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The Obama administration's policy toward Syria and its more than four-year civil war is rapidly becoming a black mark on the president's legacy. And a scathing new report by Peter Baker of The New York Times details the mind-boggling decision by the White House to refuse to accept any responsibility. The blame for the failed US effort to train Syrian rebels to fight ISIS "should be pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training Syrian rebels in the first place," administration officials told Baker. There are only "four or five" US-trained rebels left fighting...

... “That’s not enough for me.” The same words could be said by many an addict. Does Barack Obama constantly need to get a political and diplomatic high to feed his ego? Can this explain his actions? He was pleased that the Affordable Care Act came to be known as Obamacare -- even though he actually had little to do with its drafting and passing (other than to be called in by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as muscle to deal with recalcitrant Democrats). He has routinely claimed it is working either exactly as it should, or better than even...

During a radio interview that had him declaring the United States as racist and using the N-word to emphasize his point, Barack Obama made some other remarks that have gone largely unnoticed by the Mainstream Media that offer further and troubling insight into a man seemingly obsessed with the belief he should remain the center of the known political universe… During that same already infamous interview, the president indicated his belief that he would be an even better presidential candidate if he was running again for a third term because, “I know what I’m doing and I’m fearless.” Self-declared as...

Government investigators say IRS employees erased computer backup tapes a month after officials discovered that thousands of emails related to the tax agency’s tea party scandal had been lost. The investigators, however, concluded that employees erased the tapes by mistake, not as part of an attempt to destroy evidence.The report is likely to fuel conspiracy theories among conservatives who say the IRS has obstructed congressional investigations into the scandal. …

Foreign ministers from 21 countries are meeting in London to discuss ways to co-ordinate their efforts to combat the jihadist group Islamic State (IS). IS controls large swathes of Syria and Iraq and the US-led coalition has been carrying out air strikes since August. But UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond insisted much more needed to be done. He told the BBC that the countries wanted to find ways to halt the flow of recruits to IS, cut off its funding and "tackle the underlying narrative". At the start of Thursday's conference at Lancaster House, which he is co-hosting with Mr...

President Hosni Mubarak did not even wait for President Obama’s words to be translated before he shot back. “You don’t understand this part of the world,” the Egyptian leader broke in. “You’re young.” Mr. Obama, during a tense telephone call the evening of Feb. 1, 2011, had just told Mr. Mubarak that his speech, broadcast to hundreds of thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo, had not gone far enough. Mr. Mubarak had to step down, the president said. Minutes later, a grim Mr. Obama appeared before hastily summoned cameras in the Grand Foyer of the White House. The...

Obama to Restart Transfers From Guantanamo By JULIAN E. BARNES, EVAN PEREZ and ADAM ENTOUS WASHINGTON—The Obama administration is set to restart transfers of detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. officials said, kick-starting a long-stalled drive to close the prison. In a speech Thursday, President Barack Obama will reassert his case that closing Guantanamo is crucial to U.S. counterterrorism goals. While he isn't planning to detail in the speech how to speed up transfers from the prison, officials said the president in coming weeks plans to lift the administration's prohibition on sending detainees to Yemen. The president in the speech...

Panetta: Obama Absent Night of Benghazi Daniel Halper February 7, 2013 12:05 PM Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified this morning on Capitol Hill that President Barack Obama was absent the night four Americans were murdered in Benghazi on September 11, 2012: Panetta said that Obama left operational details, including knowledge of what resources were available to help the Americans under siege, "up to us." In fact, Panetta says that the night of 9/11, he did not communicate with a single person at the White House. The attack resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Panetta said...

As the administration’s false narrative about the events leading up to the sacking of our consulate in Benghazi and the killing of our ambassador continues to unravel, a sordid detail has come to light. The leader of the the attack is believed to be an alumnus of Guantanamo Bay who was released from custody via an anti-American left wing group headed by an Obama donor. First, the terrorist: Abu Sufian bin Qumu. Bin Qumu, according to his Guantanamo file, was picked up in Pakistan in early 2002 after being identified by the Libyan government (that would be the same government...

As for Obama, even as the ongoing scandals of Fast and Furious and Benghazi continue to deteriorate, it remains almost certain no one will call this administration or its standard-bearer to account for their blood-chilling indifference. They are people who have amply demonstrated that honor, respect and decency can be brushed aside in favor of political expediency as easily as one brushes lint off one’s suit jacket. And the silent media, which both forgive and forget the pile of bodies that have accrued in two major scandals, is equally reprehensible. Of the many scandals associated with the Obama administration, two...

TEHRAN, Iran — Five Iranian officials who were held in Iraq for more than two years by U.S. forces on suspicion of aiding local Shiite militants returned to Iran Sunday, where the Iranian foreign minister hailed their return as a victory for Iran. The five diplomats flew to Tehran from Iraq on Sunday and were met at the airport by a cheering crowd of onlookers who carried the men on their shoulders and put garlands of flowers around their necks. Iran's Foreign Minster Manouchehr Mottaki in a news conference with the men that was carried by Iran's Press-TV minutes after...

President Obama has been forced to reassess his view of what caused the attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, raising questions about whether the White House has a solid grasp on the underpinnings of the angry convulsions rocking the Middle East and the impact of the so-called “Cairo doctrine” laid out by Obama shortly after he took office in 2009. The White House initially laid the blame for the attack, as well as dozens of other protests that continue to roil the Mideast, on a YouTube clip from a movie called “The Innocence of Muslims” insulting...

Via BuzzFeed, simple question from the Univision moderators: Why wasn’t your administration better prepared to secure America’s embassies on September 11th? The response, true to form, is nearly six minutes of meandering about how it’s important to stay engaged in the Middle East, how the Mohammed movie is “offensive” but shouldn’t be a pretext for violence, how he’s decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership, etc etc etc — everything except an answer to the question that was asked. The closest he gets is insisting that they redoubled their security efforts afterward, which is super but not much of a consolation to Chris...

The violence unleashed in Kyrgyzstan is being spun as ethnic rioting. The reality is a good deal more complex, and the blame can be laid directly at Russia's door. Russia's coup against the Bakiyev government which took power in the Tulip Revolution leveraged Uzbek separatists in the Osh Province to suppress Kyrgiz nationalist supporters of Bakiyev. Russia had been trying for a while to force out Manas Air Base, a US air force base that serves as a vital link to US forces in Afghanistan. Russia tolerated Bakiyev, so long as he was against the US base. But once Bakiyev...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Al Jazeera is reporting that American and Israeli flags are being burned in London. Israeli and US flags being burned in London according to Al Jazeera. We know that the University of Texas has evacuated their campus after a phoned-in bomb threat from Al-Qaeda. No bombs were found. Fargo, North Dakota, state university has ordered all employees and students off campus after receiving a bomb threat. But everything's okay because I got an e-mail from the Obama campaign. Ambassadors are being murdered, former SEALs are dying, embassies are burning across the Middle East, but don't worry, we...

EXCLUSIVE MONDAY PREVIEW | OPINION Panic sets in at the White House By John E. Sununu | JUNE 18, 2012 KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS President Obama said, “the private sector is doing fine.” It’s been a tough couple of weeks for President Obama, one of those stretches where everything seems to go south at once. The economy is soft, his poll numbers are down, and Europe has the markets on edge; Romney is even beating him in the money race. What was once hailed as personal confidence — or condemned as arrogance — is long gone. Panic has set in, and it’s...

Mideast: As the president sneaks more money in the budget for Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood thugs he helped install in Cairo show their gratitude by threatening to attack Israel. For three decades, the U.S. essentially paid Egypt not to attack our closest ally in the region. The policy worked to maintain peace. But Obama nullified that deal by backing Islamist revolutionaries against reliably pro-U.S. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Now the bribe has lost its effect. The new Egyptian leadership, led by the virulently anti-Jewish Muslim Brotherhood, this week issued a warning to Washington that it should understand that "what was...

It is profoundly disconcerting to read media reports of the unseemly competition between the US and Western governments to curry favor with the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of its electoral victory in Egypt. There are chilling parallels between such behavior and the disastrous European policy of appeasing the Nazis which paved the way for World War II. What those attempting to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood fail to comprehend is that this organization represents one of the most fanatical and dangerous of the radical Islamist groups in the region, with a dark record of violence and terrorism imbedded in its...

President Barack Obama's administration proposed a $100 per-flight fee on corporate jets and other turbine-powered planes that use the U.S. air-traffic system. The fee would raise an estimated $11 billion over 10 years, according to the president's recommendations to the 12-member congressional committee charged with finding ways to trim the deficit. The fee is aimed at private aircraft, which currently don't pay their fair share of costs of operating the aviation system, the administration said today.

Speaking in Chile to defend his decision to launch Operation Odyssey Dawn, President Obama couldn’t resist taking a swipe at George Bush, in a clumsy attempt to make himself look superior. As reported by Fox News, the President declared: "In the past there have been times when the United States acted unilaterally or did not have full international support, and as a consequence typically it was the United States military that ended up bearing the entire burden." As the folks at Fox quickly pointed out, Bush actually had twice as many international allies for the invasion of Iraq as Obama...