1. KNOWLEDGE: Governor Palin must demonstrate the knowledge necessary to be Commander-in-Chief.
Governor Palin has repeatedly cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as a qualification for being Commander-in-Chief.  This despite the fact that Russia isn't even in the top twenty countries that trade with Alaska and that Moscow is actually...

One of the things that hasn't been covered much coming out of the debate, is that McCain's Iran policy has turned to absolute gibberish.  After the past few days, it appears that McCain's policy is that Iran developing nuclear technology is an urgent problem that must be stopped to avoid...

So what came out of this debate that John McCain tried to evade?  The pressure was on McCain to win and win big.  But he didn't do that.  Not at all.  Obama won on key issues demonstrating that our foreign policy is more than just about the surge.  McCain frequently...

In her interview with Katie Couric Sarah Palin essentially called Henry Kissinger naive and also proved that she just hasn't done her homework. 

Couric: You met yesterday with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is for direct diplomacy with both Iran and Syria. Do you believe the U.S....

Sarah Palin said something very very dangerous today during her interview with Charlie Gibson.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO. Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And...

Things seem to have gone very wrong in Georgia and South Ossetia.  It doesn't really look like anybody has a very clear idea of what is going on.  As a presidential candidate you have two choices:

A.  Take a cautious approach and call for the cession of violence on...

John McCain's latest argument is to somehow try to retroactively argue that by "surge" he meant "counterinsurgency strategy" and that the counterinsurgency strategy and thus the surge actually went back to 2006. Here is the video:   

One problem.  Just two months ago McCain came under attack for saying this:

"I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels." 

Of course, U.S. forces hadn't drawn down to "pre-surge" levels.  They are only now just getting back to 140,000, which is still above pre-surge levels.  But that's besides the point.  What was McCain referring in that moment?  Was he saying "We are drawing back down to where we were before Colonel McFarland started using counterinsurgency tactics in Anbar as part of the Anbar Awakening."  No, that is completely and patently absurd.  He meant that we are coming back down to pre-January 2007 numbers when the "surge" actually began.

In fact, he added later:

"The surge, we have drawn down from the surge and we will complete that drawdown to the end -- at the end of July. That's just a factual statement."

According to this statement John McCain is basically asserting that the surge is over.  But based on his own definition today the "surge" actually equals the counterinsurgency strategy.  So, is the counterinsurgency strategy over?  I think that might be news to General Petraeus.

Basically this is one of the most pathetic attempts of political spin that I have seen in quite a while.  Let's face it.  When John McCain went on CBS he completely bungled the facts and demonstrated that he had no idea of how the surge and Anbar Awakening played out.  His attempted explanation today by somehow claiming that by "surge" he actually meant the counterinsurgency strategy that was going on months before the troop increase, might make sense if he hadn't spent the past few months defining and referring to the surge as the troop increase that began in early...

John McCain made a mistake this evening, which as far as I'm concerned, disqualifies him from being president.  It is so appalling and so factually wrong that I'm actually sitting here wondering who McCain's advisers are.  This isn't some gaffe where he talks about the Iraq-Pakistan border.  It's a real...

It's become pretty apparent both from Prime Minister Maliki's statements over the past few days as well as through a slew of other assertions from senior Iraqi officials that they are comfortable with the idea of a timeline for the withdrawal of American combat forces by sometime in 2010 and...

To: The Progressive Community

From: The National Security Network

The past few weeks have again shown that the issue of Iran will be front and center in the country's foreign policy dialogue and will play a major role in the upcoming election. Conservatives have likened diplomatic engagement...

Today John McCain outlined his path forward on Iran.  He started by mocking Barack Obama's proposals for engagement claiming that they've been tried before and failed.  He completely mischaracterized Obama's position which is about tough and direct negotiations.  He instead argued for continuing the failed policies of the Bush...

Deception or ignorance? That seems to be the question every time John McCain makes a foreign policy gaffe. Whether its Sunnis or Shi'a or yesterday on the nature of Iran's government. Joe Klein reports:

At a press conference here, I just asked John McCain about why he keeps talking...

So John McCain is outlining his vision for America this morning.

John McCain, looking through a crystal ball to 2013 and the end of a prospective first term, sees "spasmodic" but reduced violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden dead or captured and government spending curbed by his...

General Petraeus has been tapped to be the next commander of CENTCOM, which leads to a number of quick questions / observations.

First, it'll be interesting to see how he handles the tension of Afghanistan and Iraq from that position since Gates, Mullen and Fallon have all made clear...

John McCain has been insisting that his 100 years in Iraq comment is being taken out of context. That in fact what he meant is that American troops can stay in Iraq for fifty or 100 years if American troops are no longer being attacked. This assertion leads to a...

Democracy Corps has a great new poll out on national security and the 2008 election cycle (Also look at the slides [pdf]). I think the overall conclusion is: Democrats should address national security head on because they can beat Republicans on this issue.

There has been a pretty intensive...

So, the news from Iraq today isn't good.

Iraqi forces clashed with Shiite militiamen Tuesday in the southern oil port of Basra and gunmen patrolled several Baghdad neighborhoods as followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered a nationwide civil disobedience campaign to demand an end to the crackdown...

At its five-year anniversary, the Iraq War continues to make Americans less secure

The Iraq war has exacted a tremendous cost on America's national security. In the last five years, we have taken our eye off the ball in Afghanistan and Pakistan, allowing...

SHI'A OFFICIALS ACQUITTED OF RUNNING SECTARIAN DEATH SQUADS AMIDST "SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS OF WITNESS INTIMIDATION AND OTHER IRREGULARITIES"

Two top Shi'a officials-- with links to the Mahdi army-- were charged with orchestrating death squads which stormed into hospitals to kidnap and murder Sunni Arab patients. The first time...

PM MALIKI FACING CRITICISM FROM EVERY DIRECTION

Maliki's confidence seems untethered to political reality and some of his pronouncements -- like one on Thursday that "sectarianism has been eliminated" -- have struck Iraqi and American officials as bordering on the delusional. Maliki is facing a drumbeat of...