Last week, Texas governor and GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry attacked President Obama’s record on the Middle East. Perry, in a possibly ghost-written op-ed where he distorted a Texas historian to link Israel and Texas, wrote that it was a “mistake for President Obama to distance himself from Israel and seek engagement with the hostile regimes in Syria and Iran.”

But sending an ambassador to Syria, despite Republican opposition, has yielded some results. In early July, Ambassador Robert Ford joined embattled anti-government protesters in the restive city of Hama in a show of “solidarity.” Activists there said they “felt protected.” Today, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration is leaving Ford in Damascus “so he can maintain contact with opposition leaders and the leaders of the country’s myriad sects and religious groups” in order to avoid chaos in the event of the fall of dictator Bashar Al-Assad.

And today, the top U.S. military officer, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen, supported the notion of opening up channels of communication with Iran. Speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ahead of his retirement, Mullen said having no communications with adversaries made it more likely that mistakes could be made that would lead to an escalation of tensions and possibly a conflict:

MULLEN: We haven’t had a connection with Iran since 1979. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, we had links to the Soviet Union. We are not talking to Iran, so we don’t understand each other. If something happens, it’s virtually assured that we won’t get it right — that there will be miscalculation which would be extremely dangerous in that part of the world. [...]

QUESTION: Are you specifically talking about military to military contact, or a broader set of engagement between the two countries?

MULLEN: I’m talking about any channel that’s open. We’ve not had a direct link of communication with Iran since 1979. And I think that has planted many seeds for miscalculation. When you miscalculate, you can escalate and misunderstand. This isn’t about agreeing or disagreeing. [...]

My own experience is, it sort of depends on the country what the most effective channels are. Some of them are diplomatic. Some of them are political. Some of them are mil-to-mil. Some of them are economic. But we have not had a clear channel to Iran since 1979.

[...] Any channel would be terrific and I don’t have a preferred one based on what the hopes would be.

Mullen’s comments come a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that the military was considering establishing a direct hot line to Iran in order to communicate should there be an incident between the countries, especially in the Persian Gulf between U.S. ships and Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats. Several encounters in the past resulted in what the Journal described as “near-altercations.” The Bush Administration, which rejected talking to Iran, refused to give military commanders the power to negotiate an “incidents at sea” agreement with the Iranians.

House Armed Service Committee chairman Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) is leading the charge in the lower chamber of Congress against cuts to military spending. And like many of those trying to protect the military’s bloated budget, McKeon’s arguments are comprised of scare tactics and false information. He even said he’d support raising taxes if it meant that Congress left DOD spending alone.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that in an interview, McKeon “walked that back” and said he “basically regretted the remark suggesting tax increases might be on the table.” Also in the interview, McKeon fell back on the baseless fearmongering:

WSJ: There’s discussion in the Republican caucus in the House because you have newer Tea Party members who are more of the view that, “hey, we’re headed on the road to Greece. We’ve got this insane level of debt. We’ve got to cut, including defense.” Do you have some sympathy for that view? What do you say to people who are saying, “Look, we’ve got an economic disaster and we’ve got to cut”?

McKEON: If we try to solve that economic disaster on the back of our military, who’s going to have our backs the next time we’re attacked?

Watch it:

No one is arguing that the the U.S. should solve the economic crisis at the expense of only the military. U.S. military spending represents more than 40 percent of the world’s total and the United States spends more than the next 14 biggest spenders combined. Moreover, the military can easily sustain, for example, $1 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade. “This would, in real terms,” as CAP’s Larry Korb noted, “allow the Pentagon to spend at its 2007 level for the next decade.” Apparently, at 2007 spending levels, McKeon doesn’t think the U.S. military has the capability to “have our backs.”

Since the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Israelis have slowly populated the West Bank and maintained an expanding network of settlements that today, threaten the viability of a two-state solution.

U.S. policy stretching back to the Johnson administration considers these settlements to be illegal, and has called for their construction to be halted. Yet at an event in New York City this morning Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) — in a speech attacking President Obama’s Middle East policies — disregarded four decades of U.S. policy and told a reporter that Israel should continue to build settlements because it’s “their land” and “their right”:

REPORTER: Should [Israel] continue building settlements?

PERRY: I think so, it’s their land; it’s their right.

Perry’s position stands far outside maintstream in the United States, where Democratic and Republican administrations have called for the settlement expansion to be halted, in accordance to international law.

(Video to come.)

Speaking at an event yesterday hosted by the Arms Control Association, former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) said that even if the U.S. launched airstrikes against the Iranian nuclear program, the eventual outcome of the conflict could lead to further commitments of U.S. resources.

Sestak, who retired from the Navy as an admiral after more than 30 years of service and became the highest ranking military officer elected to Congress, emphasized engaging with Iran on issues ranging from the nuclear program to an agreement that would allow communication between Iran and the U.S. should there be an incident between the two countries, particularly in the Persian Gulf where both put ships to sea.

But Sestak’s focus was on the dangers of a military attack, which he said should not be taken off the table but nonetheless denounced as irresponsible. He quoted former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said that anyone who aims to launch another U.S. land-war in Asia should “have his head examined.” But most pundits who press for an attack on Iran’s nuclear program usually call for “surgical air strikes,” as if this is a simple solution. But military analysts often disagree, as did Sestak. He said attacking Iran — whether by invasion or air strikes — “is not a responsible option in terms of offering a solution to the problem, certianly not without opening up even more challenges to our national security”:

A military strike, whether it’s by land or air, against Iran would make the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion look like a cakewalk with regard to the impact on the United States’ national security. [...]

[A]n airstrike would be problematic, extremely challenging, requiring many multiple runs of assets, and not be of any permanent consequence for stopping the pursuit of nuclear weaponry. [...]

There are of course the unintended consequences. Iranian strikes from costal batteries at sea, … mobile missions on other nations where our forces are today. But it would also release terror by networks that are supported by Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah.

So as a result, avoiding mission creep is unlikely. It is simply hard to know — in fact, I would argue one can’t know how such a conflict ends, nor the final dimensions of the consequences of such an attack by us.

Watch the video:

Sestak was joined on stage by nuclear non-proliferation experts Greg Theilmann and Mark Fitzpatrick, both of whom placed emphasis on keeping Iranian nuclear progress in perspective and working towards engagement to head off a conflict.

Today, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) held a news conference in New York City where he attacked President Obama’s Middle East policies and called upon the United States to be more stridently supportive of the actions of the Israeli government.

At one point, a reporter asked Perry how he views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of his Christian faith. Perry replied by saying that as a “Christian,” he has a “clear directive to support Israel”:

PERRY: As a Christian I have a clear directive to support Israel, from my perspective its pretty easy both as an American and a Christian. I am going to stand with Israel.

In 2009, Perry struck a similar tone talking with the Weekly Standard. “My faith requires me to support Israel,” he said. One has to wonder what other foreign policy initiatives Perry feels he is directed to take from the Bible.

In video acquired by Wired’s Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman, FBI counterterrorism trainer William Gawthrop, who in previously leaked documents was shown to have lectured that the Muslim prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader,” tells his audience that “[After 9/11] we wasted a lot of analytic effort talking about the type of weapon, the timing, the tactics. All of that is irrelevent… if you have an Islamic motivation for actions.”

Ackerman had previously called attention to Gawthrop’s presentation materials for his lectures at the FBI’s training facilities in Quantico, Virginia, in which the counterterrorism “expert” suggested that Islam, unlike Judaism or Christianity, hadn’t moderated its “militancy considerations” since approximately 622 B.C.

Gawthrop, much like many of the experts discussed in the Center for American Progress’s new report Fear, Inc., believes that Islam is, at its roots, a violent ideology at war with the West.

In the newly released video, Gawthrop tells his audience at the New York Metro Infragard at the World Financial Center in downtown Manhattan — an FBI sponsored public-private partnership — that even overthrowing Islamic states, like Iran, who threaten the U.S. and its allies, is insufficient since “there are still internal forces that will seek to exert Islamic rule again.”

Watch it:

Gawrthrop, as he advocates in his PowerPoint presentations, pushes for a direct confrontation with Muslims that challenges the underpinnings of their religion and Koranic teaching. Referring to a slide with the words “Holy Texts” and “Clerics,” Gawthrop says:

If you remember Star Wars, that ventilation shaft that goes down to into the depths of the Death Star, they shot a torpedo down there. That’s a critical vulnerability.

Ackerman and Shachtman report that a different video, which they were unable to recover before it was deleted, showed Gawthrop criticizing outreach programs to Muslims communities:

If we were going back to the 1940s, this would be like the Army and Navy asking Japanese-Americans to participate in the intelligence and operations paths trying to understand the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. That didn’t happen,

The FBI says that Gawthrop gave his last presentation to Bureau counterterrorism classes in April 2011, but the newly disclosed videos would suggest that Gawthrop has continued his career as a terrorism “expert” at FBI sponsored events for at least another two months.