Osama Bin Laden
The Case for the Loser Offspring of Billionaires
There are millions of Americans without adequate healthcare and potentially millions more soon to be added to their ranks. There are tens of millions of working poor on food stamps. Total debt on student loans is well over a trillion dollars. Home ownership is more elusive than ...read more
For the Love of Allah, Why Can't Some Liberals Acknowledge Islam's Role in 9/11?
It seems that the National September 11 Memorial Museum has been in the news lately for every reason but the fact that it opened last month. There's the gift shop with questionable souvenirs; the lavish cocktail party thrown for wealthy benefactors; and the reporter who was ...read more
Fox News' Eric Bolling Has Chronic 9/11 Brain Fart Syndrome
The Colbert Report host Stephen Colbert took several stinging shots at Fox News' Eric Bolling on last night's report over Bolling's failure to remember that Osama bin Laden was actually killed more than a year before the attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi on ...read more
The Iran Deal is the Obama Team's Third Major Foreign Policy Victory
The saying goes, "Once is an event, twice is a coincidence and three times is a pattern." So it goes with the Obama administration's major foreign policy trophies. The historic accord with Iran, freezing the so-called "axis of evil" nation's development of nuclear weapons, while ...read more
Bin Laden's Son-in-Law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Captured by CIA
The Daily Banter Headline Grab from AP: Osama bin Laden's spokesman and son-in-law has been captured by the United States, officials said Thursday, in what a senior congressman called a "very significant victory" in the ongoing fight against al-Qaida. Abu Ghaith is expected ...read more
The Depressing ‘Zero Dark Thirty’
By Robert Parry When I watched the get-bin-Laden movie Zero Dark Thirty at a theater just outside Washington D.C., I was struck by how silent the audience was from beginning to end with almost no reaction to the climatic killing of the terrorist leader or to the film’s lame ...read more
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Profiting Off the Terror Threat
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. By Ivan Eland More than 11 years after the 9/11 attacks, the American public is still barraged with sensational media coverage of the occasional uncovering of a terrorist plot. Many of these are so-called sting operations, which, rather than ...read more
Remembering The Victims of 9/11 on Both Sides
By Ben Cohen: I was taking a driving lesson in the UK when I first heard the news about the planes crashing into the twin towers. The lesson finished early and I went home to a stunned family sitting glued to the television. Like the rest of the world, I spent the next few ...read more
Idealism and Spiking the Bin Laden Football
By Bob Cesca: You might have noticed how the Democrats last week weren't afraid to ballyhoo the Obama administration's tenacious pursuit and killing of Osama Bin Laden. This pivotal event in the president's first term represented what could be the beginning of a major shift in ...read more
We Aren't Americans Anymore
By Chez Pazienza: It's one of those thing I haven't wanted to admit to myself but which I know has been bubbling just below the surface of my consciousness for quite a while. I just finished watching this week's episode of HBO's The Newsroom and for the record it was the ...read more
Should World Leaders be Pessimistic About Obama's Re-Election Chances?
Dennis McShane writes a bleak warning to the British Left in the New Statesman on the likelihood of a Romney Presidency, a prospect they should prepare for if they find themselves in power: In America, the liberal-left dislike of Romney may not be enough to offset the Obama ...read more
Attacking the President for Being Presidential
Bob Cesca: In the absence of anything realistic and feasible to say, the Republicans have all along made an effort to attack the president -- not in the name of substantive alternatives to his policies -- but for every day basic things all modern presidents do. It began even ...read more
NATO Seals Agreement to Hand Control Over Control of Afghanistan
NATO leaders sealed a landmark agreement on Monday to hand control of Afghanistan over to its own security forces by the middle of next year, putting the Western alliance on an "irreversible" path out of an unpopular, decade-long war. A NATO summit in Chicago formally ...read more
Osama Bin Laden Letters Show Increasingly Desperate Last Days
Letters from Osama bin Laden's last hideaway, released by U.S. officials intent on discrediting his terror organization, portray a network weak, inept and under siege -- and its leader seemingly near wit's end about the passing of his global jihad's glory days. The documents, ...read more
Why Do We Ignore the Causes of Terrorism?
By Ray McGovern: John Brennan, President Obama’s chief adviser on counter-terrorism, has again put on public display two unfortunate facts: (1) that the White House has no clue as to how to counter terrorism; and (2) (in Brennan’s words) “the unfortunate fact that to save many ...read more
Obama Promises to End Afghan War
US President Barack Obama has pledged to "finish the job" and end the Afghan war, addressing the US public live from a military base in Afghanistan. Speaking a year after Osama Bin Laden's death, Mr Obama thanked US troops and hailed plans to end combat operations. He ...read more
The Republicans Can't Handle the Truth About Bin Laden
By Bob Cesca: Republicans continuously get it wrong about terrorism and national security issues. Wait. Correction. They get it wrong about everything, actually. The environment, the economy, women's issues, race, government regulation, comedy (as I've written here lately) -- ...read more
Joe Biden Rips Mitt Romney's Foreign Policy
Vice President Joe Biden charged Thursday that a flip-flopping Mitt Romney remains "mired in a Cold War mindset" and has "a profound misunderstanding of the responsibilities of a president and a commander in chief." In one of the Obama campaign's harshest critiques of former ...read more
5 Observations About Obama's State of the Union Speech
I'm snowed under so haven't had time to write a lengthy piece on Obama's State of the Union address last night. However, my immediate reactions were as follows: 1. Obama did a good job of highlighting his successes - an important task for him given the relentless nonsense ...read more
Netanyahu and the Politics of Fear
Carlo Strenger explains why Benjamin Netanyahu thrives off Hamas's extremism and the politics of fear (h/t Andrew Sullivan): The problem is that Netanyahu has no motivation to maneuver Hamas into moderation, because an extremist Hamas is really Netanyahu’s best friend. A ...read more
Obama's Middle East Speech: Immediate Reaction
Image via Wikipedia More on this tomorrow, but my first reaction to Obama's speech from the White House on America's policy towards the Middle East was one of cautious optimism. Ignoring the usual pledges to support democracy in the region (countered by the United States lengthy ...read more
Are Their Crimes Worse Than Ours?
Glenn Greenwald asks why Bin Laden's crimes against America are deemed uncontroversial (the consensus being that 9/11 was unjustified, criminal and evil), while America's crimes against say, Iraq, are controversial when it seems fairly clear that the latter was far more damaging: ...read more
Time To Do The Damn Thing In Afghanistan
I have waited so long for this. So long. One of the things I'll never forgive Bush for is that he let Bin Laden get away. The man and the network responsible for the worst terror attack in our history still breathes, and its an insult to the dead and their loved ones every day ...read more
Bush Follows The Obama Doctrine
Obama, 8/1/07 As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing ...read more