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More than once wars have been started by accident, and Sen. John McCain, predicted that a conflict between the Koreas would be a “catastrophe of enormous proportions.” Warning on “Face the Nation” that “North Korea could set Seoul on fire,” the Arizona Republican said that China is failing to rein its ally in. …

Former U.N. Ambassador and Congressman Andrew Young tells Newsmax TV that the United States has “got to have better intelligence and better diplomacy because wars don’t work.” “The only places where we have real troubles are Zimbabwe, Cuba, North Korea, and Iran,” says Young, the former Atlanta mayor who retired last year from the GoodWorks International global advisory firm he founded in 1996. “Russia and China were far greater threats, but we talked to them, we worked with them, we found nonviolent ways to have regime change through evolution rather than through war. What Iran wants and what North Korea...

President François Hollande said on Thursday that Islamist groups holding French hostages in Africa were not trustworthy and should not be taken seriously after Al-Qaeda accused Paris of blocking negotiations for their release. There are a total of nine French hostages on the continent. On Tuesday the Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said France was snubbing talks proposed by the group to free four French citizens abducted in Niger in September 2010. "The less one speaks, the better one can work," Hollande told journalists during a visit to Rungis, a giant wholesale food market just outside Paris. "There have been...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama on Friday nominated Sen. John Kerry as his next secretary of state, elevating the longtime lawmaker and foreign policy expert to the top diplomatic job he had coveted. "He is not going to need a lot of on-the-job training," Obama said, standing alongside Kerry at the White House. "Few individuals know as many presidents and prime ministers or grasp our policies as firmly as John Kerry."

As we debate whether the two parties can ever come together and get things done, here’s something President Obama could probably do by himself that would be a signal accomplishment of his presidency: End the war on terror. Or, more realistically, start planning and preparing the country for phasing it out. For 11 years, the United States has been operating under emergency wartime powers granted under the 2001 “Authorization for Use of Military Force.” That is a longer period than the country spent fighting the Civil War, World War I and World War II combined. It grants the president and...

Now on Fox. Reporting that talks with Taliban have collapsed as our surrender date in 2014 is official. Talks were through intermediaries to get some sort of treaty with the terrorists to salvage some shred of respect from Obama's announced surrender. The Taliban refused to release the sole US soldier being held hostage no matter how many terrorists Obama would release from Gitmo. They told Obama, basically, to go to hell. Our surrender in Afghanistan is now complete, along with the Afghani "allies" upping the murders of US troops. Full coverage in The Boston Globe.

The U.S. State Department is currently in negotiations with the Egyptian government for the transfer of custody of Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as “the Blind Sheikh,” for humanitarian and health reasons, a source close to the the Obama administration told TheBlaze. The Department of Justice, however, told TheBlaze that Rahman is serving a life sentence and is not considered for possible release.  Previous calls to the State Department were referred to the Department of Justice and so far, the State Department has neither confirmed nor denied the report.

On Wednesday September 12, 2012 blogger Speak With Authority discovered that five days before 9-11, the US State Department sent out a memo announcing no credible security threats against the United States on the anniversary of 9-11. The Overseas Security Advisory Council, who posted the memo, is part of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security under the U.S. Department of State. The OSAC memo said: Terrorism and Important Dates Global 9/6/2012 OSAC currently has no credible information to suggest that al-Qa’ida or any other terrorist group is plotting any kind of attack overseas to coincide with the upcoming anniversary of September...

CHARLOTTE - Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) will lacerate Mitt Romney on foreign policy in a major speech tonight at the Democratic National Convention. "In this campaign, we have a fundamental choice," Kerry will say, according to speech excerpts provided to The Cable. "Will we protect our country and our allies, advance our interests and ideals, do battle where we must, and make peace where we can? Or will we entrust our place in the world to someone who just hasn't learned the lessons of the last decade?"

Just came across this interview with an Irish journalist during a stop through Ireland when W. Bush was President and it apparently was never aired in the U.S. according to the person who posted it. If a journalist did this today to Obama they would be called unprofessional and a racist, however it was perfectly fine to treat a 2-time elected President of the United States who was a Republican this way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ36HS8dRbY&feature=colike

Sen. John Kerry has the perfect audition piece for the secretary of state job he appears to covet — the long-stalled Law of the Sea treaty. He’s come armed with a throng of industry backers and pleas from the country’s top officials. But a cadre of conservatives remains determined to sink it.

The Obama Record: In pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons, the president finalizes plans to decimate our nuclear deterrent and reduce our warhead count beyond even treaty commitments. (snip) President Obama has decided that indeed we are going to tempt them with weakness. According to an Associated Press report on conversations with current and former administration officials, Obama is finalizing plans, perhaps to be released later this month, to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal to between 1,000 and 1,100 warheads with the goal "in the longer term, (of) eliminating nuclear weapons."

President Barack Obama left Afghanistan on Wednesday, targeting a foreigners' housing compound with a suicide car bomb and militants disguised as women in an assault that killed at least seven people. It was the second major assault in Kabul in less than three weeks and highlighted the Taliban's continued ability to strike in the heavily guarded capital even when security had been tightened for Obama's visit and Wednesday's anniversary of the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan. Obama arrived at Bagram Air Field late Tuesday, then traveled to Kabul by helicopter for a meeting with President...

President Barack Obama offered a private request Monday to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for some “space” on missile defense ahead of November’s elections. “On all these issues, particularly on missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space,” Obama said, referring to incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a TV pool reporter who heard audio recorded by a Russian reporter who was in the room moments before the two leaders spoke to reporters after their 90-minute meeting. “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you,” Medvedev responded. A...

As rain splatters the windows of Sen. John McCain’s second-floor office on Capitol Hill, the 74-year-old Arizona Republican leans back, clasps his hands, and recalls the Nineties. Brinksmanship, he says, cost the party then, and it could cripple Republicans this summer — especially if Rep. Michele Bachmann gets her way. Over in the House, “I am told that it is very difficult,” McCain says. “There are Republicans who are committed, like Michele Bachmann, to vote against raising the debt limit under any circumstances.” Bachmann, he warns, is acting “sort of like Senator Obama did.”(snip) Yet as poorly as Obama has...

The German government is mediating secret talks on German soil between the US government and representatives of the Taliban. Berlin is cautiously optimistic that the negotiations will deliver progress, but observers warn that the insurgents' morale remains high. It's still unknown where exactly in Germany the American and Afghan negotiators met, but when they met can be pinpointed fairly exactly: at the turn of the year and on the second weekend in May. It's also fairly clear who attends these talks on peace in the Hindu Kush. On the American side, representatives of the State Department and the CIA are...

For decades, American inspectors have monitored Russian nuclear forces, putting into practice President Ronald Reagan's favorite maxim, ``Trust, but verify.'' But since the old START Treaty expired last December, we have relied on trust alone. Until a new treaty comes into force, our inspectors will not have access to Russian missile silos and the world's two largest nuclear arsenals will lack the stability that comes with a rigorous inspection regime. Before this session of Congress ends, we urge senators to approve an arms control treaty that would again allow U.S. inspectors access to Russian strategic sites and reduce the number...

On their way out of Afghanistan Just a day after Osama bin Laden warned France to remove its troops from Afghanistan, French Defense Minister Herve Morin announced Thursday, Oct. 28 that the withdrawal of French troops would begin in early 2011. Paris then raised its terror alert level to "red" after confirming the authenticity of the Bin Laden audiotape aired Wednesday.

Presumed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney came out Wednesday against the planned burning of the Quran by a Florida pastor, saying that doing so would endanger American troops. “Burning the Quran is wrong on every level,” the former Massachusetts governor said in a statement to POLITICO. “It puts troops in danger, and it violates a founding principle of our republic.” Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/41895.html#ixzz0yyeKLaDE

Editor's Note: Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of "God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World," is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor. By Stephen Prothero, Special to CNN In a commentary on the shrill Republican silence in the face of the "Obama is a Muslim" nonsense, Slate’s John Dickerson wrote that "with so much traffic on the low road in American politics, you'd imagine a politician or two might take the high road simply to beat the congestion." Well, New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg continues to take the road less...

When I first began reading about the controversy surrounding a proposed Mosque being built near Ground Zero in New York City, I was completely mystified: We live in America! In 2010! Are we seriously debating whether a mainstream religion should have the right to build a house of worship? I was even more bewildered when I read that 52 percent of New Yorkers were opposed to the construction of the Mosque, with 31 percent in favor and 17 percent undecided. Filled with moral outrage, I posted an angry Facebook status with a link to an article about conservative politicians capitalizing...

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has disappointed many social and cultural conservatives with his call for a "truce on the so-called [sic] social issues. We're going to just have to agree to get along for a little while," until the economic issues are resolved, Daniels told the Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson. But as the American Spectator's Joseph Lawler has observed, it's doubtful that Daniels' truce would change anything. After all, Lawler rightly asks: "What typical Republican policies would he [Daniels] have to suspend and they [social and cultural conservatives] have to sacrifice? It's not clear to me that it would be...

In a broad redefinition of U.S. strategic priorities, President Obama has said that the United States must revitalize its own economic, moral and innovative strength if it is to continue to lead the world. Just as it did following World War II, the United States today must also shape a new international order and system of global institutions that reflect a 21st century reality in which "America's greatness is not assured," Obama says in a 52-page "National Security Strategy" released Thursday morning. "As we fight the wars in front of us, we must see the horizon beyond them," he writes...

TTP Leader Hakimullah Mehsud Declares: 'From Now On, the Main Targets of Our Fidaeen [Suicide Bombers] Are American Cities' The first, which the YouTube page titled "Hakeemullah Mehsud is Alive and Healthy and Delivering news about Attacks on USA," is 2:17 long, and shows a still satellite image of North America with a still image of Hakimullah Mehsud. Speaking in Urdu, he states that the date is April 19, 2010 and threatens bombings in U.S. "states & cities"; as he speaks, explosions are shown taking place across the map. (To view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2463.htm. NOTE: You...

RUSSIA HAS warned that it could withdraw from a new nuclear arms reduction pact with the United States if it feels threatened by Washington’s planned missile defence system in central Europe. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov issued the warning as his president, Dmitry Medvedev, and US counterpart Barack Obama prepared to head to the Czech Republic for tomorrow’s signing of a long-awaited treaty to cut their countries’ arsenals of deployed nuclear warheads by about a third. As Prague ramped up security for the visit of the two leaders, Mr Obama’s administration yesterday unveiled a new policy renouncing the development of new...

Adam Kokesh, candidate for the Republican nomination for the US House of Representatives from the Third District of New Mexico, is doing his best to deceive the electorate. He portrays himself as a libertarian conservative, but he is neither libertarian nor conservative (unless he reinvents himself again). Most egregiously, he is attempting to portray himself as a patriotic anti-war/anti-military veteran in a manner reminiscent of John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVAW), in which Kerry tarnished the valor of his brothers-in-arms in order to advance his political career. As did VVAW, Kokesh's Iraq Veterans against the War (IVAW)...

Barack Obama plans 'dramatic reductions' in US nuclear weapons stockpile. Headline only.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama does have a foreign policy. It’s called war. Unfortunately, the president has not defined any real difference between his hawkish approach to international issues and that of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Where’s the change we can believe in? Bush left a legacy of two wars, neither of which was ever fully explained or justified. Obama has merely picked up the sword that Bush left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both wars lack a formal congressional declaration of war. In the struggle against terrorism one might say, "Who cares?" Well, one group that...

Democrat Martha Coakley dodged a pointed question Tuesday about her claim during a Massachusetts Senate debate the night before that terrorists are no longer in Afghanistan. During Monday's debate with Republican Scott Brown, Coakley questioned why the United States still has troops in Afghanistan. She claimed that the al Qaeda terrorists who were originally targeted by American military action have migrated elsewhere, rendering the mission moot. "They're gone," she said. "They're not there anymore. They're in, apparently Yemen, they're in Pakistan." A reporter asked Coakley about that claim after a Capitol Hill fundraiser on Tuesday. "Do you stand by that...

WASHINGTON -- The chorus of loud criticism of President Barack Obama is a reminder that every new occupant of the White House has a presidential learning curve. There is no such thing as an instant president. They all have to learn the hard way. Fans and foes alike seem to be ganging up on the newcomer as he approaches his first anniversary in office. Hopeful Republican antagonists are wondering whether he can win a second term -- premature as that speculation may be. Some one-time Obama supporters are disillusioned because of the great expectations fostered by Obama’s soaring rhetoric during...

WASHINGTON -- The spirit of Christmas seems to have escaped Congress, maybe even the country. Have you ever encountered such mean spiritedness and political conniving as are now on display on Capitol Hill? In the past, we have had great philosophical divisions in the struggle for civil rights, especially when southern legislators ran the show. In praise of democracy, fortunately they lost. And of course there also was the "red scare" fomented by Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wis., in the 1950s when he led the commie-hunting movement that ended up victimizing government officials, academia and Hollywood. We recovered from that, too....

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama had a golden opportunity to become a peacemaker compared to his hawkish predecessor. But he has let that opening evaporate by escalating the war in Afghanistan. Now he is called a "war president" -- a dubious title that former President George W. Bush personally embraced after starting two devastating wars, one in Afghanistan, the other in Iraq. In both cases, the U.S. is touting its exit plans. In Iraq, Obama has declared a victory and plans to pull out many troops next year, though leaving thousands behind to secure the Baghdad government. In Afghanistan, Obama...

President Obama May Not Remember Vietnam Turmoil WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama insists that his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending in 30,000 more troops is not Vietnam all over again. Well, it sure reminds me of the perils and the price of that unwinnable war in Southeast Asia and the political chaos it wreaked at home. In Afghanistan, the designated enemies are remnants of the weakened al-Qaida network and the native Taliban, which has been growing in strength despite the eight-year war started by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 catastrophe....

....What has struck me most about Obama's Afghan enterprise—and his speech did not cause me to alter my view—is how obvious it is that he doesn't really want to do it. He wants to do health care. Obama has tried every delaying trick in the book—waiting for three months after Gen. McChrystal's request for more troops, having meeting after meeting after meeting, sending Gen. Jones to tell McChrystal not to ask for more troops, having his economic team say it will cost too much, framing the venture in terms of "exit strategies" rather than victory, etc. His ambivalence was on...

The United States is about to lose a key arms-control tool from the closing days of the Cold War -- the right to station American observers in Russia to count the long-range missiles leaving its assembly line. The end of full-time, on-site access will likely ignite complaints in Congress, with insiders from both parties arguing over whether the George W. Bush or the Obama administration is responsible.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have turned the focus of Afghan war planning toward an exit strategy, publicly declaring that the U.S. and its allies can't send additional troops without a plan for getting them out. The shift has unnerved some U.S. and foreign officials, who say that planning a pullout now -- with or without a specific timetable -- encourages the Taliban to wait out foreign forces and exacerbates fears in the region that the U.S. isn't fully committed to their security.

WASHINGTON -- The Nobel Peace crown lies uneasy on President Barack Obama’s head as he ponders the next U.S. move in Afghanistan, with hints and leaks showering down to tell us that he will eventually send thousands more troops there. His decision -- which could be announced soon -- was triggered by the request from Gen. Stanley McChrystal for 40,000 more troops to secure the cities and protect the citizens of Afghanistan, in addition to the 68,000 U.S. troops there now. Obama has been reviewing the U.S. role in Afghanistan for months, a time-consuming study that has led to accusations...

Barbara Boxer apparently holds meetings on the streets of Oakland, according to her companions, who didn’t want to allow a constituent with a camera to question Senator Ma’am on policy in Afghanistan. Boxer finally responds long enough to insist that Congress will not allow more troops to go into Afghanistan, which then prompts the question of whether we should keep troops there at all if we’re not going to fight to win there. Boxer walks away, even though the constituent calls her “Senator” … repeatedly:

RUSH: It is apparent, ladies and gentlemen, that General John "Swifty" Kerry has taken over Obama foreign policy. You people who thought you were voting for Obama to change foreign policy were wrong. You know, I still can't get over that last sound bite. President Obama, there aren't Bush troops, and there aren't Obama troops. Those are American soldiers, and you've abandoned them, while claiming to these naval people in Jacksonville yesterday you never -- he's embarrassing. Worse than that, it's dangerous. We got John "Swifty" Kerry, who served in Vietnam, by the way, yesterday afternoon at the Council on...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama’s leadership is being tested on two historic fronts: health care reform and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. By the time he has made decisions on these two titanic issues, we will know whether he has the courage to make tough calls and we will know more about his bottom-line principles. On health care, Obama thought he had learned lessons from 1993 when Hillary Clinton, then the first lady, was put in charge of developing a universal health plan when her husband was president. She flunked partly because she did not touch base with Congress. She didn’t...

No kidding? Obama’s surrender monkey antics are catching: Gordon Brown is using the same forum tomorrow to announce the reduction of Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet from four to three. The West is disarming at a speed that even our enemies are finding disconcerting. So long as West-hating exhibitionists such as Obama and Brown are in charge of our defences we are in real and present danger. It will all be cheered to the echo at the UN, the water-hole at which the world’s most spectacular genocides and tyrants have traditionally assembled to denounce the Western democracies. [snip] Thus, Cuba (16,000...

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry. This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but...

Accusations and responses from Liberal Kook to Rational Conservative:. You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.[ Damn straight! - The US Supreme Court said, "No Cherry Picking Vote Recounts from Democrat Counties....It's UnConstitutional ] You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.[ That's Right - Its like NOT having Politicians pretending to be Health Care Providers ] You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.[ Plame was not "covert" -- she was a political HACK that needed to be outed.....her and her...

May 13, 2009 | In John Frankenheimer's taut 1964 film, "Seven Days in May," the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appalled at a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, plot a coup d'état to remove the president whom they regard as too soft and naive about the evil of America's enemies. The screenplay by Rod Serling (based on a 1962 novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II) is filled with passionate lines that seem right out of today's talk radio -- "intellectual dilettantes" versus patriotism; America's loss of "greatness"; the superiority of military experience to civilian judgment and governance.

Rep. Barbara Lee wants the Obama administration to study ways to end the war in Afghanistan, even though President Obama and his Cabinet were meeting this week with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss how to escalate the battle against the Taliban in that country. The California Democrat, one of the most anti-war and liberal members of the House, offered an amendment Thursday to a war funding bill to request a study by the end of the year from the administration on ways to get out of Afghanistan. She eventually withdrew the amendment, but not before she aired her concerns...

(snip) "To say this complicates the Obama administration's diplomatic outreach is to put it mildly. This administration -- in fairness, not unlike the last few years of the Bush administration -- seems prepared to make an endless series of concessions to Tehran in order to secure a peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue. Yet despite these repeated overtures, the Iranians refuse to budge even an inch and instead make announcements of more centrifuges and new missiles. Now they're launching airstrikes in Iraq."

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said ahead of a meeting at the White House Thursday that Obama and Republicans ... ... on Capitol Hill have gotten off on the wrong foot. "The first 100 days have not been the best days for bipartisanship," Cantor said during an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "We've got some very serious issues, and I do think now that we can come together," he said. "We can do better." Cantor added that he wants to tell the president later today that "we want to work with you."

It wasn't really a surprise that President Obama sided with leftist lawyers in his Justice Department and released, over the objections of the intelligence community, four Office of Legal Counsel memos that concluded certain interrogation techniques used in the last several years by CIA officers on certain al Qaeda terrorists were legal. Nor was it a surprise that the presidential statement put out by the White House was a medley of preening self-righteousness and defensive disingenuousness. What was more interesting was the accompanying statement by the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, trying to justify Obama's decision--or at least put...

I have been reading the many different articles today on the NSA's eavesdropping activity. It's appalling, to me, that the occupier of the White House would allow such a practice to continue, especially after campaigning on the promise of: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me!" Now, since being elected, by hiding his Birth Certificate and lying in nearly everything he promised, he proves himself the Socialist and liar that he truly is. 0bama has steadfastly defended President Bush's wiretapping program, and, in fact, 0bama has increased the wiretaps! All the while staking claim to his own brand new...