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In a development unreported by news media, the State Department’s lead Benghazi investigator, Thomas Pickering, apparently leaked important classified information at a House hearing last week on the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack. Pickering revealed there is evidence that an Egyptian organization was behind the attack on the U.S. mission that killed U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. He further refused to deny there was a plan to kidnap Stevens. Pickering was the author of the State Department’s 39-page Accountability Review Board report, or ARB, which largely absolved then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top State officials...

If Syria were to surrender its chemical weapons to international control, it would be "an important step" toward avoiding military consequences, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday. Following a meeting with President Barack Obama, Clinton suggested that the situation in Syria was "fluid," nodding to an offer by Russian diplomats to organize the handover of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons to an international governing body. “If the regime immediately surrendered its stockpiles to international control, as was suggested by Secretary Kerry and the Russians, that would be an important step. But this cannot be another excuse for delay...

Wednesday, John Kerry told the Senate not to worry about the cost of an American war on Syria. The Saudis and Gulf Arabs, cash-fat on the $110-a-barrel oil they sell U.S. consumers, will pick up the tab for the Tomahawk missiles. Has it come to this – U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen as the mercenaries of sheikhs, sultans and emirs, Hessians of the New World Order, hired out to do the big-time killing for Saudi and Sunni royals? Yesterday, too, came a stunning report in the Washington Post. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has joined...

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who is aggressively lobbying against a military strike on Syria, says the Obama administration has manipulated intelligence to push its case for U.S. involvement in the country's two-year civil war. Grayson made the accusation in an interview published Wednesday by The Atlantic and offered more detail in a Thursday discussion with U.S. News. He says members of Congress are being given intelligence briefings without any evidence to support administration claims that Syrian leader Bashar Assad ordered the use of chemical weapons. snip He points to an article published by The Daily Caller that alleges the communications...

Secretary of State John Kerry said at Wednesday’s hearing that Arab counties have offered to pay for the entirety of unseating President Bashar al-Assad if the United States took the lead militarily. “With respect to Arab countries offering to bear costs and to assess, the answer is profoundly yes,” Kerry said. “They have. That offer is on the table.” Asked by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) about how much those countries would contribute, Kerry said they have offered to pay for all of a full invasion.

This astonishing photograph shows U.S Secretary of State John Kerry having a cosy and intimate dinner with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Kerry - who compared Assad to Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein yesterday - is pictured around a small table with his wife and the Assads in 2009. Assad and Kerry - who was then a senator for Massachusetts - lean in towards each other and appear deep in conversation as their wives look on. A waiter is pictured at their side with a tray of green drinks - which are believed to be lemon and crushed mint.

It's a potent sign of how low the American political bar is set that gratitude is expressed because a US president says he will ask Congress to vote before he starts bombing another country that is not attacking or threatening the US. That the US will not become involved in foreign wars of choice without the consent of the American people through their representatives Congress is a central mandate of the US Constitution. George Bush, of course, sought Congressional approval for the war in Iraq. There is no reason to believe that a Congressional rejection of the war's authorization would...