Republicans are predictably foaming at the mouth over the news that the Obama administration secured the release of American soldier Bowe Bergdahl exchange for five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. Even more predictable, the right-wing rage is unfounded. As Lt. Col. Robert Bateman explained, throughout its history the United States has engaged in prisoner […]

Turning to John McCain for answers on national security issues is a lot like asking a dog why it licks its ass: you get the same answer every time. But with its silence the dog does no harm. In contrast, John McCain, with his never-ending demands to deploy more American troops regardless of situation or […]

In December 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lectured American troops worried about vital equipment shortages plaguing U.S. combat forces in Iraq. "You go to war with the army you have," Rumsfeld pontificated, "not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." That was a particularly galling statement for Rumsfeld of […]

For the first time since the shocking revelations of secret VA patient waiting lists came to light, President Obama on Wednesday seemed to equivocate on his support for Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki. "I know that Rick's attitude is if he doesn't think he can do a good job on this and if he thinks […]

John McCain on Tuesday declared he would send U.S. special forces into Nigeria "in a New York minute" to free hundreds of school girls held hostage by Boko Haram. McCain's enthusiasm in unsurprising, given his past support for deploying American forces almost anywhere for almost any reason. Except, it turns out, to the place that […]

There are tragedies and then there are scandals. The killings of four Americans in Benghazi, as investigations by the State Department and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have already confirmed, was a tragedy, and likely a preventable one. But the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture was both a tragedy and a scandal. The […]

According to the Daily Beast, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned a closed-door meeting on Friday that Israel risks becoming "an apartheid state" if a two-state peace deal with the Palestinians is not reached soon. While many of the usual suspects among Israel's hardline supporters in the United States will be apoplectic, any rage […]

As Condoleezza Rice reminded Americans this week, nothing succeeds like failure for the members of George W. Bush's national security team. Addressing a $15 million dollar Republican fundraiser, Bush's former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State blasted the Obama administration's handling of the Ukraine crisis, declaring "When America steps back and there is a […]

Mitt Romney may be the happiest man in America today. After the recent documentary Mitt, some people concluded that there was more to Romney than the image of the cold, calculating parasite who pioneered schadenfreude as a wildly successful business model. And with Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea, Mitt has taken to the airwaves and […]

Politics, it is said, ends at the water's edge. Or at least it did until January 20, 2009. Sensing yet another opportunity to bludgeon President Obama, the usual suspects on the right have fanned out across TV screens and op-ed pages to blame him for Russian aggression in Ukraine. John McCain, who defended President Bush […]