Afghanistan

CNN foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria – who has recently had off-the-record conversations with President Obama on foreign issues – noted the president's "restraint" in his dealing with the "Arab Spring" and the conflict in Libya Wednesday. Zakaria previously gave a thumbs-up for Obama's Mideast speech in May and later defended the president's plan for removing American troops from…

 On ABC’s World News on Sunday, a report by correspondent Jim Avila highlighted the complaints of left-wing mayors who expressed wishes that more defense spending would be redirected at projects in their cities. The NBC correspondent speculated about what other items could be paid for using the money used by the Pentagon in Afghanistan and Iraq, and concluded the report seeming to suggest…

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that even after President Barack Obama withdraws 33,000 soldiers from Afghanistan by September 2012, there will still be “twice as many” U.S. troops in the country as there were when he took office.

On Wednesday, CNN's "Obama Adviser" aka Fareed Zakaria praised the current White House resident's Afghanistan address as a "remarkable speech for an American president." On the CNN program bearing his name Sunday, Zakaria continued lavishing praise on our Commander-in-Chief saying, "Obama has basically made the right call" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As she steps into her new role as CBS News Chief White House correspondent, Norah O'Donnell may have made a good impression on the man she'll now be covering with comments she made this weekend. While chatting with the panel of "The Chris Matthews Show," O'Donnell told the host that President Obama has more aggressively prosecuted the War on Terror than George W. Bush (video follows with…

On Thursday's NBC Today, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd recited Obama administration spin as he gave a fully positive assessment of the President's Wednesday announcement of an Afghanistan troop withdrawal: "The President went with the most aggressive compromised withdrawal plan he could get commanders at the Pentagon to sign off on." Moments later, Todd declared: "It was a sober…

Just days after demagoguing the war on terror as a "war of fear," NBC's Richard Engel told Jay Leno "it's probably time to end the global war on terrorism." The NBC News chief foreign correspondent, discussing Mideast policy on the June 22 "Tonight Show," also pushed for withdrawal from Afghanistan and an end to "this chapter in our history." Video follows break

President Obama announced last night that he will withdraw his entire 30,000 troop surge from 2009, bringing home 10,000 troops from Afghanistan this year, and an additional 20,000 troops by the end of next summer. The plan is a much more aggressive withdrawal than recommended by the Gen. David Petraeus and other Pentagon officials, who recommended one more fighting season against the Taliban…

The New York Times may flinch at the thought of cutting Medicare or unemployment benefits to cut deficits, but reporters have quickly warmed to the idea of a speedy withdrawal from Afghanistan in the name of cost-cutting. Reporter Michael Cooper spied an anti-war revival on Tuesday in “Mayors Call for a Quicker End to Wars So Money Can Be Used for Needs at Home,” picking up on a release from…

At Big Government yesterday, Kristinn Taylor and Andrea Shea King compiled overwhelming evidence refuting one key element of a cease-and-desist letter sent to Fox News by lawyers for former Obama administration "green jobs" czar Van Jones. In doing so, they referenced and credited a video I posted in September 2009 of an anti-American rally in Oakland, California on September 12, 2001 where…

While the prospect of a US withdrawal from Afghanistan is looming, some are at work pushing a revisionist history of America's involvement there. One NPR host even went so far as to claim that the Taliban, the brutal government toppled during the 2001 US invasion, "was never an enemy of the United States." Even a cursory review of the history of the invasion belies that hat statement, made by…

Fox News haters love to advance the myth that the network pushes exclusively conservative views and the anchors surround themselves with right-leaning yes men who never question them. On the latest installment of "Fox News Sunday," liberal political analyst Juan Williams challenged host Chris Wallace's view of the public's support for the war in Afghanistan leading to a humorous exchange (…

New York Times reporter James Dao has filed his second story in nine days critical of the Afghanistan war. First came the 3,000-word Sunday front-page story on May 29, "After Combat, the Unexpected Perils of Coming Home," emphasizing the negative from the start: Capt. Adrian Bonenberger made plans for his final patrol to Imam Sahib. But inside, he was sweating the details of a different…

In the Bush years, the hottest, most telegenic politician in Washington was a Republican (or “pro-defense” Democrat) who would oppose President Bush in Iraq. Democratic Rep. John Murtha was red-hot, and so were critical Republicans like Chuck Hagel. But in the Obama years, backing away from Obama’s war policy doesn’t exactly give you the same cachet. On Friday, on the front page of Politico,…