Middle East

In an exclusive interview with new Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie grilled the Pentagon chief on the Bowe Bergdahl exchange: "Do you think that the White House made a mistake in wrapping its arms around Bowe Bergdahl and saying, for example, that he served with honor and distinction, when the administration knew there were at least questions about…

Not even a lifeline could have helped her . . . There was a telling moment on today's Morning Joe when Joe Scarborough challenged April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks to cite some of President Obama's foreign-policy successes. Ryan was reduced to replying "that's kind of tough. Hmm, that's a tough one . . . I have to really ponder that."    

While on Thursday’s edition of The Nightly Show on Comedy Central, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich expressed concern that the media has been covering the terrorist group ISIS too heavily and in turn has been causing the group’s ranks to swell. After being asked by host Larry Wilmore to explain why “all these westerners [are] joining ISIS,” Reich dismissed that premise by declaring that “there…

Employing a variant of the old surgeon's joke — "The operation was a success, but the patient died" — White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, on friendly ground on MSNBC this morning, essentially told viewers that the administration still considers Yemen a success, even as its government is on the fast track to being forced into indefinite exile. Earnest told the "Morning Joe" show's Mika…

The pundit class in the U.S. and much of the rest of the world is still seething over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's electoral triumph last week. On Monday, Dan Perry at the Associated Press took that hysteria to a new level, in effect attempting to discredit Bibi's win by writing that, after all, it may not really be correct to call Israel a democracy. That's because "Palestinians" who are…

CBS's Lara Logan refreshingly brought new attention to the plight of the ancient Christian communities in Iraq on Sunday's 60 Minutes, as they face annihilation by ISIS. Logan pointed out how ISIS, "just like the Nazis marked the property of Jews, Christian homes...have been marked with this red symbol....When ISIS puts it on your home, you either convert to Islam, pay an extortion tax, or face…

Warning: readers are advised to hide the sharp objects before viewing the clip of Morning Joe's review of the Middle East today.  The picture painted is one of the utter failure of US foreign policy, leaving a devastated, deadly region in its woeful wake. We open with President Obama's "mission accomplished" moment from last year in which he called US policy in Yemen "successful." Cut to Jim…

From all appearances, only Fox News, CNS News, and a few Israel-based outlets and U.S.-based center-right blogs care about the fact, acknowledged by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, that Iran and Hezbollah, in the words of Fox's Greta Van Susteren, "are suddenly MIA from the U.S. terror threat list." DNI apparently has no plans to change its report, having told CNS News that…

Time magazine columnist Joe Klein delivered an unrestrained rant for the March 30 issue, excoriating the "tyrant" Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu's "bigoted" election victory. The journalist offered an unrelenting attack on the prime minister, sneering, "He won because he ran as a bigot. This is a sad reality: a great many Jews have come to regard Arabs as the rest of the world traditionally…

The only truly liberal democracy in the Middle East and America's greatest ally in the region yesterday conducted a free and fair election which returned its prime minister to office with a renewed mandate to govern. But to the Associated Press, the takeaway was that the Israeli people threw away an opportunity for a "thaw" in U.S.-Israeli relations by failing to oust Benjamin Netanyahu.

MSNBC hosts and guests reacted with fury over Benjamin Netanyahu's victory on Tuesday night, describing it as "polarizing," a modern "southern strategy" and an appeal to "racism." Appearing on NewsNation, Wednesday, with Tamron Hall, London Professor Fawaz Gerges decried the Israeli Prime Minister's "use of fear, the use of xenophobia and racism against a significant segment of Israeli citizens,…

So, just how slanted were the Big Three broadcast networks in their coverage of the letter sent by 47 Senate Republicans to the Iranian government? A new study by the Media Research Center has found ABC, CBS and NBC gave three times more coverage to critics of the GOP letter than to supporters, and more than eight times as much airtime fretting about the letter than about the substance of the…

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell deferred to State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on the Friday edition of her program, and let the Obama administration flack attack the 47 Republican senators who signed an open letter to Iran's leaders. Mitchell led into the segment by playing President Obama's condescending "I'm embarrassed for them" and "it's close to unprecedented" shots at the senators, and gave…

CNN's Chris Cuomo's consistent liberal bias emerged yet again on Tuesday's New Day as he interviewed Senator Tom Cotton. Cuomo confronted the Arkansas politician over the open letter to Iran that he and 46 of his Republican colleagues from the Senate signed: "Is this letter really about explaining the Constitution [to Iranian leaders], or is it an overt move to undermine the President?" The…