousef is a shopkeeper in the predominantly Christian neighborhood of Sulaimaniyah, which has seen almost constant rebel shelling since the civil war divided Aleppo in July 2012. His brother serves in the Syrian army in Damascus. In conversation, he conveyed to me some of the predominant questions and anxieties going through his community.

“Why aren’t the moderate Muslims doing more to stop the extremists in their midst?” he asked bitterly. “Do they agree with their ideology and extremism? We saw hundreds of thousands of protesters on the streets against the abuses of the regime, so why are we not now seeing those thousands of protesters against what IS is doing? Worse, we are now seeing many people and rebel groups joining them. There are so many hundreds of these Islamic rebel groups, but they are all the same, they all have this extremist ideology against us. My conclusion is that these groups and IS are fully supported and backed in what they are doing by the anti-government forces."

The Christians of Syria had for the most part tried to stay out of the country’s raging civil conflict, but had often found themselves embroiled in its messy and bloody events. On more than one occasion, the Christians became the focal point of action, as in Maaloula, Yabrud and Kassab, as well as high- profile kidnappings of nuns and clerics. (Continue Reading.)

For a brief introduction to jihad, watch this:

Women Being Stoned to Death by Rebels in Syria

The Obama Administration decided to back rebels against the Assad regime. Now women are being stoned to death in areas controlled by the rebels. The new face of American foreign policy is a stoning victim.

BEIRUT (AP) — A cleric read the verdict before the truck came and dumped a large pile of stones near the municipal garden. Jihadi fighters then brought in the woman, clad head to toe in black, and put her in a small hole in the ground. When residents gathered, the fighters told them to carry out the sentence: Stoning to death for the alleged adulteress.

None in the crowd stepped forward, said a witness to the event in a northern Syrian city. So the jihadi fighters, mostly foreign extremists, did it themselves, pelting Faddah Ahmad with stones until her body was dragged away.

"Even when she was hit with stones she did not scream or move," said an opposition activist who said he witnessed the stoning near the football stadium and the Bajaa garden in the city of Raqqa, the main Syrian stronghold of the Islamic State group.

The July 18 stoning was the second in a span of 24 hours. A day earlier, 26-year-old Shamseh Abdullah was killed in a similar way in the nearby town of Tabqa by Islamic State fighters. Both were accused of having sex outside marriage.

The killings were the first of their kind in rebel-held northern Syria, where jihadis from the Islamic State group have seized large swaths of territory, terrorizing residents with their strict interpretation of Islamic law, including beheadings and cutting off the hands of thieves. The jihadis recently tied a 14-year-old boy to a cross-like structure and left him for several hours in the scorching summer sun before bringing him down -- punishment for not fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Continue Reading.)

For a brief introduction to the treatment of women in Islam, watch this:

Syria: Jihadists Stone Woman to Death for Adultery

The Obama Administration has been supporting the rebels against the largely secular Assad regime all along. And now the rebels have begun stoning women. Will there come a day when our leaders finally realize what Islam teaches?

Syria—Fighters from Al-Qaeda-breakaway group the Islamic State have stoned a woman to death for adultery, in the first such execution of its kind in rebel-held northern Syria.

The stoning, first reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and confirmed to Al Jazeera by two activists, took place in a public square Thursday evening in the town of Tabaqa, Raqqa province. Activists said the woman was tried in an Islamic sharia court, but that witnesses to her alleged offense were never identified and that the man involved was not charged with any crime.

"Mystery surrounds the whole thing," said Abu Khalil, an activist in Raqqa who runs the anti-Islamic State group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which obtained a cell phone photograph that purports to depict the incident.

In a tweet, the U.S. Embassy in Syria -- which no longer has a presence in the country -- condemned the "barbaric" stoning "in the strongest possible terms."

While far from the first instance of Islamic State brutality in Raqqa, the stoning has exacerbated fears the hardline group will govern brutally and without accountability across Syria and Iraq, where it led a coalition of Sunni forces to take over large swathes of the north and west in a lightning offensive last month.

Raqqa, where the Islamic State established its de facto capital last year, is widely considered a glimpse of what's to come in other regions that have fallen under IS control. (Continue Reading.)

U.S. Citizen Abu Hurayra al-Amriki Carries Out Suicide Bombing in Syria

Imagine what would happen if we were allowed to have open, honest discussions about Islam without being called "racists" or "Islamophobes." If we were free to seriously discuss Muhammad's teachings about jihad, and whether an eternity of deflowering virgins awaits martyrs, and whether Muhammad is truly a prophet, Abu Hurayra al-Amriki may not have gone to Syria to wage jihad. Instead, we're told to keep our mouths shut, even as Americans head to Syria seeking martyrdom.

Politicians and reporters who protect Islam from criticism are defending jihad.

Tweet announcing the "martyrdom" of Abu Hurayra al-Amriki

Abu Hurayra al-Amriki on right wearing suicide vest

WASHINGTON—An American citizen linked to al Qaeda terrorists has carried out a suicide bombing in Syria, CBS News has learned.

The picture on radical Islamic websites shows a smiling bearded man holding a cat, but U.S. officials believe the man, who called himself Abu Hurayra al-Amriki is the first American suicide bomber to die fighting for al Qaeda in Syria.

Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra recently released a photo showing four jihadis. The fighter on the right, wearing a suicide vest, appears to be Abu Hurayra.

The terror group claims he was killed Sunday in an attack in northern Syria. An al Qaeda video released Monday shows a truck being loaded with bombs and a subsequent explosion at a government complex.

Al Qaeda had promised an attack from an American. Just last week, an English-speaking man with his face blurred called on his brothers to defend Islam.

U.S. officials say they have identified Abu Hurayra's real name; it has not been released. But he was not alone. The FBI says several dozen Americans have gone to Syria to join the fighting. (Source)

The following video is claimed to be footage of the attack:

Syrian Rebels Executing Children in the Name of Allah

I'm not going to post any pictures here. Anyone who wants to see the brutality in Syria can visit the link below.

What's interesting is how completely clueless the media are. According to the Qur'an, there are harsh penalties for "making mischief" for the Muslim community:

Qur'an 5:33—The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement.

Notice that Muslim rebels who are crucifying their opponents are careful to explain how these opponents were making mischief in the Muslim community. Yet the media portrays these Muslims as "radicals," even though they are doing exactly what the Qur'an commands them to do.

CNN—It is a scene seared forever into the memory of an eyewitness:

Masked men drag the bloodied body of a man across a public square, and tie it to a make-shift cross on a metal pole.

Green string holds the body's arms outstretched across a wood plank as blood oozes from the gunshot wound to his head.

Militiamen wrap the body's black "WhatsApp" shirt with a sign in red letters that reads in Arabic: "This man fought Muslims and detonated an IED here."

The eyewitness -- a man we will call Abu Ibrahim -- does more than watch. He steps closer and snaps a picture with his cell phone; the children around him gawk at the horrific spectacle with quiet curiosity.

Abu Ibrahim asked that his identity be kept secret for fear of reprisals. His photographs document the story of a body staged to look like a crucifixion -- and to send a message -- in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. An al Qaeda splinter group, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), says the brutal display serves as a lesson to anyone who dares challenge its rule.

Three days on, the "crucified" body of the man and another victim were reportedly still hanging in Raqqa.

"What they are conveying is those who oppose ISIS rule oppose God's rule, and those who are enemies of ISIS are enemies of God and deserve the highest form of punishment possible," says Abbas Barzegar, assistant professor of Islamic studies at Georgia State University.

The jihadist group carried out a total of seven public executions in Raqqa on Tuesday, but only two bodies were displayed afterward, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group.

Abu Ibrahim, a member of a recently formed anti-ISIS activist group in Raqqa, says the remaining five victims were children under the age of 18, one of them a seventh-grade student. (Continue Reading.)

United States and Saudi Arabia Join Together in Arming Syrian Rebels with Missiles

The U.S. still has faith in the "Arab Spring." What could go wrong?

Fox News—The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have supplied Syrian rebel groups with a small number of advanced American antitank missiles for the first time in a pilot program that could lead to larger flows of sophisticated weaponry, people briefed on the effort said.

The new willingness to arm these rebels comes after the failure of U.S.-backed peace talks in January and recent regime gains on the battlefield. It also follows a reorganization of Western-backed fighters aimed at creating a more effective military force and increasing protection for Christian and other religious minorities—something of particular importance to Washington.

This shift is seen as a test of whether the U.S. can find a trustworthy rebel partner able to keep sophisticated weapons out of the hands of extremists, Saudi and Syrian opposition figures said. The U.S. has long feared that if it does supply advanced arms, the weapons will wind up with radical groups—some tied to al Qaeda—which have set up bases in opposition-held territory.

The White House would neither confirm nor deny it had provided the TOW armor-piercing antitank systems, the first significant supply of sophisticated U.S. weapons systems to rebels. But U.S. officials did say they are working to bolster the rebels' ability to fight the regime. (Continue Reading.)

Jihadists Training Americans and Europeans in Syria to Attack Western Targets

The "Arab Spring" just keeps getting better and better. It's a good thing the Obama Administration was so dedicated to supporting the jihad.

American convert Nicole Mansfield, killed in Syria while waging jihad

WASHINGTON — Islamic extremist groups in Syria with ties to Al Qaeda are trying to identify, recruit and train Americans and other Westerners who have traveled there to get them to carry out attacks when they return home, according to senior American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

These efforts, which the officials say are in the early stages, are the latest challenge that the conflict in Syria has created, not just for Europe but for the United States, as the civil war has become a magnet for Westerners seeking to fight with the rebels against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. At least 70 Americans have either traveled to Syria, or tried to, since the civil war started three years ago, according to the intelligence and counterterrorism officials — a figure that has not previously been disclosed.

The director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, said Thursday that tracking Americans who have returned from Syria had become one of the bureau’s highest counterterrorism priorities.

“We are focused on trying to figure out what our people are up to, who should be spoken to, who should be followed, who should be charged,” Mr. Comey said in a meeting with reporters, without referring to specific numbers. “I mean, it’s hard for me to characterize beyond that. It’s something we are intensely focused on.”

Fearing that the handful of Americans who have returned to the United States pose a threat because they may have received extensive training and jihadist indoctrination, the F.B.I. is conducting costly round-the-clock surveillance on a small number of these individuals, according to the officials.

“We know Al Qaeda is using Syria to identify individuals they can recruit, provide them additional indoctrination so they’re further radicalized, and leverage them into future soldiers, possibly in the U.S.,” said a senior counterterrorism official, who, like half a dozen other top intelligence, law enforcement and diplomatic officials interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified discussing delicate national security issues.

In Europe, where larger numbers are leaving for Syria, officials share the same concern and are working closely with American authorities to coordinate measures to stem the flow and track those who return.

Analysts say at least 1,200 European Muslims have gone to fight since the start of the civil war. In a confidential memo on Nov. 26, Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union’s counterterrorism coordinator, warned that “the first returnees have come back, and there are cases where individuals continue traveling back and forth.” (Continue Reading.)

Doctors Hide Patients as Infighting among Syrian Rebels Threatens Hospital

And the rebels are undoubtedly fighting each other with weapons supplied by the Obama Administration. How's that Peace Prize working out for everyone?

(CNN) — Infighting between Syrian rebels threatened a hospital in the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, a source said, forcing doctors to hide patients as clashes flared between Islamists and members of the Free Syrian Army.

"Doctors are working neutrally, treating both sides," said the source in northern Syria, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal attacks.

As doctors treat the wounded, fighters from the FSA and the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, are fighting outside the hospital and plotting to attack each other inside, the source said.

The clashes come after the FSA gave ISIS members a 24-hour ultimatum to surrender and leave the country and arrested 200 members of the al Qaeda-linked group. (Continue Reading.)

For more on jihad, click here.

Muslim Children Play "Behead the Enemy" in Syria

Nothing to worry about here. Thank you, Arab Spring.

Syrian Mothers Selling Daughters as Prostitutes to Wealthy Saudis in Accordance with Sharia

"I sacrifice myself for my family."

~Muslim girl sold to a Saudi as a prostitute

The Prophet of Islam allowed his followers to practice a form of prostitution called Muta. In Muhammad's time, a Muslim could pay a woman for "temporary marriage," which would last a few hours, days, weeks, or months (depending on the agreement). Many Muslims today claim that Muhammad eventually changed his mind about this obviously immoral practice, and that Muta is now forbidden in Islam (certain Muslim sources suggest this). But these Muslims fail to mention that some of Islam's most trusted sources plainly declare that Muhammad never prohibited Muta. For instance, the following passage in Sahih Muslim says that Muslims were practicing Muta well beyond the lifetime of Muhammad:

Sahih Muslim 3248—Ibn Uraij reported: 'Ati' reported that Jabir b. Abdullah came to perform 'Umra, and we came to his abode, and the people asked him about different things, and then they made a mention of temporary marriage, whereupon he said: Yes, we had been benefiting ourselves by this temporary marriage during the lifetime of the Holy Prophet and during the time of Abu Bakr and ‘Umar.

Some hadith claim that it was Umar, rather than Muhammad, who outlawed Muta:

Sahih Muslim 3250—Abu Nadra reported: While I was in the company of Jabir b. Abdullah, a person came to him and said that Ibn 'Abbas and Ibn Zubair differed on the two types of Mut'a (Tamattu’ of Hajj 1846 and Tamattu’ with women), whereupon Jabir said: We used to do these two during the lifetime of Allah's Messenger. Umar then forbade us to do them, and so we did not revert to them.

Hence, Muslim men who want to hire prostitutes can simply point out that Muhammad, Islam's final prophet, allowed prostitution, and that later Muslims (like Umar) cannot overrule Muhammad. Moreover, since Muhammad allowed sex with prepubescent girls, pedophiles are free to seek out child prostitutes. That's exactly what's happening in Syrian refugee camps.

While the overall accuracy of this news report is excellent, the narrator makes one important (politically correct) blunder. After pointing out that Sharia allows marriage to "very young girls," she says that this is only an "extreme interpretation" of Sharia, for "Islamic law rejects forced marriage in principle." She seems to be confusing a few different concepts here, so let's separate and clarify them.

First, as I have pointed out, there is some disagreement in the Muslim sources as to whether Muta is allowed today. Nevertheless, since there are strong narrations reporting that Muhammad never prohibited Muta, any Muslim who signs a temporary marriage contract can easily defend his actions.

Second, there is no disagreement whatsoever in the Muslim sources as to whether a grown man can marry a prepubescent girl. Both the Qur'an and the Hadith allow men to marry prepubescent girls, and Muhammad himself married and had sex with Aisha when she was only nine years old. Thus, it's simply false to say that marriage to young girls is only allowed under an "extreme interpretation" of Sharia. Marriage to young girls is permitted under any serious interpretation of Sharia.

Third, the narrator believes that Islamic law forbids "forced marriage," and she thinks that these marriages qualify as "forced" because the girls' families are pressuring them. But family pressure (e.g., "You must do this for your family") has nothing to do with the Islamic concept of forced marriage. As long as a girl or woman gives verbal consent to marriage, or even if she remains silent when asked, the marriage does not count as forced. Notice that Umm Majid (the "marriage broker") specifically says to the girls, "I have a 70-year-old Saudi, who wants a girl no older than 13 years. Who of you wants to meet him?" One of the girls responds, "Me." Umm Majid obtains the girl's consent in order to make the marriage fully Sharia-compliant.

So we see once again the depressing fruits of Muhammad's teachings and example. The Prophet of Islam allowed his followers to practice Muta. He allowed his followers to marry prepubescent girls. He allowed men to beat their wives. The result? Wealthy Saudis are taking young Muslim girls back to their hotels, beating and raping them, and it's all perfectly in line with Sharia. (The same thing is happening in Egypt.)

Where are CAIR and ISNA when these little girls are being raped? It seems that Muslim organizations in the West are too busy complaining about Islamophobia to care much about the horrendous abuse of vulnerable little girls in the Middle East. Indeed, many Muslims get far more upset about people like me reporting the abuse than they do about the abuse itself.

You can learn a lot about a religion by noticing what tends to outrage its adherents. Welcome to Islam.