"About one in five Iraqis wants a democracy and believes a democracy “will work” in their country. Another two in five say that they would like a democracy but they don’t “believe it will work.” At the same time, one in five “do not want a democracy” because they believe “it won’t work” in Iraq. Depending on how you add up these responses, it can either be said that six in ten Iraqis want their country to be a democracy, or six in ten Iraqis don’t believe that democracy will work in Iraq. This is the definition of being conflicted."

"While the fundamentals remain the same —people will want jobs, the ability to raise and provide for their families, be educated and have the chance to advance, and receive health care when they need it —there can be no doubt that the “Arab Spring” has introduced a new vocabulary and new concerns into the Arab political discourse. How governments respond to these new concerns in the years to come will be important to watch."

"All of this goes beyond the normal platitudes offered up in an election year. It was dangerous, shameful, and crass pandering, making it clear how far today's GOP has moved from the reality-based foreign policy of the Bush-Baker era. And while it's hard to imagine the alternate universe inhabited by these candidates for President, it's frightening to think of where they will take U.S. - Middle East policy should any of them be elected."

"...Turkey must be careful not to allow either hubris or frustration or external pressure to force it to get dragged too deeply into a Syrian quagmire. Some Syrian oppositionists may want Turkey to militarily intervene in Syria, but that might prove to be a fatal mistake. It would exacerbate an already bloody conflict causing even more killings and unrest in an already unstable region, and would compromise Turkey's hard won regional credibility."

Admittedly, “Liberate Wall Street” doesn’t have the right ring and sounds incongruously sympathetic to those responsible for the banking fiasco, yet it would be to call attention to the real occupation, because the acceleration of zionist control of the U.S. that came with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 neatly coincides with the beginnings of the banking crisis.

"It makes sense to us when we hear Arab Spring protesters in Tunisia and Egypt demanding that those who were complicit in the crimes of the past governments in which they served should be called to account for their misdeeds or, at the very least, should be excluded from future leadership roles. It makes sense that we apply the same measure of accountability here at home. This is not, as some will suggest, anti-democratic or an effort to "weed out" and exclude those with differing points of view. It is rather a call for us to apply the profoundly democratic principles of transparency and accountability to our politics. Those who abused the public's trust and who lied us into a war that took so many lives and cost us all so dearly should be called to account for what they have done. To let them "off the hook" is both wrong and dangerous."

"The turnabout came early on, with agitators like talk radio host Rush Limbaugh declaring that he hoped Obama would fail as President. This was followed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's pronouncement that his number one goal in the Congress was to ensure that the President was defeated. Then came the birth of the angry Tea Party with its wild suggestions of Obama's "foreign birth" and allegations that his health care reform program would include "death panels" that would condemn senior citizens to an early demise."

"What is so distressing in all of this is the degree to which the Republicans have failed to learn the lessons of Bush's failures. Not understanding how deep is the hole dug by the Bush Administration's recklessness, Republicans keep pushing Obama to pursue policies that would dig that hole deeper still."