In his predictably self-absorbed farewell address to the nation, President George W. Bush grudgingly acknowledged, "There are things I would do differently if given the chance." But as he demonstrated last night, rejecting his repeated linkage of the 9/11 attacks to his war on Iraq is not among them. Even as Bush and Vice President […]

In an interview Thursday with the AP, Vice President Cheney neatly summarized the failed Bush presidency. Comparing the financial meltdown and implosion of the American economy with the 9/11 attacks, Cheney insisted, "I don't think anybody saw it coming." As it turns out, from 9/11, sectarian conflict in Iraq and the election of Hamas to […]

Over the past several days, a wave of stories has highlighted the deepening crisis in Afghanistan. One day after the New York Times detailed American plans to deploy thousands of new troops just to secure the capital Kabul came word that a U.S. resupply convoy in Pakistan was destroyed by Taliban insurgents. But largely overlooked […]

In the waning days of his failed presidency, George W. Bush has launched a quixotic reclamation project to salvage his irreparably tarnished reputation. Sadly, that effort stumbled out of the gate earlier this week when the President and Karl Rove couldn't get their stories straight as to whether Bush would have launched his war on […]

Even as Barack Obama was introducing his national security team to the nation Monday, Americans learned of a chilling new report detailing the scope of the global threat of weapons of mass destruction. Dramatically titled "World at Risk," the study led by former Senators Bob Graham (D-FL) and Jim Talent (R-MO) predicted a better than […]

On Saturday night Sarah Palin once again put John McCain in a tough spot, this time on the subject of Pakistan. Just hours after McCain blasted Barack Obama for saying "out loud" that the U.S. should - if necessary - unilaterally strike at Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan's western border, Palin in essence agreed with […]

No safe havens for terrorists. Preventive war. Democracy expansion. Those are the three central tenets of the Bush Doctrine, the guiding theory of unilateral American foreign and national security policy since 9/11. And today, on the seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin revealed she […]

With the anniversary of the September 11 attacks once again upon us, Bush's Law of Bin Laden is also again on display. That is, in the Bush playbook, the threat posed by Osama Bin Laden is directly proportional to the threat to the President's own political standing. At the White House on Wednesday, press secretary […]

As developments on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to undermine his campaign, Republican John McCain tried to play the Bin Laden card on Friday. Repeating his claim "I know how to win wars," McCain told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "I know how" to capture Osama Bin Laden. Apparently, the McCain strategy, as he […]

The steady stream of bad news about Afghanistan this week served to highlight two inescapable truths regarding the conflict against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. First, Barack Obama was right that the ongoing commitment of American forces in Iraq is preventing the United States from successfully pursuing Al Qaeda along the Pakistan frontier. Second, the […]