Sources: US Weapons Stolen in Libya Raids, Fueling Special Forces Pull-Out

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Highly sensitive U.S. military equipment stored in Libya was stolen over the summer by groups likely aligned and working with terrorist organizations, State Department sources told Fox News — in raids that contributed to the decision to pull Special Forces personnel from the country.

The stolen equipment had been used by U.S. Special Forces stationed in the country. Lost in the raids in late July and early August were dozens of M4 rifles, night-vision technology and lasers used as aiming devices that are mounted on guns and can only be seen with night-vision equipment.

“This stuff is how we win wars. The enemy doesn’t have that,” one source said.

The overnight raids happened at a military training camp run by American Special Forces on the outskirts of Tripoli, in the weeks before the team was pulled from the country in August.

That U.S. team was funded by the Department of Defense Section 1208, which provides support to assist and stand up foreign counterterrorism forces in other countries. And in the case of Libya, the trainers were also tasked with hunting down the Benghazi attack suspects that killed four Americans one year ago. As Fox News previously reported, members of that team are leaving Libya.

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Russia ‘to Renew Offer to Supply S-300s to Iran’

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Photo Credit: France 24

Photo Credit: France 24

Russian President Vladimir Putin will offer to supply Iran S-300 air defence missile systems as well as build a second reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, the Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday.

Putin will renew an old offer to supply Iran with five of the sophisticated ground-to-air missile systems at a meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rowhani on Friday, Kommersant said, quoting a souce close to the Kremlin.

Putin is set to meet Rowhani at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation held in Kyrgyzstan on Friday.

Russia in 2007 signed a contract to deliver five of the advanced ground-to-air weapons — which can take out aircraft or guided missiles — to Iran at a cost of $800 million.

In 2010, then-president Dmitry Medvedev cancelled the contract after coming under strong US and Israeli pressure not to go ahead with the sale of the weapons system, drawing vehement protests from Tehran.

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Nun Reveals Rebel Atrocities in Syria

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Everyone in Syria, but especially its Christian population, is endangered by the growing surge of violence and atrocities perpetrated by the rebels who are challenging President Bashar al-Assad, according to a Catholic nun who has served community members in Syria for more than two decades.

Multiple reports have recently confirmed that the rebel forces opposing Assad are increasingly populated with hardcore Islamists, including groups with close ties to al-Qaida.

Among the areas of Syria that have unfortunately found themselves in the Islamist rebels’ bull’s-eye has been the longtime – think thousands of years – city of Maaloula, where residents still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

Mother Agnes Mariam el-Salib, the mother superior of St. James Monastery in Qara and who previously has served as a source of information for WND, describes the horrors to which she was witness. One was the threat from Islamists that Christians of Maaloula would be beheaded if they did not convert to Islam.

In a question-and-answer interview with RT recently, she voiced doubt about the validity of rebel statements protesting a gas attack near Damascus just days ago, and expressed outrage at the “massacre” of civilians by members of Jabhat al-Nusra, the most influential of the rebel groups fighting Assad.

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Kerry Gives Assad One Week to Surrender Chemical Weapons or Face Attack

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Photo Credit: Talk Radio News Service

Photo Credit: Talk Radio News Service

The US secretary of state has said that President Bashar al-Assad has one week to hand over his entire stock of chemical weapons to avoid a military attack. But John Kerry added that he had no expectation that the Syrian leader would comply.

Kerry also said he had no doubt that Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack in east Damascus on 21 August, saying that only three people are responsible for the chemical weapons inside Syria – Assad, one of his brothers and a senior general. He said the entire US intelligence community was united in believing Assad was responsible.

Kerry was speaking on Monday alongside the UK foreign secretary, William Hague, who was forced to deny that he had been pushed to the sidelines by the House of Commons decision 10 days ago to reject the use of UK force in Syria.

The US Senate is due to vote this week on whether to approve an attack and Kerry was ambivalent over whether Barack Obama would use his powers to ignore the legislative chamber, if it were to reject an attack.

The US State Department stressed that Kerry was making a rhetorical argument about the one-week deadline and unlikelihood of Assad turning over Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. In a statement, the department added: “His point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons, otherwise he would have done so long ago. That’s why the world faces this moment.”

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Obama Sees Potential ‘Breakthrough’ in Russia’s Syria Proposal

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syria_alqaedaRussia and Syria embraced Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s suggestion Monday that the Syrian government could avert a U.S. attack by placing its chemical weapons under international control, upending the Obama administration’s efforts to sharpen its case for military action.

U.S. officials said Kerry’s comment, made in response to a question at a news conference in London, was not intended to be a diplomatic opening. But Kerry’s Russian and Syrian counterparts quickly followed up, and the idea drew immediate interest internationally and from top Democrats in Washington.

By the end of the day, President Obama conceded that the idea of monitoring and ultimately destroying Syria’s arsenal “could potentially be a significant breakthrough.” The Senate postponed a vote scheduled for Wednesday on whether to back a proposed punitive strike.

“I think you have to take it with a grain of salt, initially,” Obama said in an interview with NBC that was among several he gave Monday in pursuit of public backing for a military strike in response to an alleged Aug. 21 gas attack on Syrian civilians.

“We are going to run this to ground,” Obama said. “We’re going to make sure that we see how serious these proposals are.”

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Afghan Interpreter who Saved US Soldier Gets Long-Awaited Visa

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Photo Credit: MATT ZELLER

Photo Credit: MATT ZELLER

The Afghan interpreter credited with saving an Army intelligence officer only to become a target of the Taliban, has been granted a visa and could come to the United States as soon as next month.

Janis Shinwari, whose cause was embraced by Medal of Honor winner and U.S. Marine Dakota Meyer, along with more than 100,000 people who signed a petition at Change.org, saved Army Officer Matt Zeller in a 2008 firefight with insurgents, according to Zeller. The grateful Zeller has been aggressively lobbying for a visa for Shinwari for nearly two years, since Shinwari, 35, began getting death threats. On Monday, the pair spoke by phone after learning the State Department had finally processed the paperwork.

“Janis gave me the news a short while ago via Facebook chat — and then I called him,” Zeller told FoxNews.com. “It was very emotional. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him that happy. He started telling me about how excited he is and that he expects to have flights and housing arranged by IOM (the organization that handles that aspect of it) within 30-40 days.

“We started talking about how our kids (I have a daughter about the same age as his youngest) will grow up together and be friends,” Zeller added. “I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that in a few weeks I’ll be able to talk to him in person.

Shinwari applied to move to the U.S. in 2011 under a special immigration program begun in 2009 for people who helped U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. The program, designated to help interpreters and other allies from the Iraq war, expires at the end of this month absent an extension. The Afghan version would go away in September 2014 without a new law.

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Obama Offers Assad Secret Deal

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

On the eve of a critical Capitol Hill discussion on Syria and two days before his address to the nation, President Obama offered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a way out of any U.S. bombing campaign.

Informed Middle Eastern intelligence officials tell WND the U.S. passed a message to Assad through Russia offering a deal that would ensure against U.S. military action if the Syrian leader agrees to the following terms:

Serious political reforms that will result in free and fair presidential elections.

Assad will not be allowed to run in future presidential elections and agrees to step down from power.

An international committee will supervise control of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.

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Village ‘Liberated’ by Rebels… Who then Forced Christians to Convert to Islam

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Terrified Christians claim Syrian rebels ordered them to convert to Islam on pain of death when they ‘liberated’ their ancient village.

Opposition forces, including fighters linked to Al Qaeda, gained temporary control of the Christian village of Maaloula after fighting with regime forces.

The reports have reignited fears about western support for the rebel groups, which are increasingly being infiltrated by Islamic extremists.

One Maaloula resident said the rebels, many of whom had beards and shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great), attacked Christian homes and churches shortly after moving into the village.

‘They shot and killed people. I heard gunshots and then I saw three bodies lying in the middle of a street in the old quarters of the village. Where is President Obama to see what has befallen us?’

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Thousands Show for German anti-NSA Protest

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German_protestThousands took to the streets in Berlin Saturday in protests against Internet surveillance activities by the US National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, and the German government’s perceived lax reaction to them.

Organisers, among them the opposition Greens, The Left and Pirates parties, said 20,000 people turned out. Police would not confirm the figure, saying only their “tally differs from that of the organisers”.

The protest was organised under the slogan “Freedom Rather Than Fear” and demonstrators carried banners saying: “Stop spying on us” and, more sarcastically: “Thanks to PRISM (the US government’s vast data collection programs) the government finally knows what the people want.”

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Truth Leaking Out? Nerve Gas Points to Rebels

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Former U.S. intelligence analysts claim current intelligence analysts have told them Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was not responsible for the Aug. 21 poison gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, which killed 1,429 people, of whom more than 400 where children.

They claim the “growing body of evidence” reveals the incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters.

“The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war,” one former U.S. intelligence analysts said.

The analysts referred to a meeting a week before the Aug. 21 incident in which opposition military commanders ordered preparations for an “imminent escalation” due to a “war-changing development” that would be followed by the “U.S.-led bombing of Syria.”

In addition, the former U.S. analysts said that Israel welcomed limited U.S. military action but not so much that it would strengthen rebel groups, which are “increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.”

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