Change.

Man, we’re a long way from 2004 if John Kerry is urging shock and awe against a Middle Eastern dictator over WMD and most Republicans are pounding the table against a reckless intervention. Cycle of life, my friends. Flash-forward to this past Wednesday. At a principals meeting in the White House situation room, Secretary of [...]

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"Farcical."

The first air-defense missiles from Russia have begun rolling into Syria, according to the the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Speaking on a TV station owned by Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad said that Russia will honor its promises to Syria, and had in fact already started to do so (via Rovin): The Syrian president has told [...]

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It's going down.

Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have been insisting that, despite their indignant insistence to the contrary, the Obama administration still has plenty of explaining to do and needs to release more documents relating to the deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi last September and the subsequent talking-point shenanigans. Last week, Oversight Chairman [...]

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Reset!

Last week, rumors began to swirl that Russia would sell Bashar al-Assad missile systems that would allow Syria to fight any NATO or US attempt to impose a no-fly zone.  Russia immediately denied it, which of course means that that’s exactly what they planned on doing all along. Time for another reset button? Russia has sent [...]

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June 25 showdown.

As optics go, not a bad look for the Republican Party in this usually reliable blue state. Perhaps another young, vibrant military man with an independent streak can surprise everyone there. He’s interesting enough to grab the lead in the Boston Globe, despite the R beside his name: Will he be the next Scott Brown? [...]

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Be sure to let the FBI know.

He did? We certainly suspect this might be the case, given Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s unusual six-month sojourn to Dagestan and Chechnya, but, er … no one has actually established that as fact. At least judging by media reports, the current case theory postulates that Tsarnaev self-radicalized, and apparently approached bombmaking with the same auto-didactic enthusiasm.  And yet, Secretary [...]

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Moving right along.

By all means, tell us how you really feel. REP. DANA ROHRABACHER (R-CA): …We need to talk to the people who are on the scene. Can you give us a commitment now that for this administration you will be coming up with the request, the honest request of this investigative committee as to who was [...]

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Respect.

And the British government is apparently unhappy about it, too.  Sources within Whitehall told the Daily Mail that the Obama administration’s decision to skip sending an envoy to what has become a de facto state funeral for one of America’s staunchest Cold War allies came before the Boston terrorist attack yesterday, and that the White House [...]

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Ignoring the problem is "utterly unrealistic."

The big question is whether a high-profile visit from John Kerry will get China’s attention at all, and if so, whether it will move the needle in Beijing.  In a joint press conference an hour or so ago, Kerry and his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se demanded that Pyongyang tone down the rhetoric, with Yun [...]

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Smart power.

For some reason, American politicians in both parties want to see the US intervene to some extent in Syria’s civil war, even after the disastrous intervention in Libya that almost made Mali an al-Qaeda state.  Only a French military intervention prevented that outcome, and that may still only be temporary, but more on that in [...]

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Plus, a gamechanger for Israeli energy independence?

After an unusually long break from rocket attacks and military responses from a five-month cease-fire, rockets again began shelling southern Israel from Gaza the last few days. Israel didn’t wait long to deliver a response, attacking “two extensive terror sites” with air attacks of their own. Gaza answered back with two more rocket launches, once [...]

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US handing over last prison.

US Secretary of State John Kerry paid a surprise visit to Kabul this morning, hoping to move forward on a reconciliation process between the Taliban and the Hamid Karzai government.  Kerry arrived as the US armed forces transferred control of the last American prison in the region to Afghanistan: Secretary of State John Kerry paid an unannounced [...]

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Box checked.

As Joe Biden wings his way to Rome to celebrate the installation mass of new Roman Catholic pontiff Pope Francis at the Vatican, his boss will make a pilgrimage — of sorts — to Jerusalem. Despite his high-profile visit to Israel in 2007 as a candidate with little foreign-policy experience, Barack Obama never bothered to [...]

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Just in time?

Talk about timing.  With the first-ever visit to Israel by Barack Obama coming in just days, the Israelis have finally formed a government behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud Party didn’t win enough Knesset seats to easily create a coalition.  Now, with three parties backing him, Netanyahu can look forward to dealing with his [...]

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Smart power?

Egypt’s economy is in bad place, with an unemployment rate of around 13 percent and an even worse youth unemployment rate, and Morsi’s government has been negotiating with the International Monetary Fund about a $4.8 billion loan package to try to help stabilize the economy and get their budget in order. The IMF, however, would [...]

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Irked.

One reason that Senate alums get easy rides in confirmation hearings is the presumption that as members of the club, they represent a close tie to a presidential administration and their activities.  It supposedly eases the communication gap between the White House and Capitol Hill, as the appointee will have personal contact with the men [...]

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Legitimacy.

No, no, no. Listen: If, in the name of exhausting all non-military options, we need to keep up the farce a bit longer of pretending that Iran might be convinced to abandon its bomb project, fine. Keep talking. Plenty of military experts think even an attack on their nuclear infrastructure will do little more than [...]

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"I think the opposition needs more help in order to convince him.”

Has the Obama administration decided to intervene in Syria? CBS News reports that the White House is now floating trial balloons about providing direct aid to the rebels fighting the Bashar Assad regime — “non-lethal” aid, but aid nonetheless. Even non-lethal aid allows the rebels to use other resources to improve their arms capability, and [...]

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"Turning point"?

This may not be as meaningful as it sounds.  Secretary of State John Kerry could have meant that the US was ready to hold bilateral talks with Irazakhstan.  Just kidding — Kerry meant Iran, and intended to dangle the possibility after this week’s P-5+1 talks with Tehran’s representative on the nuclear question. The renewed offer of [...]

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Hmmmm.

Daniel Freedman thinks so, and even credits the Arab Spring — in a kind of backhand manner.  In yesterday’s New York Daily News, Freedman notes that incoming Secretary of State John Kerry has pledged to make Israeli-Palestinian peace talks a high priority, a traditional pledge that goes back for decades at Foggy Bottom.  Kerry has [...]

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Mum's the word.

This entire time, I thought that there was hardly a real chance that the Obama administration would ultimately reject the Keystone XL pipeline when it really came down to it. Sure, they’ve been stalling out the wazoo — presumably hoping the PR furor over the proposal would die down a bit, and/or to think up [...]

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No takers

Is Massachusetts still in play for elections on the state-wide level? If you asked anyone in the heady days of the 2010 cycle after Scott Brown shocked the nation, you’d probably get a lot answers in the positive. (Or at least a strong maybe.) But plenty of water has passed under the bridge since then, [...]

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Awkward.

It’s a measure of just how much credibility Dick Cheney retains in national-security matters that the AP sent a reporter to his speech at a dinner for the Wyoming GOP.  CBS also picked up the story and featured it on its Sunday Morning site.  When Cheney criticizes Obama, more than four years after leaving office, [...]

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Temp job.

Soon-to-be Secretary of State John Kerry’s formal bowing-out via resignation letter of the U.S. Senate seat he occupied for 29 years will officially trigger the special election to fill the vacancy in Massachusetts. After indicating that he was looking for an “out of the box” candidate who hasn’t run for political office before to act [...]

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