Iraq

Fortunately, there might still be time for the show trial that Thom Hartmann craves. Hartmann, long atop the decidedly short list of popular liberal radio hosts, has again lapsed into the language of fringe leftist, this time while talking about the horrific situation in Iraq, al Qaeda's rationale for attacking the US on 9/11, and the Persian Gulf war. (Audio after the jump)

Hyperbolic claims about the Tea Party are nothing new from the mainstream media, but now admitted plagiarist Fareed Zakaria is comparing the conservative group to a radical Islamist sect, rehashing the same tired comparison other liberal journalists and pundits have made before. On the June 29 edition of Fareed Zakaria GPS, the host compared the Tea Party to the Mahdi Army, an Iraqi Shiite…

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the far-left The Nation magazine, did her best to attack Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, over his continued support for the Iraq war and the need to take action to stop the increasing violence in the region. Appearing on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, June 29, vanden Heuvel tried to verbally assault…

Continuous fear-mongering from the left about the supposed cataclysmic dangers of global warming has always been present, but Slate’s Eric Holthaus has taken things to a whole different level. As Iraq and Syria devolve into chaos, the left-wing publication has blamed climate change for the rise of the al-Qaeda offshoot ISIS. While the purpose of ISIS – imposing Sharia law on captured…

In an exclusive interview with Barack Obama, George Stephanopoulos on Friday hinted that the President is disappointed in the American people. The overall interview actually included some tough questions on subjects such as Iraq and the crisis of illegal immigration. But the Good Morning America co-host sympathized with Obama when discussing his crumbling poll numbers and noted that "the public…

On Tuesday night’s edition of his PBS show, Charlie Rose interviewed former Vice President Dick Cheney and pushed him to “give the president some credit for trying” to negotiate for a contingent of American troops to stay in Iraq after the status of forces agreement expired in 2011.  Cheney reminded Rose that, in his mind, Iraq “was in pretty good shape” when he and then-President George W.…

On Tuesday's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC, during a segment about foreign policy challenges involving Russia and the turmoil in the Middle East, MSNBC.com Executive Editor Richard Wolffe oddly suggested that President Obama finds it to be a "satisfying challenge" because it is "intellectually rigorous" to deal with such substantial foreign policy problems. He also not…

Just prior to President Obama's Thursday press conference on Iraq, NBC's chief White House correspondent and political director Chuck Todd was caught on an open mic joking that Republican Senator John McCain "must have had heart palpitations" after former general and CIA director David Petraeus seemed to back up President Obama's inaction during the crisis. Todd quipped: "Did anybody check John…

Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski has never been one to hide her partisan liberal leanings, and it showed in her interview with President Obama which aired on Monday’s show. While Brzezinski started the interview with some tough foreign policy questions, it lost steam later on as she voiced admiration for the President on equal pay for women, and encouraged him to do more on the issue.…

Someday, Barack Obama might make a fine professor somewhere.  In the meantime, someone should remind him that he's still President of the United States . . . If President Obama thought he was going to score some easy media points by sitting down for an interview with Mika Brzezinski last Friday, he was badly mistaken.  Morning Joe aired the interview today, to bad reviews by its guests. Dem…

Hillary Clinton is not as complex as the universe, but she's Big and Important enough for Peter Beinart to call his 4,600-word National Journal piece on her hypothetical presidency "A Unified Theory of Hillary" and appear to mean it (mostly) seriously. The article deals more with Hillary's personality than with her ideology (for what it's worth, Beinart classifies Hillary, along…

In a screed against an interventionist foreign policy, Hardball’s Chris Matthews virtually insisted that there is a sinister plot among those initial supporters of the Iraq war to dictate the political life of nations throughout the Middle East. For Matthews, simply being wrong on the Iraq war–to the extent that anyone can make a claim like that with any certainty at the present time–is not…

Anti-American commandos from Iran are already helping the Iraqi military by doing the sort of logistical coordination that President Obama promised from the U.S. Army today, NBC's Richard Engel noted in a June 19 Nightly News report from Baghdad. "The image I've had in my head all day, Brian, is of this driver's ed car with two steering wheels, with one with the U.S. Army now about 300 people…

Reacting to the announcement from President Obama that the United States will be sending approximately 300 special forces to Iraq in non-combat “advisor” roles, the panel on MSNBC’s The Cycle was skeptical that the move would accomplish anything significant. It’s fair to say that the panel was not exactly erring on the side of more intervention, however. After reading a quote from Time…