One day after Vladimir Putin scolded Secretary of State Condi Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates over the administration's plans for a European missile defense system, Rice fired back at the Russian president. But before lecturing Putin on his return to authoritarianism in Russia, Rice should have first checked with her boss President Bush about […]

If nothing else, Mitt Romney is a perpetual irony machine. Yesterday, Romney added to his legend by proclaiming that his three leading Democratic opponents - all U.S. Senators - lack his foreign policy experience. More ironic still, the one-term governor and international affairs neophyte leveled the charge while speaking in Midland, Texas, home of one […]

In the wake of the controversial O'Hanlon/Pollack op-ed endorsing the progress of the surge in Iraq, the liberal blogosphere has been awash in commentary about the mainstream media's narrow reliance on the pro-surge viewpoints of "very serious people" constituting the "foreign policy clerisy." As it turns out, not so much. A new joint report from […]

Among the more tragi-comic aspects of the departure of Karl Rove is the media's renewed interest in the Bush Doctrine and its three tenets of no safe havens for terrorists, preventive war and democracy promotion. Last Monday, Rove claimed that the Bush Doctrine would live on and be the President's legacy. And this morning, the […]

In the latest chapter in the Mitt Romney book of flip-flops, the former Massachusetts governor has revealed his love-hate relationship with Hezbollah. Just weeks after including the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite terrorist group in his laundry list of Islamic enemies real or imagined, Romney told an audience today that Hezbollah is the living model of modern […]

Sunday's New York Times reports a new fissure within the American evangelical movement. Already increasingly at loggerheads over global warming, evangelicals may be witnessing a new schism over the issue of a Palestinian state. And that means Pastor John Hagee and his end-of-times friends at Christians United for Israel (CUFI) are not happy. On Friday, […]

Sunday's New York Times offers an explosive story of an aborted 2005 U.S. raid into Pakistan, a special forces operation designed to "snatch and grab" Ayman Al Zawahiri and other senior Al Qaeda leaders. The story, following July 2006 revelations that the CIA had previously disbanded its Bin Laden unit, gives lie to one of […]

That wheezing sound you may have heard this week amid the chaos in Gaza, the carnage in Baghdad and the conflict in Lebanon was the final gasps of the Bush Doctrine in its death throes. Just two years after the President and his neo-conservative allies basked in the glow of their self-proclaimed moment of triumph, […]

In Albania this weekend, President Bush learned that there is at least one place on earth where he is still welcome. Massive crowds and adoring throngs in the primarily Muslim nation came out to greet the President in Tirana to thank Bush for his support of independence for their ethnic brethren in Kosovo. But in […]

On Wednesday, President Bush once again turned to AIDS for air cover in the battle for global opinion. Facing the prospect of universal condemnation by the international community for a wildly unpopular American policy, President Bush tried to change the topic and buy some global goodwill by announcing massive new U.S. AIDS funding. This time, […]