In one of the more bizarre developments of campaign 2008, John McCain's campaign has announced that he won't be rolling out the White House welcome mat for Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, prime minister of America's NATO ally Spain. But if McCain's posture seems like an adolescent temper tantrum aimed at a critical member of Washington's […]

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 […]

No doubt, history will not be kind to George W Bush. And to be sure, Bush is already returning the favor. Apparently stunned by the Russian assault on Georgia, President Bush forgot his invasion of "sovereign" Iraq and declared, "Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century". As it turns out, John McCain, Condoleezza […]

Back in July, an envious McCain campaign blasted Barack Obama for being "presumptuous" during his tour of European capitals. That charge was not only echoed in the right-wing media, but amplified by the Washington Post's Dana Milbank. But with conflict now raging between Russia and Georgia, it is the presumptuous John McCain who is pretending […]

One of the most enduring moments of the 9/11 Commission hearings came when Condoleezza Rice casually recalled the now infamous August 6, 2001 presidential daily brief (PDB). "I believe," she said, "the title was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'" Now almost exactly seven years later, Secretary of State Rice seems to […]

In ways large and small, CBS News continues to offer John McCain's presidential campaign a helping hand. Less than a month after Katie Couric edited out McCain's shocking confusion over the timeline of the surge in Iraq, CBS News on Monday featured Robert Kagan, not identified as McCain foreign policy adviser, as its lone analyst […]

The announcement this morning that Russia will halt its military operations in Georgia will almost certainly be followed by another. No doubt, the McCain campaign and its conservative amen corner will claim that John McCain's tough talk is responsible for it. As with the July release of Colombian hostages and the recent dip in oil […]

As the conflict over the breakaway region of South Ossetia threatens to explode into all-out war between Georgia and Russia, Republican presidential nominee John McCain weighed in. "What's most critical now," McCain said, "is to avoid further confrontation between Russian and Georgian military forces." But given his confused and contradictory statements about expelling Russia from […]

Continuing to play the victim at the hands of the American media that love him, on Friday John McCain bashed both Barack Obama and the press. Appropriating Lance Armstrong's cancer awareness event in Columbus, McCain slammed the "throng of adoring fans" who greeted Obama in Paris. Sadly for McCain, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's glowing reception […]

That the Republican water carrier and New York Times columnist David Brooks would blast Barack Obama's Berlin speech was utterly predictable. (Kevin Drum even predicted the title of the piece, "Playing Innocent Abroad.") To be sure, by slandering Obama's call to "remake the world" with epithets including "saccharine," "treacle," and "Disney," Brooks did not disappoint. […]