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U.S. Secretary of State’s John Kerry’s closing memo to President Barack Obama painted a rosy picture of the U.S. role in the world since Obama took office in 2008. Kerry claimed Obama made the best of a bad situation, citing Obama’s inheritance of wars not his own in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to a grave economic crisis. Talking points seeking to validate Obama’s supposed success by blaming the past are a frequent and familiar direction for the Obama administration. “The United States is more secure, more respected, and more engaged in the world,” the glowing memo states, adding that,...

Four Gitmo detainees are slated to be transferred to Saudi Arabia in the next 24 hours, the first of the final wave of up to 20 transfers expected before Inauguration Day, two U.S. officials tell Fox News. The identities of the four detainees are not immediately known. The transfers are proceeding despite renewed opposition from President-elect Donald Trump, who tweeted on Tuesday: “There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.”

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Wednesday called WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a “sycophant for Russia,” as Mr. Assange reiterated this week that Russia was not the source for internal communications from Democratic officials during the presidential campaign.

Republican Senator John McCain said on Sunday the United States could only improve its relations with Russia by taking a tough stance with President Putin, calling for stronger sanctions against Moscow. On a tour of the Baltic states, Ukraine and Georgia, McCain and other senators assured the former Soviet-dominated countries that the United States would support them, despite President-elect Donald Trump's praise of Putin and expressions of doubts about NATO. "We will strongly urge our colleagues toward more meaningful and stronger sanctions against Russia because of their attack on the United States of America," McCain told reporters in Georgia's capital...

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Secretary of State John Kerry was clearly exasperated, not least at his own government. Over and over again, he complained to a small group of Syrian civilians that his diplomacy had not been backed by a serious threat of military force, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times. The 40-minute discussion, on the sidelines of last week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York, provides a glimpse of Mr. Kerry’s frustration with his inability to end the Syrian crisis. He veered between voicing sympathy for the Syrians’ frustration with United...

Of all the lies that Edward Snowden has told since his massive theft of secrets from the National Security Agency and his journey to Russia via Hong Kong in 2013, none is more provocative than the claim that he never intended to engage in espionage, and was only a “whistleblower” seeking to expose the overreach of NSA’s information gathering. With the clock ticking on Mr. Snowden’s chance of a pardon, now is a good time to review what we have learned about his real mission.

John Kerry doesn’t come late to the betrayal of friends. He has had considerable practice. In 1971, when he was a young lieutenant just back from Vietnam, where he was a decorated skipper of a Swift Boat patrolling the Mekong River, he appeared before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee to pay his “respects” to the American soldiers, sailors and Marines he fought a war with. Representing all those veterans, he told the senators, he wanted to talk about war crimes he said “were committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”...

When Secretary of State John Kerry delivered his comprehensive statement on the Arab-Israel conflict in front of a safe audience at the State Department, he took over an hour to defend the decision of the United States to in essence allow passage of the recent UN anti-Israel resolution by abstaining from it, rather than adhering to the longstanding policy of the U.S. to veto such resolutions. The general thrust of his message was to chastise Israel for building “settlements” on land defined as “occupied Palestinian territory,” as the main obstacle preventing a two-state solution. In addition to focusing attention on...

Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Wednesday offered a harsh and detailed assessment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying their growth threatens to destroy the viability of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the United States was obliged to allow passage of a U.N. resolution condemning the activity in order to preserve the possibility of peace. Kerry noted that the number of Israelis living in settlements has grown significantly and that their outposts are extending farther into the West Bank — “in the middle of what by any reasonable definition would be the future...

I’m excited for him. It’s no small thing for a man to realize a fantasy he’s cherished for decades, even though literally no one cares what he has to say. Obama’s a sport for letting him live the dream. That sounds like a joke but it isn’t. What explanation could there be for this except that Kerry badly wanted to extend a rhetorical middle finger to Netanyahu’s government, whose agenda he attacked today as being “driven by its most extreme elements,” on behalf of the Obama administration as they head out the door? Nothing will flow from it policy-wise. The...

Full title : Kerry: “Israel can either be Jewish or democratic. It cannot be both. And it won’t ever really be at peace.” …”The truth is that trends on the ground, violence, terrorism, settlement expansion and the seemingly endless occupation, they are combining to destroy hopes for peace on both sides and increasingly cementing any reversible — an irreversible one state reality that most people do not actually want."Today, there are a similar number of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. They have a choice. They can choose to live together in one state...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded earlier today to the hour long speech by Secretary John Kerry and the clarified stance of the U.S. position toward Israel as outlined in the past several days.

How can Israel do that when the Palestinian Authority and Hamas teach children to hate and kill Israeli Jews?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51U_EBDggkQ   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzWjSpka6gA   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-kOwFA8xZ4&t=3s  

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday said Israel's building of settlements on occupied land was endangering Middle East peace, voicing unusually frank frustration with America's longtime ally. In a swiftly issued statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Kerry of bias. He said Israel did not need to be lectured to by foreign leaders and looked forward to working with incoming President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to pursue more pro-Israeli policies.

Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday said American allies "won't be swayed or intimidated by a tweet" from President-elect Donald Trump, who has repeatedly weighed in on foreign affairs despite not yet taking office. In an exclusive interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell, Kerry said he would not get into a "debate" with Trump, but suggested U.S. allies have been "affected" by the president-elect's recent commentary on U.S.-Israeli relations and other sensitive foreign policy issues.

n about two hours, John Kerry will deliver a speech at the State Department to outline the Obama administration’s plan for a peace settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians. Needless to say, the Israelis aren’t happy about it, Republicans are furious about it — and even some Democrats want Kerry and the White House to shut up. Rep. Steny Hoyer, the House Democratic whip, lashed out at Kerry and the Obama administration for reversing decades of American policy on peace negotiations: Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the Democratic whip in the House of Representatives and the second- highest ranking Democrat in...

Israel fired back at Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasting Kerry’s lengthy televised rebuke of the Middle Eastern democracy and the United States’ abstention from an anti-Israel United Nations vote last week. Netanyahu, speaking in Jerusalem just over an hour after Kerry’s speech had ended, said the speech was “as unbalanced as the anti-Israel resolution passed last week.” “Secretary Kerry paid lip service to the unrelenting campaign of terror that has been waged by the Palestinians against the Jewish State,” Netanyahu said. He later added: “Israelis do not need to be lectured about...

Prior to the UN Security Council vote on anti-Israeli settlement resolution 2334, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with a Palestinian delegation in early December in Washington to discuss the draft, agreeing to cooperate, according to transcripts released by Egyptian daily Al-Youm Al-Saba'a. According to the report, Kerry along with US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, met with Secretary General of the PLO Executive Committee Saeb Erkat and Majed Faraj, head of the Palestinian Authority's General Intelligence Service. The reported transcripts reflect statements by numerous Israeli officials claiming that the resolution was orchestrated by the Obama administration. The source...

Defending Obama..

Secretary of State John Kerry will on Wednesday make a speech regarding the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) and discuss next steps needed to resolve the conflict, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Tuesday, according to Reuters. Kerry will offer a "comprehensive vision" of how he believes the process should be revived, Toner said. The Secretary of State Kerry believes "it is his duty in his remaining weeks and days as Secretary of State to lay out what he believes is a way towards a two-state solution," he continued. "It's always important to keep the...