Foreign Policy

President George W. Bush's nickname for David Gregory was "Stretch."  True to his moniker, the elongated Meet The Press host gave a long, tall, three-part smooch to President Obama during his appearance on this morning's Today Show. Speaking with weekend Today co-host Jenna Wolfe: Gregory reported favorably on: 1. the Tripoli bombing that might have killed members of Khaddafy's family; 2.…

The front of the New York Times Sunday Week in Review features a think-piece by the paper’s foreign policy maven David Sanger, “Halfway In With Obama.” The subhead: “In Libya, America lets others command. By letting allies pick up the burden, is its credibility on the line?” Sanger was a harsh critic of Bush’s foreign policy philosophy, mocking the  president as an incurious George overseas…

A new poll finds one out of 10 Egyptians are sympathetic to Islamic "fundamentalists," 75 percent have a positive view of the Muslim Brotherhood, and 79 percent have a "very" or "somewhat unfavorable" view of the United States. But Washington Post's Michael Birnbaum seems to portray this data as of little concern (emphasis mine):

The New York Times offered a distorted glimpse into the prison at Guantanamo Bay and the Bush administration's treatment of suspected terrorists in a series of reports published on Sunday and Monday. Scouring hundreds of leaked military documents, Times reporters used emotionally-charged phrases and cherry-picked anecdotes to paint an unflattering picture of the facility that has jailed…

Out of the mouths of babes... On Friday's "Inside Washington," during a discussion about American foreign policy in the Middle East and Africa, PBS's Mark Shields actually said, "The most urgent priority that we have is to find jobs somehow, not simply for Americans, which is an urgent priority, but for young Egyptians" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Call him a NOW-hawk . . . Of all the reasons to send our people to fight and die in Afghanistan, spending $2 billion per week in the process, Howard Dean has managed to come up with perhaps the worst: feminism. On today's Morning Joe, Dean explained that "the whole reason" he used to support President Obama's waging of the Afghanistan war was that leaving the country would plunge its…

Former Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez is expected to be a Democratic contender in the Texas 2012 Senate race. However, when Politico's Mike Allen brought news of his probable candidacy to MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Monday,  he omitted the fact that Sanchez commanded the U.S. ground forces in Iraq while the infamous abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison took place. Sanchez, when he retired from the Army…

On Saturday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Lester Holt marked the 50th anniversary of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion as "one of the most infamous events in American history." In the report that followed, correspondent Mark Potter proclaimed: "This weekend Cuba is remembering a critical moment in history still felt today. Huge crowds have come out to celebrate in ways not seen here for years."…

Burning a copy of the Koran is morally equivalent to flying a plane into the World Trade Center and equally eternally damnable. That's essentially the fatwa of Time magazine's Joe Klein in an April 1 blog post at the magazine's Swampland blog. Klein was condemning Florida pastor Terry Jones's "trial" and subsequent burning of a Koran which allegedly have sparked a murderous rampage against…

Newsweek's Evan Thomas on Friday took a swipe at the White House's handling of its operation in Libya. As the subject was raised on PBS's "Inside Washington," Thomas said, "In this case, it’s always hard to know what the Administration is doing because it’s sort of a headless horse" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Admiral and former Democrat Congressman Joe Sestak (D-Penn.) has been an outspoken critic of President Obama's attack on Libya since the operation began almost two weeks ago. For some reason on MSNBC's "Ed Show" Thursday, Sestak radically changed his view (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Michael Scheuer, a former counter-terrorism analyst for the CIA, scolded CNN's Christine Romans Thursday for letting her support for the current President show. Toward the end of a lengthy interview on "American Morning" about the situation in Libya, Romans took issue with her guest saying America is "nearly bankrupt" leading Scheuer to respond, "You're just carrying the water for Mr. Obama…

As Syrian President Bashar al-Assad defiantly refused to implement democratic reforms and his security forces fired on protesters on Wednesday, the networks continued to ignore Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Sunday comments labeling the dictator as a "reformer." On Wednesday's CBS Evening News fill-in anchor Erica Hill read a news brief on the latest crackdown by the Syrian government…

In 1427, a ship captain sailing for his Portuguese Prince, Henry the Navigator, discovered the Azores Islands. If the question of the significance of this event had been posed, at the time, to Sultan Murad Khan (the leader of the Ottoman Empire), or to Itzcoatl and Nezahualcoyotl (the co-leaders of the Aztecs) or to Rao Kanha (one of the princes of Jodhpur in India), it is unlikely that any of…