Despite the Obama administration's 4% increase in the Pentagon budget, Republican leaders and their conservative echo chamber are predictably issuing dire warnings about draconian cuts in defense spending and "disarming America." Of course, critics of Secretary Gates' strategic shift of resources to boost the nation's ability to fight current wars and future counterinsurgencies neglect to […]

Ever since 9/11, analysts of all stripes have created a cottage industry in studying comparative fundamentalism across Islam, Christianity and Judaism. (In 2007, for example, CNN featured Christiane Amanpour's special report on "God's Warriors.") Now with the revelations from Israeli soldiers of atrocities committed during their assault on Gaza, new questions are being raised about […]

One day after Dick Cheney claimed President Obama is making the nation less safe, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs joked that CNN invited the former vice president only because "Rush Limbaugh was busy" and Cheney was "the next most popular member of the Republican cabal" available. But when CBS' Chip Reid protested the "sarcastic" […]

Back in December 2007, Americans learned that then-head of the CIA's clandestine service Jose Rodriguez two years earlier ordered the destruction of at least two videotapes of detainee interrogations. Today, government lawyers revealed the number of tapes destroyed was much higher, totaling almost 100. That shocking revelation prompts two questions. First is the issue of […]

As CQ Politics first reported yesterday, former House Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) leaked word of his delegation's secret trip to Iraq. Hoekstra, who in 2006 decried "unauthorized disclosures of classified information [which] only help terrorists and our enemies - and put American lives at risk," used Twitter to inadvertently announce the presence of […]

Among the lowlights of the confirmation hearings for Eric Holder this week was a jaw-dropping endorsement of torture by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). Having watched one too many "ticking time bomb" scenarios on the Fox series 24, Cornyn asked the would-be Attorney General if he "would still refuse to condone aggressive interrogation techniques like waterboarding […]

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 […]

Coming in the wake of Russian warships passing through the Panama Canal and visiting Cuba, conflicting reports that Moscow intends to sell an advanced anti-aircraft missile system to Iran are ratcheting up tensions with the United States. But more worrisome still is the heightened prospect of a preemptive Israeli air strike against Tehran's nuclear infrastructure […]

Three years after the New York Times first revealed the Bush administration's program of illegal domestic surveillance by the NSA, whistleblower Thomas Tamm has acknowledged his role in making public the President's lawbreaking. In its expose Sunday, Newsweek details how the former Justice Department official came to discover the White House's violations of the FISA […]

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 […]