Weisberg: For Presidents, Loyalty Has a Price | Newsweek Newsweek Voices - Jacob Weisberg

Why Don’t Liberals Care About Health Care?
Eleanor Clift 10/2/2009 12:00:00 AM
Railing about Afghanistan is a loser politically, but it gets liberal juices going in a way the Baucus health-care bill never will. The left is more focused on pressing President Obama not to escalate in Afghanistan than it is in convincing Congress with a real grassroots push on health care. It's in the party's DNA. Liberal Democrats are more emotionally invested in war and peace issues than in sausage-like compromise on health-care legislation. ( Click here to follow Eleanor Clift )
Peace Out
9/17/2009 12:00:00 AM
During the 2008 presidential campaign, liberal voters beheld Barack Obama and saw a man of peace. No, Obama himself never pretended to be a pacifist. But for some of his most fervent supporters, few things were more bedazzling than Obama's clearly stated opposition to the Iraq War in the autumn of 2002, and his campaign's emphasis on getting America out of that country.
Stand In
7/28/2009 12:00:00 AM
On Sunday, George Mitchell, President Obama's Middle East envoy, arrived in Israel to confer with its leaders. Also visiting this week are Defense Secretary Robert Gates, national-security adviser James Jones, and Gulf States envoy Dennis Ross. It's a full-court press on the Israelis, and the American wish list is long. They want Israel to stop expanding settlements; to stop building Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem; and for hawks in the government to chill out while the U.S. is negotiating with Iran. And yet, odds are, they'll come back to Washington empty-handed, for reasons having to do as much with atmospherics as policy: Team Obama just doesn't have Israel's full trust.
Don’t Shoot
Mark Hosenball 7/14/2009 12:00:00 AM
A ferocious dispute between the CIA and congressional Democrats centers on an ultrasecret effort launched by agency officials after 9/11 to draw up plans to hunt down and kill terrorists using commando teams similar to those deployed by Israel after the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, according to a former senior U.S. official.
Getting Off the Island
5/29/2009 12:00:00 AM
Late one night in February 2004, the U.S. ambassador for war-crimes issues, Pierre-Richard Prosper, and the Danish ambassador to the United States, Ulrich Federspiel, sat in the living room of Denmark's ambassadorial residence in Washington ironing out the details of an agreement to repatriate Guantánamo's only Danish detainee. His name was Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, and while he had drawn little attention in the United States, his fate had been the subject of intense negotiations between Danish diplomats and a group of high-ranking American officials, including Prosper, Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and the White House National Security Council's legal adviser, John Bellinger.
Friendly Fire at the White House
Michael Isikoff 5/21/2009 12:00:00 AM
Fending off criticism from human-rights and civil-rights groups at a private White House meeting Wednesday, a frustrated President Obama complained about the "mess" he'd been left by his predecessor.