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This Is Not a One-Eyed Smiley Face, It’s a Symbol of Frightening Things Happening to Middle East Christians

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Photo Credit: TwitterTheir community has suffered murder, crucifixion, rape, kidnapping, theft, special taxation and intimidation under the fierce hand of the Islamic State group.

Now, Iraqi and Syrian Christians are getting a flood of moral support from around the world from those who are taking the symbol of their oppression in order to express solidarity.

One way to say Christian in Arabic is “Nasrani,” that is, one who believes in Jesus of Nazareth. Reports emerging from the towns populated for generations by Christians suggest that Islamic State jihadists have spray painted some homes to mark them as once inhabited by Christians using the Arabic letter ن, which sounds like “noon,” and is the first letter of the word “Nasrani” in Arabic.

Supporters of Middle East Christians say the branding of the homes with red paint is reminiscent of Jews being forced to wear yellow stars under Nazi Germany and are now adopting the symbol of persecution to support Middle East Christians.

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White House: Americans with Islamic State Have Returned to U.S. (+video)

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Photo Credit: iStockThe White House acknowledged on Monday that some Americans fighting with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have returned to the United States, estimating that more than 100 fighters from the U.S. have joined the terrorist group.

To date, the White House had not publicly revealed that Americans fighting on behalf of the Islamic State were back in the U.S. The FBI is now monitoring the American-born fighters who have come home, a senior administration official confirmed.

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Suspicions Run Deep in Iraq That C.I.A. and the Islamic State Are United

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Photo Credit: Reuters By David D. Kirkpatrick.

The United States has conducted an escalating campaign of deadly airstrikes against the extremists of the Islamic State for more than a month. But that appears to have done little to tamp down the conspiracy theories still circulating from the streets of Baghdad to the highest levels of Iraqi government that the C.I.A. is secretly behind the same extremists that it is now attacking.

“We know about who made Daesh,” said Bahaa al-Araji, a deputy prime minister, using an Arabic shorthand for the Islamic State on Saturday at a demonstration called by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr to warn against the possible deployment of American ground troops. Mr. Sadr publicly blamed the C.I.A. for creating the Islamic State in a speech last week, and interviews suggested that most of the few thousand people at the demonstration, including dozens of members of Parliament, subscribed to the same theory. (Mr. Sadr is considered close to Iran, and the theory is popular there as well.)

When an American journalist asked Mr. Araji to clarify if he blamed the C.I.A. for the Islamic State, he retreated: “I don’t know. I am one of the poor people,” he said, speaking fluent English and quickly stepping back toward the open door of a chauffeur-driven SUV. “But we fear very much. Thank you!”

The prevalence of the theory in the streets underscored the deep suspicions of the American military’s return to Iraq more than a decade after its invasion, in 2003. The casual endorsement by a senior official, though, was also a pointed reminder that the new Iraqi government may be an awkward partner for the American-led campaign to drive out the extremists.

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Liberal Editor Says ISIS ‘Not A Legitimate Threat’

By Al Weaver.

Left-wing talking head Katrina vanden Heuvel said Sunday on ABC’s”This Week” that ISIS is “not an immediate threat to this country,” a point later disputed in the roundtable segment by Wall Street Journal foreign affairs columnist Bret Stephens. Vanden Heuvel, the editor of the liberal news outfit The Nation, also said that America should go about combating ISIS through “regional diplomacy” or a “political solution.”

“The president articulated what I think is a pretty good foreign policy organizing principle: don’t do stupid stuff…He resisted military strikes in Syria last august. He said at West Point in May that our biggest mistakes have been willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences.”

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Photo Credit: Andrea Bruce for The New York TimesU.S. Suspects More Direct Threats Beyond ISIS

By MARK MAZZETTI, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and BEN HUBBARD.

As the United States begins what could be a lengthy military campaign against the Islamic State, intelligence and law enforcement officials said another Syrian group, led by a shadowy figure who was once among Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, posed a more direct threat to America and Europe.

American officials said that the group called Khorasan had emerged in the past year as the cell in Syria that may be the most intent on hitting the United States or its INSTALLATIONS overseas with a terror attack. The officials said that the group is led by Muhsin al-Fadhli, a senior Qaeda operative who, according to the State Department, was so close to Bin Laden that he was among a small group of people who knew about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks before they were launched.

There is almost no public information about the Khorasan group, which was described by several intelligence, law enforcement and military officials as being made up of Qaeda operatives from across the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa. Members of the cell are said to be particularly interested in devising terror plots using concealed explosives. It is unclear who, besides Mr. Fadhli, is part of the Khorasan group.

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Dems Block Cruz Bill to Strip U.S. Citizenship from Islamic State Defectors (+video)

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Photo Credit: APSen. Ted Cruz tried to get the Senate to consider a measure Thursday providing that any American who joins the fight with terrorist groups such as the Islamic State would immediately renounce their U.S. citizenship, but a Democratic senator objected, saying more time is necessary to weigh the significant constitutional issues it raises.

Ahead of the Senate’s scheduled consideration Thursday afternoon of a proposal to arm and train Syrian rebels, part of President Obama’s strategy to combat the terrorist group, the Texas Republican asked for unanimous consent to pass the Expatriate Terrorist Act he introduced earlier this month.

The measure makes providing support to or fighting for a terrorist group targeting the U.S. “an affirmative renunciation of American citizenship,” Mr. Cruz said on the Senate floor Thursday. He pointed out that former Sens. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, and Scott Brown, Massachusetts Republican, introduced a similar measure several years ago related to al Qaeda.

“If we do not pass this legislation, the consequence will be that Americans fighting alongside ISIS today may come home tomorrow with a U.S. passport, may come home to New York or Los Angeles or Houston or Chicago and innocent Americans may be murdered if the Senate does not act today,” Mr. Cruz said.

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Egypt: Don’t Limit Action to ISIS; Islamists Elsewhere Share its Ideology

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Photo Credit: Interdependent By Patrick Goodenough.

During Secretary of State John Kerry’s weekend visit to Cairo, his Egyptian counterpart pushed for the new international focus on countering terrorism to go beyond Syria and Iraq, arguing that the same ideology espoused by the jihadists there is driving other Islamist extremists, including those in Egypt’s neighboring territories.

During his current travels in the Middle East and Europe, Kerry is seeking support for a coalition to tackle the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL), and he said Sunday he has received offers from some countries to take part in the military element of that campaign.

But while the administration’s focus has been largely centered on ISIS, Cairo sees the problem as a far broader one.

A spokesman for President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi said that in talks with Kerry the president had “stressed that any international coalition against terrorism must be a comprehensive alliance that is not limited to confront a certain organization or to curb a single terrorist hotbed but must expand to include all the terrorist hotbeds across the Middle East and Africa.”

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US launches first offensive strikes against ISIS in Iraq

By Fox News.

The U.S. military launched airstrikes against the Islamic State militants in Iraq Monday in its first move in the newly broadened mission authorized by President Obama to go on the offensive against the terror group.
The U.S. Central Command said in a press release that the strikes were conducted to provide support for Iraqi security forces fighting the militants southwest of Baghdad.

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Obama: ISIS 'Is Not Islamic'

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Chelsea Schilling.

In his prime-time speech to the nation on the eve of the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, President Obama vowed to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State insurgency in Iraq and Syria with airstrikes and 475 U.S. boots on the ground – but he also made a particular point of declaring that the Islamic State terrorists “are not Islamic.”

“Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not Islamic,” Obama said, speaking from the state floor of the White House residence. “No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.”

He added, “And ISIL is certainly not a state. It was formerly al-Qaida’s affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria’s civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border. It is recognized by no government, nor the people it subjugates. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.”

Obama said the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, poses a threat to Iraq, Syria and the broader Middle East – including American citizens, personnel and facilities.

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Digital jihad: ISIS, Al Qaeda seek a cyber caliphate to launch attacks on US

By Jamie Dettmer.

Jihadists in the Middle East are ramping up efforts to mount a massive cyber attack on the U.S., with leaders from both Islamic State and Al Qaeda – including a hacker who once broke into former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Gmail account – recruiting web savvy radicals, FoxNews.com has learned.

Islamic militants brag online that it is only a matter of time before they manage to pull off a highly disruptive attack on America’s infrastructure or financial system. In addition, Islamic State, the terror group that claims to have established a caliphate across Syria and Iraq, boast openly of plans to establish a “cyber caliphate,” protected by jihadist developed encryption software from behind which they hope to mount catastrophic hacking and virus attacks on America and the West.

“The jihadists are investing a lot in encryption technologies and they have developed their own software to protect their communications and when western agencies work out how to crack them they adapt quickly,” said Steve Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington-DC-based non-profit that tracks jihadist Internet activity. “They are forward-thinking and are experimenting with hacking. In the future, the jihadist cyber army’s activities will become a daily reality.”

The terror groups are trying to add to their numbers to boost their capabilities, using social media to reach a larger pool of potential recruits and calling on militant-minded specialists to join them. The targets are the websites of U.S. government agencies, banks, energy companies and transport systems.

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Obama lays out plan to ‘eradicate cancer’ of Islamic State fighters

By Amie Parnes.

President Obama vowed to “destroy” Islamic State in Iraq and Syria terrorists in a prime-time address Wednesday that sought to restore eroding public confidence in his leadership and ability to safeguard national security.

The president announced a “systematic campaign of airstrikes” against fighters with the ISIS “wherever they exist,” signaling U.S. targets will expand from Iraq to Syria. [READ FULL TEXT OF OBAMA’S SPEECH.]

“I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country wherever they are,” Obama said during the 15-minute address from the White House. “That means I will not hesitate to take action against [ISIS] in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.”

Obama also said he will send 475 additional U.S. armed services personnel to Iraq to reinforce that country’s military and ask Congress to approve a program allowing the Pentagon to train and equip moderate rebels inside Syria battling both ISIS and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government.

“America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat,” Obama declared. “Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, [ISIS] through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.”

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Action against Islamic State is a ‘legacy issue’ for President Obama

By David Nakamura.

Nearly six years into a presidency devoted to ending U.S. wars in the Muslim world, President Obama faced the nation Wednesday night to explain why he has decided to engage in a new one.

Obama did not describe his authorization of direct military action to defeat the Islamic State terror group as a conventional war. To the contrary, in a prime-time address from the White House, he sharply contrasted his use of targeted but limited ­American force with the large-scale air-and-ground invasions launched by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

“This effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said, casting the strategy as a “counterterrorism campaign” similar to U.S. intervention in Somalia and Yemen. “It is consistent with the approach I outlined earlier this year: to use force against anyone who threatens America’s core interests, but to mobilize partners wherever possible.”

But make no mistake: Obama’s escalation of airstrikes and the use of U.S. personnel to help “degrade and destroy” the extremist Sunni group represents a major setback for a commander in chief whose early international appeal was built on a pledge to remove the United States from “permanent war footing.”

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EX-CIA Employee Admits President Obama is a Radical Islamic Enemy of America

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Photo Credit: APToday, a former CIA agent bluntly told the newspaper, World Net Daily, that America has switched sides in the war on terror under President Obama. Clare Lopez was willing to say what a few members of Congress have said in private, but declined to say on-the-record.

Clare M. Lopez is the Vice President for Research and Analysis at the Center for Security Policy and a Senior Fellow at The Clarion Project, the London Center for Policy Research, and the Canadian Meighen Institute. Since 2013, she has served as a member of the Citizens Commission on Benghazi. Also Vice President of the Intelligence Summit, she formerly was a career operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, Executive Director of the Iran Policy Committee from 2005-2006, and has served as a consultant, intelligence analyst, and researcher for a variety of defense firms. She was named a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute in 2011.


Lopez said the global war on terror had been an effort to “stay free of Shariah,” or repressive Islamic law, until the Obama administration began siding with such jihadist groups as the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates. Lopez believes that the Muslim Brotherhood has thoroughly infiltrated the Obama administration and other branches of the federal government. One of the most outrageous of those appointments is Mohamed Elibiary, a senior member of the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council. According to a report by the Center for Security Policy, Elibiary supports brokering a U.S. partnership with the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group. Two months ago, a firestorm erupted online after Elibiary tweeted that a “Caliphate” is inevitable and compared it to the European Union.

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Radical Islamists Stole 12 Libyan Jetliners, Raise Fears of Suicide Airliner Attacks on 9/11

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Photo Credit: APBy Bill Gertz.

Islamist militias in Libya took control of nearly a dozen commercial jetliners last month, and western intelligence agencies recently issued a warning that the jets could be used in terrorist attacks across North Africa.

Intelligence reports of the stolen jetliners were distributed within the U.S. government over the past two weeks and included a warning that one or more of the aircraft could be used in an attack later this month on the date marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, said U.S. officials familiar with the reports.

“There are a number of commercial airliners in Libya that are missing,” said one official. “We found out on September 11 what can happen with hijacked planes.”

The official said the aircraft are a serious counterterrorism concern because reports of terrorist control over the Libyan airliners come three weeks before the 13th anniversary of 9/11 attacks and the second anniversary of the Libyan terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the Benghazi attack, which the Obama administration initially said was the result of a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Muslim video.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Western Journalism Shocking Revelation: Radical Islamists Just Stole A Dozen Airliners That May Be Used In 9/11 Attack

By Norvell Rose.

With the anniversaries of the 9/11/2001 attack as well as the deadly attack on Benghazi fast approaching, intelligence officials in the U.S. and elsewhere are increasingly on the alert. And what’s just been reported by several news outlets could give counter-terrorism experts reason to heighten their alert status.

Islamist militias in Libya — a nation falling into chaos — have reportedly stolen from the airport in Tripoli as many as a dozen large, commercial jetliners that could be used in terror attacks. The Washington Times and the Washington Free Beacon are reporting that western intelligence agencies are warning that 9/11-like attacks could be in the final planning stages.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rev. Graham: ‘As I Read the News, I Can’t Help But Wonder if We're in Last Hours’

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Photo Credit: APRev. Franklin Graham, head of the international Christian aid group Samaritan’s Purse and son of world-renowned preacher Billy Graham, said that given all the “bad news” about the killing of Christians by Muslims in some countries, and attacks on Christians by the media and the government even in America, he cannot “help but wonder if we are in the last hours before our Lord Jesus Christ returns.”

“As I read the news, I can’t help but wonder if we are in the last hours before our Lord Jesus Christ returns to rescue His church and God pours out His wrath on the world for the rejection of His Son,” said Rev. Graham in a post on the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) website.

“I don’t know if we have hours, days, months, or years—but as Christians, God calls us to take the truth of the Gospel to the ends of the earth,” said Graham. “Our job is to warn sinners of the consequences of sin and show them that God is loving and gracious, willing to forgive if we come to Him in repentance and faith.”

The BGEA was founded in 1950 by Rev. Billy Graham, and Franklin Graham is vice chairman and CEO of the evangelical organization.

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‘Duck Dynasty’ Star Phil Robertson Explains How He’d Fight Islamic State: ‘Convert Them or Kill Them’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: A and E

Photo Credit: A and E

Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson offered his preferred strategy to combat the Islamic State terror group during a Fox News appearance Tuesday night: “Convert them or kill them.”

“In this case, you either have to convert them, which I think would be next to impossible. I’m not giving up on them, but I’m just saying either convert them or kill them,” Robertson told host Sean Hannity. “One or the other.”

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