Middle East

With the demise of the Editor and Publisher this week, many media commentators are nostalgic for the hard-nosed trade journalism the newspaper industry publication often engaged in. E&P's strength was always in its core mission of reporting news industry trends. In its latter years, like a number of other outlets, it began to stray off-course into garden-variety, hypocritical leftist media…

Despite all the campaign assurances that he would see the Afghan war effort through, liberals are incensed that Obama is following through on his pledge to, you know, win. The latest lefty to excoriate the president for pursuing America's enemies abroad is veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who today lamented that Obama must now be dubbed a "war president.""Obama should remember his…

Good Morning America’s Diane Sawyer on Wednesday conducted a generally tough interview with Joe Biden on the subject of Afghanistan, but ignored an embarrassing gaffe from the Vice President: "Our number one enemy concern is the existential threat, al Qaeda. Number two is the stability of a nuclear state called Afghanistan, under siege by radicals." Did the Vice President, perhaps, mean Pakistan…

Good Morning America host Diane Sawyer on Tuesday badgered Robert Gibbs from the left, quizzing the White House press secretary about Democratic resistance to a troop surge in Afghanistan. She began by fretting, "Is this the last time the President is going to ask for American troops from the American people?" After Gibbs mentioned the dangerous threat of al Qaeda, Sawyer reiterated, "...If the…

Previewing the President's speech tonight, NBC's Matt Lauer invited on Karl Rove, on Tuesday's Today show, and pressed the former White House senior adviser if the reason Afghanistan still required the U.S.'s attention is because the previous administration "took its eye off the ball in Afghanistan," and "concentrated too heavily on Iraq." Rove hit back, accusing Lauer and Bush administration…

On last night's "Rachel Maddow Show", the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh commended President Obama for taking the reins in Afghanistan. Hersh stated that Presidents must decide their own war strategies. But in the early stages of the war in Iraq, Hersh was a leading critic of similar actions by the Bush administration. Hersh's hypocrisy suggests he is more concerned with the political implications of…

Uniquely among Wednesday’s broadcast network evening newscasts, ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson informed viewers that the Israeli navy earlier in the day intercepted a record quantity of weapons supplied by Iran and destined for Hezbollah, in violation of a United Nations resolution forbidding the arming of the Lebanon-based terrorist group. Host Gibson set up the report: "Israeli navy…

After President George W. Bush employed the words, "You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists," addressing a joint session of Congress in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks – as the President prepared for the impending war in Afghanistan – liberals eventually treated those words with consternation as if the blunt declaration reflected poorly on America. But pro-democracy activists in…

So much for politics ending at the water's edge . . . Hillary Clinton has gone to Pakistan and bragged of having opposed Pres. Bush during her entire Senate career. Clinton also depicted the difference between Barack Obama and George W. Bush as being "like daylight and dark."  For good measure, Clinton played the moral equivalency card, declaring "we cannot let a minority of people in both…

Where is Tina Fey now that we need her? Martha Coakley is the front-runner for the Dem nomination for Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat.  In a recent debate, asked about her lack of foreign policy experience, the first credential Coakley offered in response was that "I have a sister who lives overseas, and she's been in England and now lives in the Middle East."

Conservative columnist Ann Coulter debated no less than two former Clinton operatives on Friday’s Good Morning America, guest host George Stephanopoulos and former State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin. On the show, she decried President Obama’s handling of Afghanistan as a "Hamlet routine." Despite facing off against two liberals, Coulter went on the attack. She labeled 2009 as a "year where it…

MSNBC anchors David Shuster and Tamron Hall on Thursday lashed out at a speech Dick Cheney gave that was critical of Barack Obama, speculating on whether the Vice President is of a "rational, healthy mind." Attempting to attack the Bush administration’s handling of Afghanistan for eight years, News Live co-host Tamron Hall dismissed, "Is it selective amnesia?" Shuster and Hall seemed particularly…

After months of investigation, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) released a report addressing accusations from some humanitarian groups that its use of white phosphorus (WP) munitions in the Gaza War was a violation of international law, as the report distinguishes between the use of WP as a weapon and the more common non-weapon purposes such as providing smoke screens to conceal troop movements.…

Addressing the UN on September 23,  Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi called Pres. Obama "our son" and expressed the hope he "can stay forever as the President of the United States." Photo Guardian [UK].