Last week, a well-connected neoconservative pundit and board member of a high-profile right-wing pressure group wrote, after the prisoner swap deal that freed an Israeli soldier, that Israel should now take Palestinian militants — and their “devils’ spawn” children — and “throw them… into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.”

When the blog post, by Rachel Abrams (wife of top Bush adviser Elliott Abrams), got some media attention — highlighted by both liberal and conservative writers — the progressive Jewish-American group J Street demanded that the right-wing Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) cut ties with the neoconservative doyen.

ECI responded to J Street’s criticism with a statement from former John McCain campaign adviser Michael Goldfarb (who advises ECI) to the Washington Jewish Week’s Adam Kredo. Goldfarb said:

J Street chooses to deliberately and viciously slander Rachel Abrams, accusing her of directing her words at all Palestinians when she was clearly speaking about the terrorists who abducted [Israeli soldier] Gilad Shalit and those who celebrated that deed and other acts of terror. ECI supports Israeli efforts to kill or capture terrorists, including those responsible for abducting Gilad Shalit.

Despite the fact that her original post said Palestinians’ children should also befall the fate she prescribes for their parents — something the denial took no heed of — Abrams would unequivocally demonstrate shortly thereafter that she does not, indeed, limit her call for gruesome physical harm to be done only to Palestinian terrorists. Her list of those slated to become “food for sharks” also apparently includes liberal American writers with no ties to terror or a record of supporting or celebrating such acts.

After the Washington Jewish Week piece, this reporter asked Goldfarb on Twitter if he personally thought it would be alright to drop Palestinian prisoners in the sea as shark food instead of taking them to Israeli prisons. Goldfarb dodged, writing back that he’d “have to check with [Rachel Abrams] re official ECI position.” It was at this point that Abrams herself chimed in, writing in a Twitter post that she would feed this reporter “and all his friends to sharks.”

Before Abrams and ECI start issuing convoluted denials that relay implausible defenses or alternate intended meanings, it should be noted that the context of Abrams’ Tweet seems unambiguous as to the target of her comment. Take a look at a screenshot of her tweet, along with Goldfarb’s to which she was responding:

In his condemnation of the original blog post, J Street chief Jeremy Ben-Ami said Abrams’ screed was an “unhinged rant filled with incitement and hate.” The term seems to apply to her twitter feed too. If Abrams is, as her brother Commentary editor John Podhoretz posited, the “neocon id,” then perhaps that school of thought has its issues to work out as well. Looking at her tweet, one wonders what this reporter and Abrams’ mutual friends must think, for she said she’d consign them to becoming shark feed, too.

Keeping with tradition of those invested in the Iraq war criticizing ever withdrawing any troops, retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, said to be one of the key architects and advocates for President Bush’s “surge” in 2007, attacked President Obama for announcing he will order all troops out by the end of the year. “I think it’s an absolute disaster,” he said, adding, “We should be staying there to strengthen that democracy.”

Absent in that line of thinking of course is that it was, in fact, the democratic process in Iraq that ultimately guided the president’s hand toward total withdrawal. The Iraqis would not grant U.S. troops immunity from Iraqi law should they stay past 2011, a prospect the United States military could not accept. Still not seeming to understand this concept, Keane went on Fox News last night and again attacked Obama, saying the U.S. needs troops there to “preserve the democracy.” But when host Brett Baier pointed out that this was a decision made by a democratically elected government, Keane claimed it wasn’t about immunity:

BAIER: And when they say — the administration says, hey, it wasn’t our deal. The Iraqis said we couldn’t say.

KEANE: Look, the fact that we pushed away from Iraqis in 2010 is what led us to the issue in 2011. It wasn’t the issue over immunity. That was a side issue. The real issue was the Iraqis believed that we, the United States, were not serious about the long-term strategic partnership with them.

Oddly, about an hour-and-a-half earlier over on CNN, Iraq’s ambassador to the United States noted, “we have a democratic system” in Iraq, adding that immunity was an issue and that indeed, the Obama administration was “very serious” about keeping U.S. troops in Iraq:

AMB. SAMIR SUMAIDAIE: The reality is we have a democratic system. There was consultation. There this is what the leaders of the main blocks of parliament decided.

WOLF BLITZER: They didn’t want to give immunity to U.S. troops remaining.

SUMAIDAIE: No, they didn’t. Iraqis are very touchy about, given their recent history, very touchy about independence and sovereignty. This is what they came up with. We have to make it work. And I think, as I said, this is the end of an era, the beginning of another.

BLITZER: Did the Obama administration…seriously want to maintain a modest U.S. military presence in Iraq? [...]

SUMAIDAIE: To judge by the serious negotiations, conducted by the American ambassador and by the commander of the American forces, yes, they were very serious and very positive.

Watch the compilation:

So a democratically elected government decides democratically to put conditions on a continued American presence in Iraq past 2011, conditions that the U.S. government declined. But according to Keane, Obama should have ignored that request, and kept U.S. troops there to “preserve” Iraq’s democracy.

Eric Martin at Democracy Arsenal boiled it down for those like Keane who can’t seem to let go of Iraq. “Despite what our preferred policy outcomes might be, a continued US presence in Iraq is not a popular position amongst Iraqi lawmakers/voters,” he writes, adding, “Simply put, Maliki lacks the political support to push for such an agreement.”

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain seems to constantly find himself wandering into foreign policy gaffes, all the while insisting he’s been studying the issues at hand for months. But in the latest iteration of this meme — a friendly if critical in a here’s-some-advice report on conservative Daily Caller website — Cain’s associates again demonstrated his unpreparedness to seek a position as a statesman and commander-in-chief of the U.S.’s armed forces.

The Daily Caller notes that “Cain’s lack of experience was most recently on display last week” when he was asked by CNN’s Wold Blitzer, just after Israel made a prisoner swap deal with the Hamas militant group, if he would consider a deal to release all the terrorists and suspects at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for the freedom of one American soldier. Cain said, “I could see myself authorizing that kind of transfer.” Just hours later, in a Republican presidential debate, Cain’s comment came to the fore and became a hot topic of conversation. Cain then disavowed his original answer, saying that he “misspoke,” saying that he perhaps misunderstood the (very clear) question.

Now, the Daily Caller has a “source close to Cain” making excuses for the presidential hopeful’s gaffe:

One source close to Cain told TheDC that Cain’s answer to Blitzer was the result of lack of sleep and doing too many media appearances.

You can almost already hear a rival Republican camp cutting a television ad wondering if Herman Cain is ready to take a 3 a.m. phone call on a serious national security or foreign policy issue. And one shouldn’t expect President Cain to do too many press availabilities either, since “media appearances” can apparently lead Cain to say things he doesn’t mean or comprehend.

In 2009, a special poll commissioned by the Al-Zughbi International Foundation for Polls and presented at the Brookings Institution found that Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad was the region’s most popular leader among the publics of six large Arab states.

Today, a poll released by the Arab American Institute (AAI) that gauged the opinions of people in Morocco, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon finds that support for Assad has all but evaporated. In every single country polled, a majority of respondents said they are more sympathetic to demonstrators than Assad’s government. Support for the government didn’t extend past single-digits. Meanwhile, overwhelming majorities in every country do not believe that Assad can continue to govern:

AAI president Dr. Jim Zogby spoke at the poll’s release this morning. Zogby noted that Assad’s standing has slowly collapsed over the past few years as he violently cracked down on pro-democracy protests in the past few months. Watch Zogby’s remarks:

Read the full poll results here.