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Barack Obama cancelled three operations to kill Osama bin Laden before finally going ahead with the mission at the insistence of Hillary Clinton, according to a new book. The explosive allegation is contained in an expose by journalist Rich Miniter, who argues that the White House’s carefully-crafted narrative of Obama as a decisive leader who dispatched the al-Qaeda leader despite the doubts of advisers is a myth. Leading from Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him will be published on Tuesday. Excerpts have been viewed by Mail Online. Miniter, a former ‘Wall Street Journal’, ‘Washington Times’...

President Barack Obama called Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an 'American patriot' at a White House Iftar dinner celebrating the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. His praise came after a group of Republican lawmakers accused her of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political organization. 'She has been nothing less than extraordinary in representing our country and the democratic values that we hold dear,' Obama said.

Barack Obama is no fool, either. but he also wants to win a second term. If Israel is forced to strike, Obama and his advisers understand that the majority of Americans support Israel and will expect the administration to do everything in its power to ensure Israel's success. In such a case, even if Obama does the bare minimum to help Israel -- vetoing a resolution against her at the U.N., ensuring safe airspace over Iraq and perhaps refueling at U.S. military bases in the region, ensuring that the Strait of Hormuz remain open and safe for oil tanker passage,...

In the early morning hours of October 10, 2002, Anwar al-Awlaki, the notorious al Qaeda operative, was detained by U.S. Customs agents when he arrived at JFK International Airport in New York City after a flight from Saudi Arabia. At the time, he was a prime suspect in the 9/11 attacks and had been placed on terrorist watch-lists. Nevertheless, the Bush Justice Department directed Customs to release him. That decision enabled Awlaki to continue his jihadist campaign against the United States until he was finally killed in Yemen last September, in an American drone attack. For nearly a decade since...

Why is the Obama administration shunning potential allies and empowering enemies? Why has the administration gotten it wrong everywhere? On Wednesday, John Brennan, US President Barack Obama’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, made a quick trip to Israel to discuss Hezbollah’s massacre of Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria last week. Hopefully it was an instructive meeting for the senior US official, although his Israeli interlocutors were undoubtedly dumbstruck by how difficult it was to communicate with him. Unlike previous US counterterror officials, Brennan does not share Israel’s understanding of Middle Eastern terrorism. Brennan’s outlook on this subject was revealed...

In the wake of the recent memo from the Obama administration which announced “prosecutorial discretion” in dealing with illegal aliens, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents across the country have been speaking out what many of them are calling a “backdoor amnesty.” On Wednesday, ICE Union president Chris Crane told PRNewswire:“Any American concerned about immigration needs to brace themselves for what's coming. This is just one of many new ICE policies in queue aimed at stopping the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in the United States. Unable to pass its immigration agenda through legislation, the Administration is now implementing it through...

One of the most embarrassing yet telling exchanges (using the term loosely, as will be seen) in the history of presidential press secretaries occurred on Thursday. Connie Lawn, described here as longest-serving White House reporter, asked Obama Press Secretary Jay Carney what should have been a really easy question: "What city does this administration consider to be the capital of Israel -- Jerusalem or Tel Aviv?" Carney wouldn't answer it, and accused Lawn and relentless national treasure Les Kinsolving of WND.com of asking about something they already knew. Carney's contemptible behavior has been virtually ignored in the establishment press. Here...

The White House incorrectly claimed that a bust of Winston Churchill was not removed from the White House when President Obama moved in, insisting with emphatic certainty that it had simply been moved to the residence but then retracting the assertion. In a “Fact Check” post added to the White House website Friday, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer scornfully dismissed as “100% false” the “rumor” that Obama had removed the Churchill bust that had presided over the George W. Bush Oval Office and shipped it back to the British. Turns out Pfeiffer’s was the false statement. Picture [snip] Pfeiffer...

Administration’s effort to boost global image has floppedAt the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno, Nev., on Monday, President Obama heaped praise on his foreign policy record. “Because we’re leading around the world, people have a new attitude toward America,” he said. “There’s more confidence in our leadership. We see it everywhere we go.” This raises the question: Where exactly has he been going? Since Mr. Obama took office, the opinion of the United States generally has declined in every country surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, according to a report released in June. Despite the vaunted White...

Minutes after Mitt Romney addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Tuesday, NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell appeared on MSNBC to downplay the GOP candidate's positive reception: "...this is a conservative group....This is a very conservative foreign policy group and there's no question that they would be predisposed, I think, more towards being in the Republican camp than the Democratic camp."Mitchell was responding to host Craig Melvin fretting over Romney's tone in the speech: "...a fairly aggressive attack. I don't know if that's exactly what we were expecting from his address there at the VFW. A stark contrast...

RENO, Nev.— President Obama today argued that his foreign policy has ushered in a “new era of American leadership,” while suggesting that Republican rival Mitt Romney has not shown he is ready to be commander in chief. “Four years ago, I made you a promise. I pledged to take the fight to our enemies and renew our leadership in the world. As president, that’s what I’ve done,” Obama said at the national convention for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “As you reflect on recent years, as we look ahead to the challenges we face as a nation

Bulgarian media on Thursday named the suicide bomber who blew up a bus full of Israeli tourists, killing five Israelis and a local bus driver, in the Black Sea resort of Burgas on Wednesday as 36-year-old Mehdi Ghezali. Ghezali reportedly arrived in Bulgaria five weeks before the bombing and arrived at the airport via taxi, Channel 2 reported. He was also reportedly given the bomb by someone else, but no further details were provided. [Snip] Ghezali has a Wikipedia page, which describes him as a Swedish citizen, with Algerian and Finnish origins. He had been held at the US’s...

President Barack Obama's reelection campaign mocked Mitt Romney late Wednesday as being "scared" of Venezuela's anti-American President Hugo Chavez "like he's ten feet tall," the latest rhetorical broadside in an escalating war of words. "Hugo Chavez has become increasingly marginalized and his influence has waned," Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement. "It's baffling that Mitt Romney is so scared of a leader like Chavez whose power is fading, while Romney continues to remain silent about how to confront al-Qaeda or how to bring our troops home from Afghanistan." The rhetorical rumble began late Tuesday when Obama told...

While the elections for a 200-member National Congress is unlikely to grant a majority to any one faction, the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies are confident they can join their counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt at the helm of leadership. Negotiations between the Muslim Brotherhood and a secular-based political movement led by former interim prime minister Mahmoud Jibril have focused on forming a post-election government as soon as the result is known. An adviser to Mr Jibril said the former prime minister was likely to take the post of figurehead president with Mustafa Abu Shagour, currently interim deputy prime...

CNSNews.com) – President Obama phoned the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi on Sunday evening to congratulate him on becoming Egypt’s new president, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo said in a Twitter message around 7 PM eastern time. Earlier, White House press secretary Jay Carney in a statement called the Islamist’s election a “milestone” in Egyptians’ transition to democracy. “Millions of Egyptians voted in the election, and President-elect Morsi and the new Egyptian government have both the legitimacy and responsibility of representing a diverse and courageous citizenry,” he said. Egypt’s election commission earlier announced that Morsi had beaten his second-round opponent, former...

There was something about the way Hillary Clinton said it that touched a nerve. “People are dying,” the Secretary of State said forcefully and finally – with an emphasis on the word “dying” that can only be born of outrage. She was talking about Syria and the brutal repression by embattled President Bashar al-Assad against a popular uprising – an uprising that Clinton and President Obama hope leads to the toppling of the Assad regime. The comment came during a June 13 press conference at the State Department as Clinton stood at a podium next to the Indian foreign minister,...

Following are excerpts from an interview with Rif’at Al-Said, leader of the Egyptian Al-Tagammu’ Party, which aired on Dream 2 TV on June 6, 2012. Rif’at Al-Said: The danger in the Freedom and Justice Party [of the Muslim Brotherhood] lies in its being a Salafi organization, which relies upon peddling in religion. They believe that if their candidate becomes president, Islam itself will have come to power, and will serve as an umbrella for the rule. Therefore, if Muhammad Mursi, the Freedom and Justice Party’s candidate, is elected, any opposition to him will be considered opposition to the Islamic enterprise,...

Editor's note: Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst, is a director at the New America Foundation and the author of the new book, "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad." (CNN) -- On Monday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate a series of recent leaks that critics charge are designed to bolster the national security credentials of the Obama administration. Investigations by special prosecutors can take on a life of their own. Recall that the investigation of the Whitewater real estate deal in Arkansas -- in...

The Arab Spring of revolution has given rise to a new summer of concern in North Africa. While Moammar Gadhafi is gone, the weapons used by the rebels who overthrew him are now a threat to the whole region, according to Amanda Dory, a top Defense Department policy official on Africa. "The breakdown of security in Libya has generated a significant flow of militants and weapons and has decreased legitimate cross-border traffic at a time of great economic fragility and turbulence," said Dory, the deputy assistant secretary of defense on African affairs. Many of those weapons, the Pentagon fears, are...

David Plouffe, adviser to President Obama, pervaded Sunday morning news shows this week, and among them was an interview with Fox News Sunday‘s Chris Wallace. In a show focused largely on the recent leaks of classified intelligence, Wallace grilled Plouffe on how this information was leaked and how much the president is willing to participate in the investigation.