In speech, Paul backs Wikileaks, criticizes U.S. war policy

Republican presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) delivered a strong anti-war message at an appearance Saturday in Des Moines, praising whistle blowers like WikiLeaks, questioning the use of drone missile strikes and calling for more information going out to citizens before the military intervenes overseas.

Paul’s isolationist message More…

Bachmann again argues U.S. should have stayed out of Libya

Michele Bachmann said again that the United States shouldn’t have participated in the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

“My position is that the United States should not have gone into Libya because again the last chapter isn’t written. This is a snapshot in time,” Bachmann told Christiane Amanpour of More…

Lunchtime Links

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad condemns D.C.’s most famous psychic octopus.

Rod Blagojevich is not corrupt; he’s just not the “sharpest knife in the drawer.”

Now it’s Republicans who need to “support our men in uniform.”

Massachusetts approves a plan to bypass the electoral college.

Voters More…

Nuclear Licensing Process Raises Proliferation Concerns

This Thursday in Wilmington, N.C., officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the government agency responsible for overseeing the country’s nuclear energy activities, are slated to present a report laying out the environmental impacts of a proposed uranium enrichment facility, a key step in approving the facility’s license. While NRC More…

Amb. Crocker: Putting Iran in the ‘Axis of Evil’ Led Them to Release Brutal Insurgent Leader

At the Center for a New American Security’s annual conference yesterday, the respected former ambassador to Iraq and Pakistan, Ryan Crocker, made a point of saying that the rhetorical antagonization of Iran in 2002 had a real operational impact on the Afghanistan war. Including Iran in President Bush’s “Axis of More…

United Nations Security Council Places New Sanctions on Iran

A victory for the Obama administration: As expected, the United Nations Security Council just voted to place new economic sanctions on Iran. Months of doubt about China’s stance were answered by the Chinese “yes” vote for the package — not just an abstention — along with affirmative votes from More…

‘Collective Breathholding’ When Palestinian Leader Abbas Visits Obama

So tomorrow Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, will visit the White House, under the shadow of last week’s Israeli raid of a flotilla intended to break Israel’s siege of Gaza. What’s on the agenda? See if you can tell from this AFP story:

Palestinian president Mahmud

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Clinton: We’re Ready to Move Forward With Iran Sanctions at the United Nations

Laura Rozen reports that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn’t think the new Iran-Turkey uranium enrichment deal will derail the U.S.’s efforts at securing consensus in the United Nations Security Council for Iran sanctions:

“We have reached agreement on a strong draft with the cooperation of both

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Gibbs: Why Would the New Iran Nuke Move Scuttle the Sanctions Process?

Building on his previous noncommittal statement about Iran’s declared deal to send most of its uranium to Turkey for enrichment, Robert Gibbs was a human dose of Ativan during his press briefing this afternoon when asked if the move scuttles the United States’ delicately cobbled sanctions effort at the United More…

Gibbs on Iran Nuke Deal: Continued Enrichment Sours ‘Vague’ Turkey/Brazil Deal

Sure enough, as soon as I run with my previous post on the Iran enrichment offer, here’s White House spokesman Robert Gibbs’s official comment. It’s fairly noncommittal. It doesn’t rule out the prospect that the foreign-enrichment deal might be substantive, but Gibbs highlights the concern the previous post did: More…