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Barack Obama’s National Security Team met at the White House Saturday to discuss the deepening crisis in Ukraine, which now includes Russian troops entering Crimea and occupying government buildings. Those in attendance were: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, and CIA Director John Brennan. Those not in attendance were: Barack Obama. Unbelievable? Yes, but not to worry, as White House reporter Zeke Miller tweeted: Briefed by Susan Rice. Susan Rice. Is the irony not lost here? The same Susan Rice who not only went on five...

Vladimir Putin is ignoring him. Sarah Palin is bragging about outsmarting him. The Cold War-style crisis in the Ukraine is exposing President Obama’s lack of foreign policy respect to new lows. Hours after Obama’s toothless threat to Putin to stay out, Russia’s military moved in uncontested. So what was Obama’s response to this bold show of military force by Putin? He made a phone call to the Russian leader and pulled out of planning meetings for the next G-8 summit in Sochi. No, not the actual summit. Just the planning meetings. Wow, Putin must be shaking in his shoe lifts....

A White House official emailed some reporters to say that President Obama's team met today to discuss the ongoing situation on Ukraine. It appears President Obama did not attend. "The President's national security team met today to receive an update on the situation in Ukraine and discuss potential policy options. We will provide further updates later this afternoon," reads the full statement.

ZABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan soldiers fighting the Taliban have grown confident in their ability to combat an agile insurgency. But for those on the front lines, one question casts a shadow over the young army’s progress. What if the United States — and its funding — vanish from Afghanistan? That outcome has become increasingly probable with President Hamid Karzai’s refusal to sign a bilateral security agreement that would allow the United States to maintain a small military presence here beyond 2014. Now, Afghan troops are beginning to raise their voices against Karzai, demanding at great personal risk that he...

CIA Director: Jonathan Pollard Is In Prison Because He's JewishBy Karen Levy Israel News AgencyJerusalem — February 9, 2014 ... There have been many senior US officials who have called for Israeli Jonathan Pollard to be released, but none ever came from this highest of security institutions. Former CIA Director James Woolsey has reiterated his call for the immediate release of Jonathan Pollard, now in his 29th year behind American bars over charges of spying for Israel. Speaking to the Israel News Agency, Woolsey stated: "It's enough. After a quarter century the time has come to free Pollard. That doesn't...

I called a hardheaded realist, a Harvard trained PhD who has been watching the Middle East professionally for decades, to ask him about Obama's Iran deal. This is what he told me. It's done. Iran will get a bomb. They want a bomb and they will not be denied unless somebody stops them. Obama does not want to stop them. He does not want a friendly regime in Iran. He wants Iran as a counterforce to America and Israel. Obama is not a Muslim, but he is a radical. He sees the U.S. and Israel as imperialistic and oppressive. He...

The U.S. Navy is about to cut in half the number of aircraft carriers it keeps ready for combat. Starting in 2015, just two American flattops will be on station at any given time, down from three or four today. The change is spelled out in a presentation by Adm. Bill Gortney, head of Fleet Forces Command. The U.S. Naval Institute published the presentation on its Website on Jan. 24. The new “Optimized Fleet Response Plan” represents an effort to standardize training, maintenance and overseas cruise schedules for the Navy’s 283 front-line warships, in particular the 10 nuclear-powered carriers. The...

American intelligence and security agencies are not currently capable of detecting when foreign nations are building nuclear weapons or ramping up their existing programs, according to a newly released Pentagon report that faults a range of U.S. agencies. “The nation is not yet organized or fully equipped” to detect clandestine nuclear activities across the globe, and in most cases “current solutions are either inadequate, or more often, do not exist,” according to the report, which was compiled over three years by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board.

BAGHDAD: A senior Iraqi official claims Al-Qaeda fighters hunkered down in a city they seized late last month west of Baghdad have enough heavy weapons to allegedly take the country's capital. Senior deputy Interior Minister Adnan al-Asadi said Monday that Iraqi forces are fighting "fierce battles" against heavily armed militants to recapture parts of Ramadi, the capital of the western Anbar province, and also the nearby city of Fallujah. He says the weapons in Fallujah that are in the hands of Iraq's Al-Qaeda branch and other Sunni militant groups battling the Shiite-led government are "advanced and huge and enough to...

According to former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, Israel has already spent ten billion dollars on developing ways to either delay or completely neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat. Israel's military knows no bounds. When the very survival of the Land of Israel is at stake, Israel will not hesitate to surprise American policymakers and military experts. The last time this happened was not 1967, or 1976's Entebbe. It was September 6, 2007, when Israel destroyed the Syrian plutonium reactor at Al Kibar. American military experts had thought this was improbable, and some said – impossible. In September, 2012, the...

Newly released records confirm a 2012 Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) report that the State Department cleared the way for a visiting delegation of Muslim Brotherhood officials to enter the country without undergoing routine inspection by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. The April 2012 visit came before the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate was elected Egypt's president, although the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) had won a plurality of seats in parliamentary elections. The expedited entry is known as a "port courtesy" normally reserved for high-ranking visiting government officials and dignitaries. [...] The Muslim Brotherhood has open connections with Hamas,...

President Obama has been judged to be 'chronically incapable' of conducting a coherent military strategy and 'has no sense of what he wants to do in the world', according to Oxford University professor, Sir Hew Strachan - one of the UK's most respected and senior military advisers. The damning verdict from a governmental insider of the United States' closest military ally comes days after the president was heavily criticized by his own former Defense Secretary Robert Gates who said that Obama was indecisive and lacked any passion for his nation's armed forces. Claiming that America and Britain had committed total...

Foreign Policy: The latest U.S. ally to openly sneer at us is a senior British defense adviser who says President Obama has "devalued the deterrent effect of American military capability" in the world. In his first campaign for president, in April 2007, Barack Obama complained George W. Bush's war in Iraq cost the U.S. "in influence and respect." Because of Iraq, he said, "many around the world are disappointed with our actions, and many in our own country have come to doubt either our wisdom or our capacity to shape events beyond our borders. Some have even suggested that America's...

America’s “schizophrenic” approach to the Middle East could result in many key Arab states deciding to align themselves more closely with Russia, the rulers of Bahrain warned on Sunday. In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, the Crown Prince of Bahrain, warned that Barack Obama´s administration would lose influence in the region if it persisted with what a “transient and reactive” foreign policy. There has been a sharp rise in tensions between Washington and several major Arab states in the wake of last month’s controversial interim agreement with Iran over its nuclear programme.

Iran, U.S. Set to Establish Joint Chamber of Commerce within Month,” reports Agence-France Presse. Government official Abolfazi Hejazi tells the English-language newspaper Iran Daily that the Islamic Republic will shortly commence direct flights to America. Passenger jets, not ICBMs, one assumes — although, as with everything else, the details have yet to be worked out. Still, the historic U.S.–Iranian rapprochement seems to be galloping along, and any moment now the cultural-exchange program will be announced and you’ll have to book early for the Tehran Ballet’s season at the Kennedy Center (“Death to America” in repertory with “Death to the Great...

In a direct effort to sabotage US President Barack Obama’s efforts, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed the heads of Israel’s intelligence community to look for proof that Iran has violated an interim deal signed with the international community last week over its nuclear program, a British newspaper reported on Sunday. Mossad, as well as the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, were told to dig up evidence of Iranian intransigence ahead of Obama’s push to pass the deal in Congress this week, the Sunday Times reported, citing Israeli defense sources.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama says he'll release a new national security strategy next year. The White House on Friday released a copy of a letter in which Obama informs Congress of his intent to release a new National Security Strategy in early 2014

The weekend ended with the first tangible sign of a nuclear deal with Iran, after more than three decades of hostility. Then on Monday came the announcement that a conference will convene in January to try to broker an end to the civil war in Syria. The success of either negotiation, both long sought by President Obama, is hardly assured — in fact the odds may be against them. But the two nearly simultaneous developments were vivid statements that diplomacy, the venerable but often-unsatisfying art of compromise, has once again become the centerpiece of American foreign policy. But it also...

Israel harshly criticized the agreement between Iran and six world powers, saying it would not prevent Tehran from building a nuclear weapon. "This is a bad agreement. It gives Iran exactly what it wants: both substantial easing of sanctions and preservation of the most substantial parts of its nuclear program,'' said a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office Sunday.

Economics minister and Jewish Home leader says Israel cannot ‘sit idly by’ while world allows Iran to be 6 weeks from the bomb Economics and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) said Saturday that a “bad deal” with Iran on curbing its nuclear program would “increase the need for Israeli [military] action.” “If there will be a deal which would allow Iran to have the ability to ‘break out’ and build a bomb within six weeks, we cannot sit idly by in this situation and we will examine all the options,” Bennett told Channel 2 Saturday evening.