Afghanistan

NBC's Chuck Todd on Tuesday, moments before President Obama addressed the nation from Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, compared the assassination of Osama bin Laden one year ago to VE and VJ Days marking the end of World War II. The following was actually said by NBC's Chief White House correspondent on MSNBC's Hardball (video follows with transcript and commentary):

A week ago, National Journal's Michael Hirsh quoted an unnamed State Department official who claimed that "The war on terror is over. Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism." If it's so over, then why were government officials referenced…

Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst, said Sunday that President Obama was informed by CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell in December 2010 "that the circumstantial case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was better than the circumstantial case that bin Laden was in Abbottabad." This astonishing revelation was made on CBS's Face the Nation (video follows with transcript and…

Hillary Clinton says the expression on her face in that now iconic picture of the White House Situation Room taken the day Osama bin Laden was killed is "the way I usually look when my husband drags me to an action movie." Such was told to NBC's Brian Williams for a Rock Center special to be aired Wednesday which was previewed on Sunday's Meet the Press (video follows with transcript and…

The media were predictably orgasmic over a new Obama campaign ad out Friday featuring former President Bill Clinton in a strong message implying Mitt Romney wouldn't have made the decision last year to kill Osama bin Laden. The problem with their glee is that Clinton himself passed up numerous opportunities to kill or capture bin Laden prior to leaving the White House in January 2001 thereby…

CBS's Bill Plante on Friday downplayed graphic photos of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan posing with severed body parts of suicide bombers as a GOP "distraction," insisting that Republicans were "somehow" trying to portray this (and other issues) as a failure of leadership. None of the networks wondered if this reflected poorly on Barack Obama. Since the Los Angeles Times first reported the…

Let's stipulate up front that it might well have been an innocent mistake. Even so, until explained, it was shocking to say the least.  On today's Morning Joe, as Mika Brzezinski read a David Brooks op-ed about the shooting of civilians in Afghanistan in which he wrote of "monstrous acts that shock the soul and sear the brain," suddenly the screen cut--for an extended period--to three different…

Just how far is MSNBC's Chris Matthews willing to go to shield President Obama from criticism this election year? On Monday's Hardball, the host defended Koran burnings saying, "In Western religions when you have a religious article, the proper way of disposing it is burning it. So it's not a desecration...An American would never burn something to desecrate it. That would be a way of treating…

Reporting on violent protests in Afghanistan following accidental Quran burnings for Monday's NBC Today, correspondent Atia Abawi declared the incident "...follows a long line of insults that has intensified the public outrage towards the U.S., including last year's intentional burning of a Koran by a pastor in Florida and the video of U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters…

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, in an attempt to defend President Obama’s recent apology for the accidental Koran burnings that set off riots in Afghanistan, equated his response to what a foreign leader would be required to do if his military inadvertently burned an American flag. Morning Joe co-host Willie Geist correctly replied, “No because Americans wouldn’t go in the streets and start killing…

As violent, deadly demonstrations have broken out in Afghanistan following the recent accidental burning of Korans, it's interesting to look back nearly three years ago when the U.S. military burned a shipment of Holy Bibles written in the Pashto and Dari languages. The military destroyed the Bibles rather than ship them back stateside apparently out of fear the American church that sent them…

On Monday, Calvin Woodward, with help from Martin Crutsinger and Pete Yost, produced a "Fact Check" on the budget proposal the White House released earlier that day. After properly criticizing the administration's plan to use "about $850 billion in savings from ending the wars and steers some $230 billion of that to highways" (and actually quoting someone knowledgeable, who pointed out that "…

It really is amazing how far liberal media members are willing to go to deflect any criticism from Barack Obama. On HBO's Real Time Friday, host Bill Maher and guest Rob Reiner said this week's revelation of United States Marines urinating on dead Taliban wasn't really that big of a deal; Reiner even said, "It's expected" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

In 1984, an Associated Press writer covering the Democratic primaries wrote that "In a presidential contest dominated by concerns over the economy, inflation, and unemployment, the Democratic candidates have been loath to acknowledge the extent to which Carter administration policies contributed to those problems. Democrats have also controlled Congress for most of the past three decades, which…