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WASHINGTON — Military officials voiced frustration and congressional leaders urged caution Tuesday over what they described as President Barack Obama's shifting strategy in Afghanistan, six months after he committed thousands more U.S. troops to the stalemated war there. Administration officials maintained they were looking at all options to protect the U.S. and its allies by shutting down al-Qaida leaders who are believed to be hiding in areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. Critics at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill said the White House was in danger of taking its eye off the fight that has turned increasingly deadly for American...

Another part of Bush's speech dealt with the supposed spread of "democracy" in the Muslim world: "He [Bush] also offered plenty of praise for democratic advances, naming countries like Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco and Jordan. 'The light of liberty is beginning to shine,' he said." Is he crazy? In Turkey, the so-called "light of liberty" is undoing Kemalism, putting the secularists in the universities, the judiciary, and the army, under great pressure, and bringing Islam back, step by grim step, as Erdogan and now Gul, cleverly backed by all kinds of people, including the shadowy millionaire Fethullah Gulen, probe and...

WASHINGTON - Republican and Democratic congressional leaders both forecast a change in President Bush's Iraq war policy as the president prepared to sign legislation Friday providing funds for military operations through Sept. 30. "I think the president's policy is going to begin to unravel now," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record), who described the just-passed measure as a disappointment because it did not force an end to U.S. participation in the conflict. At a separate news conference, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record) predicted a change, and said Bush would show the way. "I...

WASHINGTON - Democrats blistered President Bush's war policy Tuesday night, challenging him to redeem the nation's credibility — and his own — with an immediate shift toward a diplomatic end to the bloody conflict in Iraq. "The president took us into this war recklessly," the Democrats' chosen messenger, Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, said in response to Bush's State of the Union address Tuesday evening. "We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable — and predicted — disarray that has followed." Webb, a Vietnam veteran who was Navy secretary during Republican President Reagan's administration, called for a...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Ratcheting up his criticism of the war in Iraq, Senator Edward M. Kennedy accuses the Bush administration of telling "lie after lie after lie" to defend its policy in a fiery speech prepared for delivery today on the Senate floor.</p>

The Bush administration is developing a new strategic doctrine that moves away from the Cold War pillars of containment and deterrence toward a policy that supports preemptive attacks against terrorists and hostile states with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.Entire article here