Just days after playing a key role in ending the log jam over Republican filibustering of President Obama's executive branch nominees, Arizona Senator John McCain put a road block in the front of the anticipated confirmation of Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey. McCain announced he would put a "hold" on Dempsey's second term heading up […]

As the carnage and chaos grow in Cairo, there are no easy answers for the United States in Egypt. But once upon a time, Republican leaders and their allies in the conservative commentariat had a simple answer indeed for the Middle East. Waiving their purple fingers in early 2005, the likes of David Brooks, Charles […]

While Americans marked this Memorial Day by honoring the fallen of the nation's wars, Republican Senator John McCain was inside Syria making the case for the next one. As reported in the Daily Beast, McCain slipped across the Turkish border to meet with Syrian rebels. As Josh Rogin detailed, McCain's surprise visit, the first by […]

For Republicans, Benghazi is the scandal that must not die. Despite the testimony by Obama administration officials including Hillary Clinton and the blistering findings of the State Department Accountability Review Board she endorsed, the GOP is determined to bludgeon the current president and the woman who might be his successor. So, the Republicans' talking point […]

As his performance over the past week suggests, Rep. Darrell Issa's response to the tragic deaths of American citizens in the Middle East apparently depends on which party controls the White House. After all, in February 2007 Issa mocked the families of four Blackwater contractors slaughtered in Fallujah. Now, the Chairman of the House Oversight […]

Over the past few days, news reports suggest that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad may be gaining the upper hand in the Syrian civil war. While Hezbollah fighters are apparently pouring in from Lebanon to counter Al Qaeda extremists aligned with the rebels, a hard core Shiite militia backing Assad is having greater success […]

On Wednesday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) will hold new hearings into the Benghazi consulate attack which claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Hyping tomorrow's show, the Grand Inquisitor of Barack Obama boasted that he intends on "making the president come clean." Not content to […]

America's soul-searching to mark the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq went pretty much according to script. While many of its liberal supporters offered their mea culpas for having been so catastrophically mistaken, the Bush administration's architects of the war doubled-down on their epic failure. (Meanwhile, some of their biggest cheerleaders lamented only […]

This week's tenth anniversary of the catastrophic U.S. invasion of Iraq produced perhaps the most bizarre post-mortem in in recent history. While liberal supporters of the war like Ezra Klein and Jonathan Chait lined up to apologize for their error, right-wing cheerleaders like Peggy Noonan and Ross Douthat lamented only that President Bush's calamitous conflict […]

Ten years later, there is little question that the Iraq war was a disaster for the United States and its people. Over 4,400 Americans died and another 30,000 were wounded in the conflict. While U.S. forces were left to "muddle through" in Afghanistan, America's Mesopotamia misadventure significantly strengthened Iran's influence in the region. All told, […]