Middle East

On Tuesday's CNN Tonight, Don Lemon spotlighted the scoop that President Obama received briefings on ISIS "for at least a year" before the extreme Islamist group's blitzkrieg across northern Iraq – something the Big Three networks failed to do the same evening. During a segment with Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, Lemon pointed out that the President was "briefed on this a year ago, and…

Unfortunately and completely predictably, the Big Three news networks have ignored Catherine Herridge's Tuesday morning scoop at Fox News that President Obama was briefed on the growing threat of ISIS for over a year, going back to at least several months, if not much longer, before his "jayvee team" taunt in a January New Yorker Magazine interview. Curtis Houck and Jeffrey Meyer at NewsBusters…

This morning, Catherine Herridge at Fox News, in the first two minutes of a video seen here, reported that "detailed and specific intelligence about the rise of ISIS was included in the PDB, or the President’s Daily Brief, for at least a year." Fox is being careful, as some of what is being reported would indicate that the time involved is "far more than a year" — possibly even "three years…

On Tuesday's Morning Joe, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski felt sorry for President Obama and all the crises overseas that he is currently facing: "You look at just the President, and the incoming on foreign policy crises, I think it's possibly unprecedented, except for extreme times of war." Moments earlier, the morning newscast played a montage of video clips looking back at all the tumultuous…

MSNBC’s Krystal Ball substituted for Ronan Farrow as host of his MSNBC show on Friday and remarked with a guest during a segment on the Islamic terror group ISIS that their reported waterboarding of their captives, including the late James Foley, can be blamed on the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and what happened at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. After shifting gears from talking…

Politico's Josh Gerstein was in top keister-covering mode last night in dealing with President Barack Obama's latest stated indication that U.S. foreign policy is adrift. To him, the President's admission that “We don’t have a strategy yet” was just an "awkward choice of words" and an "inartful phrase." (By the way, over six years after after one of Obama's flaks first used it to defend the…

On Friday morning, the major broadcast networks were out in full force to defend President Obama after his remarks at a press conference Thursday afternoon in which he said that “we don’t have a strategy yet” in how to militarily address the Islamic terrorist group ISIS in Syria. Leading the way was NBC’s Today, where co-host Matt Lauer told NBC News political director and moderator of Meet…

Although all three networks covered Barack Obama's admission on Thursday that "we don't have a strategy" for responding to Islamic militants in Syria, ABC, CBS and NBC journalists were really animated by the President's tan suit. GMA news reader Amy Robach on Friday enthused, "Finally this morning, some presidential critics are saying, 'yes, we tan!'" [For a video montage, see below. MP3 audio…

I struggle to come up with a reason, other than an irresponsible attempt to minimize the impact of the horror, why the headline at a Thursday evening Associated Press story by Zeina Karam and Ryan Lucas about "more than 160 Syrian government troops" massacred by ISIS is "JIHADISTS KILL DOZENS OF CAPTURED SYRIAN SOLDIERS." But that's how the wire service is presenting it:

Sean Hannity confronted Anjem Choudary on his Fox News Channel program on Wednesday over the Islamist's unapologetic support of ISIS. The two repeatedly talked over each other, with the American talk show host hounding Choudary if he supported the terrorist group's genocidal campaign in Iraq and Syria. The U.K.-based radical Muslim contended that the multiple account of atrocities by ISIS…

Last week I noted how MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who usually has tingles down his leg for the president, was taken aback by Barack Obama's statement regarding the ISIS beheading of American freelance journalist James Foley.  Tonight a frustrated Matthews expressed his frustration with Mr. Obama once again, asking his guests Bobby Ghosh and Howard Fineman why the president didn't couch the U.S.…

Dan Rather, former anchor of the CBS Evening News, appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources to harshly criticize those in Congress calling for the U.S. to take military action against the terrorist group ISIS. Speaking to anchor Brian Stelter on Sunday, August 24, Rather proclaimed that he will only listen to those who advocate boots on the ground “if you tell me you are prepared to send your son,…

In a Friday op-ed which appeared in the paper's international print edition on Saturday and which can reasonably be seen as giving voice to an editorial board which wouldn't dare put their name to it, La Salle University Political Science Professor Michael Boyle strenuously objected to recent characterizations of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). We can't call ISIS "evil." We also…