Ray Odierno

WASHINGTON — Notwithstanding months of partisan wrangling in Congress over the Iraq war, the Senate on Thursday handily confirmed Gen. David Pet...

New York Senator and presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton closed out the first session of questioning with Generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno. ...

The confirmation hearings should give Democrats an opportunity to finally get Petraeus to answer some central questions.

It only makes sense that the media have focused non-stop on the looming threat of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago while paying scant attention to the fact that the presumptive Republican nominee for president apparently doesn't have a clue about what's going on in the Middle East. And with the U.S. death toll hitting 4,000, John McCain's tenuous grasp on what is happening in the region becomes all the more worthy of attention. READ MORE John McCain, Iraq, and the Eyewitness Fallacy: John McCain's glowing post-visit assessment of conditions in Iraq, and Hillary Clinton's hyperbolically harrowing recollections of her 1996 trip to Bosnia both stand as shining examples of what the British writer Malcolm Muggeridge dubbed "the eyewitness fallacy." In a brilliant essay, Muggeridge described public figures of strong conviction throughout history -- many of them greatly admired and well-meaning -- who, in eyewitness accounts, saw what they wanted to see, and became what they wanted to be. READ MORE