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Hey! Who replaced the dithering guy who lives in the White House with somebody who acts like he wants to be President? On the heels of the large jobs plan announced earlier this month, President Obama has announced his own plan to reduce the deficit by up to $3 trillion. (Details, .. $1.5 trillion in higher revenues, through limiting deductions, shutting loopholes and letting the Bush tax cuts expire, and $1.5 trillion in spending savings from tinkering with entitlement programs and counting savings from winding down operations in Iraq and Afghanistan). Like the jobs plan, this deficit reduction plan doesn't...

The bus tour has come and gone. Now, so has the movie premiere. A flattering “documentary” (from the looks of these clips, it appears more like an infomercial) about Sarah Palin, the former Alaskan governor and one-time vice presidential nominee, had its first showing in the tiny town of Pella, Iowa on Tuesday. But despite plenty of speculation that it could “serve as a galvanizing prelude to Palin's prospective presidential campaign,” the event went off with little fanfare. Palin attended a post-premiere barbeque and had lunch at a Panera Bread restaurant with a GOP fundraiser, where politics reportedly wasn’t on...

Having seen unreleased photos of Osama bin Laden’s corpse, US Senator Scott Brown does not believe pictures of the dead terrorist leader should be made public, the Massachusetts Republican said in an interview on NECN. “Let me assure you that he is dead, that bin Laden is dead — I have seen the photos,” said Brown. Asked directly if the pictures, which have been described as bloody and gruesome, should be made available for everyone, Brown responded: “If it’s to sell newspapers or just have a news cycle story, no, I don’t think they should be released. We’re still dealing...

Will there be a big reveal? The nation’s news organizations are dithering over whether to publish or broadcast images of Osama bin Laden after he was shot, when the White House inevitably releases them. Are the photos “newsworthy” the press asks, or too “grisly” for the American public? Will the images spark a retaliation from al Qaeda or offer definitive proof that the terrorist leader is dead?

President Obama isn’t quite in hibernation. But he’s saying less, proposing less, appearing in public less, doing less, interacting with Congress less, plugging his health care plan less, and singling out a Republican demon less. It took two years and the harsh rejection of a midterm election for Obama to figure out what shouldn’t have been a secret: The magic of the presidency declines with overindulgence. Now several days go by at the White House with the president listed as having “no public schedule.” Or his calendar will feature only a string of Oval Office meetings described as “closed press.”...

After a full three months of damaging dither, Obama has finally announced his strategy for Afghanistan. It is nothing less than surrender dressed up in deepest, blood-boltered hypocrisy. The media have reported the headline announcement of an extra 30,000 troops as if he has finally junked his anti-war persona and turned into George W Bush reborn. Even some hawks who should know better are purring that he has finally done the right thing in committing America more fully to fighting and winning the war in Afghanistan. Are they all nuts? This is nothing of the kind. Obama’s speech amounted to...

The most-played sound bite from Barack Obama’s speech on Afghanistan will be the following: “I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home." It sounds odd because it is: we’re coming in heavy, but then we’re off. “If you put in a timeline you encourage the enemy to outwait you, to regard the strategy as not enduring,” said Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US envoy to Afghanistan. "When I was ambassador the Taliban sent me a message saying ‘you have...

This Thanksgiving weekend, the First Family did the same thing many Americans families did – catch a game. For the Obamas, the game of choice was basketball. The Beavers of Oregon State, where Michelle Obama’s brother Craig Robinson is the head coach, were in town to play the George Washington University Colonials last night. The game was a family affair with Barack, Michelle, Sasha and Malia Obama as well as grandmother Miriam Robinson, arriving at the Smith Center shortly before the game began. Fans were required to go through airport-like security before entering the arena. While there was no official...

Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, has blamed Barack Obama and the United States for the decline in British public support for the war in Afghanistan. Mr Ainsworth took the unprecedented step of publicly criticising the US President and his delays in sending more troops to bolster the mission against the Taliban. A “period of hiatus” in Washington - and a lack of clear direction - had made it harder for ministers to persuade the British public to go on backing the Afghan mission in the face of a rising death toll, he said. Senior British Government sources have become increasingly...

November 23: Dick Cheney Exclusive Interview

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama will meet with his war cabinet Monday for "possibly" the last time before deciding whether to dispatch tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan, an official said. The meeting comes as Obama weighs a request from his top commander in Afghanistan for up to 40,000 more US troops to support the war effort there. Among the top administration officials expected to attend the meeting at 8:00 pm local time (0100 GMT) are Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The meeting will be the ninth...

Chris Matthews ‘Flips’ – Claims Obama Gives Him a ‘Chill’ Up His Leg. Video at link.

I was a supporter of both the Afghanistan invasion and the Iraq war. I believed then, following the Sept. 11 attacks, that it was a matter of national security to hand Islamic terrorists stunning defeats in their own backyards. Even a year ago, I would have said bringing the troops home prematurely would be tantamount to surrender to an enemy determined to do us in. But that was then. This is now. Things have changed and changed dramatically. The biggest change is one in America's leadership. I do not believe Barack Obama is capable of achieving anything remotely resembling victory...

NASA, at age 50, is having a midlife crisis. What should it do after it retires the shuttle? Can it, should it, recreate the glories of its youth? Or should it mature into a wise enabler of technological and institutional leadership? The 2003 Space Shuttle disaster, underfunding of President George W. Bush’s call to go to the “Moon, Mars and Beyond” and the advent of a new presidential administration have caused NASA to re-evaluate its mission at a truly fundamental level. The President’s Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, led by retired Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, was...

President Barack Obama will be forced into yet another "war council" on troops for Afghanistan as rifts deepen between his top political, security and military advisers. Mr Obama, who has faced withering criticism for "dithering" over his strategy review, is now expected to make the decision on extra troops within a week of arriving back in Washington from Asia. He will make the announcement that will shape his administration's foreign policy in a major televised speech. Mr Obama will insist that any increase is "not an open-ended commitment" in an attempt to allay fears that Afghanistan is turning into a...

Nov 14, 2009 17:25 | Updated Nov 14, 2009 17:29 Iran has completely rejected a UN-brokered nuclear deal, but US President Barack Obama has postponed the official announcement on Teheran's refusal due to internal political reasons, Israel Radio quoted a senior western official as saying Saturday. The deal would see most of the Islamic Republic's uranium shipped to Russia and France for further processing. The official reportedly told journalists in Paris that Iran has also refused to resume nuclear talks with the six world powers.

FRICTION inside Barack Obama's war cabinet has spilled into the open after Defence Secretary Robert Gates lashed out at destabilising leaks about White House talks on thrashing out a new strategy for the Afghanistan conflict. Dr Gates said yesterday he was appalled at the amount of leaking in the middle of the US President's deliberations. During a rare angry outburst, he confirmed yesterday that Mr Obama had rejected all four options put to him for boosting troop numbers in Afghanistan. Following cabinet discussions in the White House, Dr Gates said Mr Obama had asked advisers to look again at options...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Army says morale has fallen among its forces in Afghanistan, where troops are seeing record violence in the 8-year-old war. A new battlefield survey taken several months ago found instances of depression, anxiety and other psychological problems about the same as in 2007 — but there was a significant drop in unit morale. The Army also says there is a shortage of mental health workers to help soldiers, partly because of the troop buildup started this year by President Barack Obama.

President Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday. That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official. In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday. That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official. In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions...

The Associated Press is reporting that President Obama "does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government." It has been obvious for some time that Obama has no intention of fighting to win in Afghanistan, as he promised during the presidential campaign. A battle plan that includes provisions for how and when the U.S. can extricate itself from the field is a blueprint for defeat, not victory. The pretext for Obama's decision to...

Mideast: Iran tests an advanced warhead design as it gets caught shipping weapons to Hezbollah. Syria is reported to give the group operational control over Scud missiles. It's five minutes to midnight. Tyranny abhors a vacuum. While the U.S. and the West dither in Hamlet-like fashion over whatever we shall do in places such as Afghanistan and Iran, the Axis of Evil is in full swing in its plans to destroy Israel and threaten Europe and America. Israel last week seized what it said was the largest arms cache ever intercepted in the region. Israeli navy commandos boarded the Francop,...

The Daily Telegraph has learned that there is growing frustration in Whitehall at the US president’s prolonged deliberations over Afghanistan. Since early September, Mr Obama has been considering a review of Afghan strategy by General Stanley McChrystal, who has advised the president to send an extra 40,000 US troops to Afghanistan. As well as troop numbers, Mr Obama and his advisers are also considering the fundamental Western strategy in Afghanistan, trying to decide how much emphasis to put on counter-insurgency operations against the Taliban and how much to put on hunting down al-Qaeda terrorists. The president’s long decision-making process has...

War On Terror: Sen. John Kerry, who was so wrong about Iraq, now says our commander in Afghanistan is "reaching too far, too fast" and that a "good enough" policy should suffice. It won't. Offering his advice on how to micromanage the war against the Taliban, Kerry said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama's hand-picked general to fight what he called a "war of necessity," is wrong in saying he needs 40,000 more troops to fight and win it. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Kerry advocated a "good enough" policy designed not to achieve victory in al-Qaida's...

Barack Obama: Media Sweetheart and Golf Addict by Brian Darling (more by this author) Posted 11/02/2009 ET Barack Obama enjoys wide support from his liberal friends in the media. That allows them to ignore the growing discontent average Americans hold toward a leader who promised so much and has delivered so little. Politico and CBS News reported last week that the president has played 24 rounds of golf this year. Yet no media outlet has accused Obama of spending too much time on the greens and not enough time in the Oval Office. Pelosicare Unveiled As the Senate continues to...

The Obama administration is considering an almost complete surrender in Afghanistan, if the report this weekend by the BBC's Katty Kay is accurate.Speaking as a panelist on the Chris Matthews Show, a weekend public affairs broadcast, Kay reported on the internal debate at the White House, "There are real questions being asked, I think, about whether even with a big injection of troops this is a real country, a real war that you can win."And there's a new phrase which is floating around the White House which is 'minimum security'. That we're not actually aiming for a country which is...

As a Marine, Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran, and Honorably Discharged Sergeant, I know a thing or two about mission accomplishment versus troop welfare. As a matter of fact, any Marine can tell you the clearly stated objective of the Marine Corps is mission accomplishment. Troop welfare comes secondary. Commanders and military leaders learned long ago that success on any battlefront depends chiefly upon mission accomplishment. Troop welfare, while important, does not trump mission accomplishment. For the enlisted Marine on the ground, this is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. But we understand. And actually, this is one of the reasons...

By DAVID E. SANGER WASHINGTON - With the White House's reluctant embrace on Sunday of Hamid Karzai as the winner of Afghanistan's suddenly ... With Karzai, US Faces Weak Partner in Time of War New York Times. Abdullah Abdullah was at times emotional on Sunday in announcing in Kabul that he was dropping out of a runoff.

War On Terror: Sen. John Kerry, who was so wrong about Iraq, now says our commander in Afghanistan is "reaching too far, too fast" and that a "good enough" policy should suffice. It won't. Offering his advice on how to micromanage the war against the Taliban, Kerry said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama's hand-picked general to fight what he called a "war of necessity," is wrong in saying he needs 40,000 more troops to fight and win it. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Kerry advocated a "good enough" policy designed not to achieve victory in al-Qaida's...

At today's White House briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Barack Obama has spent "close to 20 direct hours" in meetings on Afghanistan since Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for tens of thousands of reinforcements was submitted over two months ago with a warning the war would be lost in twelve months without more troops.Gibbs says Obama also spends "quite a bit of time" thinking about the war in Afghanistan.Gibbs was asked about a statement by the mother of one of the fallen soldiers, Sgt. Dale Griffin, killed in Afghanistan this week whom Obama met with at Dover early Thursday morning....

Leadership: As the fire grows in Afghanistan and U.S. troops suffer their worst casualties since Fallujah, the commander in chief remains AWOL on his intentions, delaying the tough decisions. Is he opting for defeat? Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned in August that time was short to win this war. Now October is ending as the deadliest month in the Afghan war. With 55 dead since August, McChrystal's warning now stings. Even so, each day brings a new excuse from the White House for delaying a decision on troop reinforcements McChrystal has sought. The goal posts move almost daily. This...

President Obama must show leadership over Afghanistan, and soon. His delay in announcing his plans looks less like deliberation and more like dithering A remarkable headline on an opinion piece about Afghanistan in The New York Times, following an interview with David Miliband: “Britain resolves, US wavers”. If the American press can look to policy on Afghanistan on this side of the Atlantic and see relative determination, vision and clarity of purpose, then things in Washington must be dire indeed. It is now two months since General Stanley McCrystal, the commander of US and allied forces in Afghanistan, told President...

The Washington Post reports tonight that Barack Obama and top administration officials have concluded the Taliban cannot be beaten and that they are looking for ways to cede parts of Afghanistan to the Taliban without those regions becoming safe havens for al Qaeda.The article also reports that Obama may wait until after he returns from a 10 day visit to Asia that begins November 11 to decide his policy for Afghanistan.The Post article is largely about Obama's request made this week, two months after he received Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for tens of thousands more troops to fulfill Obama's counter-insuregency...

In the name of God, Mr. President, just decide. Before your dithering costs any more American lives, pull your finger out of the air and decide on a strategy for Afghanistan. You sought the presidency, for crying out loud, now exercise it. If you’re going to be commander in chief, dammit, command! That’s the simple message to Barack Obama. But it is a message which, astoundingly, he seems content to ignore. Seldom has indecision been raised to such a fine art, or been boasted of as a matter of pride. In an historic display of uncertainty masquarading as deliberateness, the...

This is the moment....when Senator John Kerry, who served in Vietnam and currently chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday that he opposes sending more troops unless conditions on the ground improve in Afghanistan. I'd say that's the basic gist of it. I think James Dobbins states it very well: James Dobbins, who served as a special envoy to Afghanistan during the Bush administration and is now at the Rand Corp., said that Kerry had made many "sensible" points in the speech but that he found the conclusion unsatisfactory. "The argument seems to be that we're not going to...

BBC LATEST: Headline Only US President Obama Says He Will Not Rush "Solemn Decision" To Commit Troops To Afghanistan

President Barack Obama pledged on Monday not to "rush the solemn decision" to send more troops to battle in Afghanistan as he weighs military options on what to do next in the troubled war. "I won't risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary," Obama told service men and women at Naval Air Station Jacksonville. He promised a "clear mission" with defined goals and the equipment needed to get the job done. Obama, who is in the process of weighing options put forward by the Pentagon that include various levels of increased troops, spoke of the latest example of the...

Former Vice-President Dick Chenney’s comment accusing the Obama Administration of “dithering” on the decision whether to send more troops to Afghanistan drew sharp rebukes from key Democrats. Administration Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs dismissed Chenney’s comments as “off-base.” “Where Mr. Chenney sees dithering, the reality is that we are pursuing a conscious policy of aggressive equivocation,” Gibbs said. “The aim is to keep America’s enemies off-balance. Not knowing whether more US troops are on the way will undermine their planning.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates echoed Gibbs’ take on the issue, explaining that “postponing a decision on deployment throws a monkey wrench...

NAWA, Afghanistan -- Before a battalion of U.S. Marines swooped into this dusty farming community along the Helmand River in early July, almost every stall in the bazaar had been padlocked, as had the school and the health clinic. Thousands of residents had fled. Government officials and municipal services were nonexistent. Taliban fighters swaggered about with impunity, setting up checkpoints and seeding the roads with bombs. In the three months since the Marines arrived, the school has reopened, the district governor is on the job and the market is bustling. The insurgents have demonstrated far less resistance than U.S. commanders...

Afghanistan: The president's decision to withhold more troops over the country's less-than-pristine election is nothing but stalling. For our soldiers, desperate for reinforcements, it's a slap in the face. No doubt, a legitimate government, complete with free and fair elections, would be good for Afghanistan. Its Aug. 20 vote was loaded with trouble because the Taliban sliced off purple-inked fingers to discourage voting and because a United Nations electoral watchdog found widespread voter fraud. Yes, correct the problems. But holding U.S. troop reinforcements hostage isn't the way to do it. Elections aren't why we have troops in that country. They're...

What’s the big rush? That seems to be Obama’s modus operandi on any foreign-policy challenge. Iran has secret (well, not secret, since the president knew about it) nuclear facilities, but we can talk about it. December’s a good deadline. But really, what’s a “deadline” mean? September’s deadline came and went, right? Likewise on Afghanistan: there is no time frame for even making a decision, according to Bob Woodward: "President Obama has not set a deadline for determining a new strategy or for committing more troops to the war in Afghanistan, despite an urgent request from his top commander, his national...

World leaders went into diplomatic overdrive today after North Korea announced that it had carried out its first nuclear weapons test, despite repeated international warnings not to do so.The blast occurred at 10.36am (0136GMT), apparently in a disused coalmine near the town of Kilju in the northeast of the country. There was no official confirmation of the North Korean claim. Seismologists detected a tremor measuring around 3.6 after the blast, suggesting an explosive yield of as low as 500 tonnes of TNT, only one-thirtieth of the destructive power deployed against Hiroshima in 1945. One US official told Reuters that it...