The fury with which neoconservative pro-Israel groups have struck out at Chuck Hagel’s imminent nomination as the Secretary of Defense is both striking and completely expected. There is such a thing as learned behavior. Many of the same groups spoke out against Susan Rice, and they succeeded in getting her to withdraw consideration for Secretary [...]

In a speech today at the Virginia Military Institute, Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney will commit to arming Syrian rebels, and will attribute the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi to the “same forces that attacked our homeland on September 11th, 2001,” which under the still-active Authorization to Use Military Force commits the United [...]

Today is the day in our quadrennial orgy of political campaigning where the two sides lay down their arms and grow silent in commemoration of 9/11. Ads get pulled, candidates lay wreaths, the military gets praised. Therefore, it took serious guts for the New York Times to publish an op-ed from Kurt Eichenwald, based on [...]

Looks like we’re scheduled to endure another round of hype about Iran’s nuclear program. David Sanger writes in today’s New York Times about an imminent IAEA report. International nuclear inspectors will soon report that Iran has installed hundreds of new centrifuges in recent months and may also be speeding up production of nuclear fuel while [...]

Mitt Romney’s national security advisor Dan Senor caused a stir yesterday when he said the candidate would respect a decision by Israel to unilaterally strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities. This sent the Romney campaign into yet another round of damage control on this overseas tour. But the bigger issue was a separate statement said by [...]

After a couple weeks of hope, there are more troubling signs about the future of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. It appeared that the IAEA had struck a deal with Iran for future inspections of previously uninspected sites. Now, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano has announced new talks, as well as a revelation about satellite images [...]

Yesterday, Senate Republicans blocked yet another Iran sanctions bill on the grounds that they needed more time to study it and make sure it was sufficiently punitive. In fact, Republicans want the next sanctions bill to include an “explicit threat of a U.S. military strike if Iran refuses to curb its nuclear ambitions.” But while [...]

As I mentioned yesterday, to the extent that the federal government has a role to play in lowering gas prices, one of the biggest things they can do is stop making the world believe that Iran faces an imminent attack on their nuclear facilities that will potentially inflame the entire Middle East and threaten the [...]

The headlines out of Syria remain virtually the same as they have for almost a year now: protests, followed by security forces firing into the crowd. Perhaps we should be surprised that more members of the military haven’t defected rather than shoot their own people – for all we know, lots have – but the [...]

It appears that Martin Dempsey is my new favorite Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He accepted the job amid a time of discontent for the neocons, who see the US performing the unforgivable strategy of shutting down wars without replacing them with shiny, new wars. So they have mounted an offensive in recent [...]

Well, you knew this was coming. Right-wingers and neocons were going to go ballistic that Barack Obama did not properly rush to defend the honor of Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who has gone out of his way to insult Obama at virtually every opportunity. The story goes that in front of an open mike at [...]