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This delay, this months-long dithering is dangerous. The Soviets watched very carefully when Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers for striking illegally. They were impressed by his swift and sure decisiveness. With Reagan, the KGB reported to the Kremlin party bosses, “words are deeds.” Obama’s Hamlet act is growing stale.

President Kennedy knew how important the presidency is. He eloquently said: “I do not shrink from this responsibility. I welcome it.”

Could it be that Obama’s very public shrinking from the responsibility of decision is what is causing his own shrinking in the American public’s support? We don’t need a president who, in the words of Newsweek editor Evan Thomas “hovers above us all, sort of a god.” What we need is a president who understands what Harry Truman meant when he posted that now-famous sign on his desk in the Oval Office: “The buck stops here.”

With an attack Aug. 19 that killed about 100 people, insurgents have now wrecked an array of pillars of the state's authority: the Foreign, Finance, Justice, and Municipalities and Public Works ministries, along with the Baghdad provincial headquarters, which are all gathered in a fortified swath of downtown.

"What Vice President Cheney calls dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform," Gibbs said Thursday. "I think we've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously."

Calling Cheney's comment "curious," Gibbs attacked the Bush administration for allegedly taking years to provide the support necessary for the war effort in Afghanistan.

Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.

From Volokh:

At what point does the MSM stop treating HRW as a neutral source on human rights in the Middle East, and start treating it like the left-wing, anti-Israel, anti-Western organization it has openly become?  And at what point do HRW’s liberal, human-rights oriented American donors become tired to enabling this?

My question: will the exposure of HRW as an anti-Israel propoganda machine usher in further examination of other allegedly nonpartisan outlets and observers who claim authority in the region, such as the Middle East Studies Association or the U.N.'s Human Rights Council?

[D]uring a speech [Clinton] made to the Stormont parliament she said that Belfast’s landmark Europa Hotel was devastated by an explosion when she first stayed there in 1995.

The Europa, where most journalists covering the decades-long conflict stayed, was famed as Europe’s most bombed hotel, earning the moniker “the Hardboard Hotel”.

However, the last Provisional IRA bomb to damage the Europa was detonated in 1993, two years before President Clinton and his wife checked in for the night.

The last time the Europa underwent renovations because of bomb blast damage was in January 1994, 22 months before the presidential entourage booked 110 rooms at the hotel.

Whoopsie!  And just because she's not running for office anymore, don't think she's lost her inner politician.  When asked if this was another case of Clinton "mis-speaking," a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said that she had been trying to express "perception" of Belfast's darker days.

The spokesman told a Belfast newspaper: “We are not talking about the same thing [as ‘mis-speaking’ about Bosnia]. Secretary Clinton was simply contrasting.”

As usual, he's brilliant.

What's come from Obama holding his tongue while Iranian demonstrators were being shot and from his recognizing the legitimacy of a thug regime illegitimately returned to power in a fraudulent election? Iran cracks down even more mercilessly on the opposition and races ahead with its nuclear program.

...What's come from the new-respect-for-Muslims Cairo speech and the unprecedented pressure on Israel for a total settlement freeze? "The settlement push backfired," reports The Washington Post, and Arab-Israeli peace prospects have "arguably regressed."

And what's come from Obama's single most dramatic foreign policy stroke -- the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection.

Not only does this de-legitimize the Nobel, but it taints his prospects of making any meaningful foreign policy accomplishments for the rest of his term. With Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran on the table, this isn't especially reassuring.

"[Afghan forces] will be the most effective in winning this war because it is their country. But we need to pay them more to avoid desertions that benefit the Taliban," said the French president.

France currently has 3,000 troops in the NATO-led coalition battling the Taliban and training Afghan security forces. So far, 36 French soldiers have been killed since 2001.

Sarkozy's comment came just after a call by NATO’s commander to send more troops to the restive southern region of Afghanistan.

“To really complete the ‘shape, clear, hold, build,’ we need at least two additional brigades of coalition forces, somewhere between 10,000 or 15,000 troops,” Major General Mart de Kruif, NATO’s commander in the region, told AFP in an interview on Thursday.

In order to clear other areas in the south, such as the Helmand province, “we absolutely need additional forces,” reiterated de Kruif.

Britain announced yesterday it would send an additional 500 soldiers to Afghanistan.  Meanwhile, U.S. commanders on the ground requested more troops from President Obama more than a month ago and are still waiting for a White House reponse...