By Rand Paul
Obama acts as though we no longer have a Constitution
In a slim and touching memoir, Kati Marton is trying to create a future by recapturing the past. It is a lonely task, and except for a couple of surprising confessions, she pulls it off with a certain amount of flair and elan.
Winners of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's lifetime achievement award, renamed this year for the late ambassador Richard Holbrooke:
An award celebrating the power of literature to promote peace has been renamed in honor of the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and author Barbara Kingsolver will be this year's recipient.
"Sometimes life in Afghanistan seemed to be lived without Afghans," is how former British ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles describes the daily reality unspooling behind his Kabul embassy's tall suicide barriers and barbed wire.
Pakistan and the United States cannot afford any downturn in their relationship, President Asif Ali Zardari told the new U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan on Monday amid a dispute over a detained American CIA contractor.
Whether or not you liked diplomat Richard Holbrooke - who recently passed away - he was always admirable.
They remembered him as "the Bulldozer" — a U.S. diplomat with such a forceful persona he could drag politicians, military brass and even warlords to the negotiating table in a quest for peace.
Richard A. Holbrooke, a brilliant and feisty U.S. diplomat who wrote part of the Pentagon Papers, was the architect of the 1995 Bosnia peace plan and served as President Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, died Monday, an administration official said. He was 69.
America's 17 intelligence agencies have spent more than half-a-trillion dollars - more than $500,000,000,000 - since Sept. 11, 2001, most of it on the global war on terror, and the Obama administration still believes that if Taliban supreme Mullah Mohammed Omar were to return to power in Kabul, al Qaeda would be back, too - "in a heartbeat." And this despite much evidence to the contrary.
Pakistan's most prominent - and vocal - retired army chiefs are demanding that the country's air force be ordered to shoot down drones and helicopters - and increasingly angry active-duty officers are voicing their approval in off-the-record conversations with Pakistani journalists.
NATO will investigate whether a grenade thrown by American military forces killed a British aid worker during a rescue attempt in Afghanistan last week, an alliance spokesman said Monday.
President Obama's top advisers spent much of the past 20 months arguing about policy and turf, according to a new book, with some top members of his national security team doubting the president's strategy in Afghanistan will work.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged citizens to vote in Saturday's parliamentary election despite a Taliban threat warning people not to leave their homes and violence on the eve of the ballot.
The Obama administration on Thursday pledged an additional $60 million in aid to Pakistan as the South Asian nation grapples with the devastation caused by its worst floods in 80 years.
As Democrats continue to attack and blame each other for their poor poll position heading into November's elections, there is one dog that hasn't barked: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"I'm too old for that," he replied. "I did that with Diane Sawyer for seven years."
"Mike Sheehan is the person I would most want at my side when trying to stop terrorists," Mr. Holbrooke wrote, calling the book "a primer for the next president."
