Former pizza executive Herman Cain has struggled with foreign policy throughout his campaign to be commander in chief, but never more so than an in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today in which he muddled through a flailing, nonsensical answer on Libya for five excruciating minutes. Ultimately, Cain lands on being generally supportive of the intervention, but says he perhaps would have a bit more cautious at the outset.

But this seems to contradict with his longstanding strident opposition to the Libyan expedition. “I’ve said many times before that US intervention in Lybia [sic] is inappropriate and wrong. The US does not belong in this war,” he wrote in a Twitter debate in July. That same month, he appeared on John Stossel’s show on Fox Business, where he clearly stated his opposition:

CAIN: Should we be in Libya? The answer is no.

STOSSEL: That’s clear.

CAIN: That’s because U.S. interest was not clearly defined.

It’s worth noting that Cain’s foreign policy slogan is “peace through strength and clarity.”

Watch the flip flop, along with a compilation of Cain’s less-than-clear foreign policy vision, produced by ThinkProgress’ Jeff Spross:

Unlike Rick Perry’s infamous “oops” moment, Cain doesn’t appear to have a momentary brain lapse, but seems to be genuinely befuddled by the substance of the question. Last month, Cain said he had studied up on foreign policy and “challenge[d] anybody who says I wouldn’t know how to address foreign policy.”

While becoming the next commander in chief is looking increasingly unlikely for Cain, he has a backup plan. This weekend, he said he would like to be secretary of defense so he could “kick the you-know-what out of everyone in the world.”

Tennessee State Rep. Rick Womick (R-Murfreesboro) is facing growing criticism for his comments, first reported by ThinkProgress, calling for a purge of all Muslims from the U.S. military.

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam (R) told The Nashville Scene, “I don’t think I would agree with Rick on that.” But when pressed to denounce Womick’s comments, as Muslim community groups have been urging, Haslam came up short, saying “I don’t know that’s my role. I would just say that on that issue I don’t agree with Rick.”

Haslam might be slow to denounce Womick’s comments that Muslims should be forced out of the military, but Womick is finding few defenders in his party.

The Murfreesboro Daily News Journal contacted Republican State Reps. Joe Carr, Pat Marsh, Bill Ketron, Jim Tracy and Mike Sparks for contact but none of them chose to comment on the controversy surrounding Womick.

While Republicans remain silent about Womick’s decision to denounce all Muslims in the U.S. military on Veterans Day, Muslim community groups are calling on Womick to issue an apology and for Tennessee politicians to publicly rebuke Womick’s anti-Muslim statements.

Islamic Center of Tennessee educator Abdul Rahman Chao told Nashville’s News Channel 5:

I think what he says has great implications, and I think he should not only retract what he said but also apologize to all people who are Muslims who are serving the military as well as all Muslims in the United States of America, because that bigotry only leads people to alienation and hate.

Watch it:

The Council on American Islamic-Relations (CAIR) issued a statement calling on the Tennessee General Assembly to formally rebuke Womick for “defaming all members of the military.”

Speaking about Iran at this weekend’s Republican foreign policy debate, the candidates seemed to only agree on one thing: President Obama wasn’t getting the job done. Instead, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the president should undertake “covert operations” to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. At the debate, Gingrich said:

GINGRICH: There are a number of ways to be smart about Iran and relatively few ways to be dumb. And the administration has skipped all the ways to be smart. [...]

First of all, maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program, including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems, all of it covertly, all of it deniable.

Second, maximum coordination with the Israelis in a way which allows them to maximize their impact in Iran.

Watch the video:

Long-shot candidate Rick Santorum also said he hoped the U.S. was undertaking “covert activity” to curb Iran’s program.

But, as the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus points out, “Some of the activities they suggested may be underway but not publicly acknowledged.” Publicly calling for covert activity, as Gingrich and Santorum did, may provide for a satisfying political punch because the administration is unlikely to defend its record. To do so could possibly hamper ongoing efforts and, more to the point, would destroy any of the deniability that Gingrich calls for. Announcing covert operations means that they, by definition, can never be carried out.

But media accounts help piece together what indeed seems like wide-ranging covert activity by the U.S. and Israel, working hand-in-hand. The New York Times reported in January that the U.S. and Israel had worked together to develop the powerful Stuxnet computer virus that destroyed some of Iran’s centrifuges, slowing down its nuclear work. And one imagines that when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israeli and American “security cooperation is unprecedented,” he could well have been talking about work on Iran issues. Former prime minister and current defense chief Ehud Barak also recently said: “I can hardly remember a better period of support, American support and cooperation and similar strategic understanding of events around us than what we have right now.”

Just this weekend, at least one massive explosion rocked an Iranian missile base outside Tehran, killing a major figure in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force’s missile program. Speaking to Time magazine, a Western intelligence source fingered Mossad, Israel’s vaunted spy agency. As recently as this summer, nuclear scientists have been turning up dead in Iran, victims of likely assassins riding motorcycles and using either guns or so-called “sticky bombs” that adhere to the sides of vehicles. Others, too, have noticed the likely covert war against Iran’s nuke program, but not the GOP candidates. To do so might get in the way of their attacks, not on Iran but on the Obama administration. Maybe the administration isn’t being so “dumb” after all.

Asked during Saturday’s CBS/National Journal GOP presidential foreign policy debate if he thought torture was wrong in all cases, Herman Cain said he did and would defer to the military as to what constituted torture. But just seconds later Cain contradicted himself, asserting his view that waterboarding did not constitute torture:

CAIN: I do not agree with torture. Period. However, I will trust the judgement of our military leaders to determine what is torture and what is not torture. That is the critical consideration.

GARRETT: Mr. Cain, of course you’re familiar with the long-running debate we’ve had about whether waterboarding constitutes torture or is an enhanced interrogation technique. In the last campaign Republican nominee John McCain and Barack Obama agreed that it was torture and should not be allowed, legally, and that the Army Field Manual should be the methodology used to interrogate enemy combatants. Do you agree with that, or do you disagree with that sir?

CAIN: I agree that it was an enhanced interrogation technique.

GARRETT: And then you would support it as President, you would return to that policy.

CAIN: Yes, I would return to that policy. I don’t see it as torture.

While Cain claims to listen to the military, he apparently doesn’t heed its policy on waterboarding. The Army Field Manual, which governs the behavior of all military interrogators, explicitly bans waterboarding.

When Cain and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) endorsed waterboarding, the crowd at the debate cheered enthusiastically. Watch it:

On Monday, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) defended waterboarding by citing a Hollywood movie. West said that “as the president, you need to do those things which are necessary to make sure that the American people are kept safe,” adding, “and furthermore, in the movie ‘G.I. Jane,’ Demi Moore was waterboarded.”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tweeted today, “Very disappointed by statements at SC GOP debate supporting waterboarding. Waterboarding is torture.”

– Karl Singer

GOP presidential primary frontrunner Mitt Romney told the audience at Saturday’s CBS News/National Journal debate that Pakistan is “comfortable” with U.S. drone strikes within their borders. But after years of deadly drone strikes, and as many as 10 civilian deaths for every militant killed, polling data from Pakistan would suggest that Pakistanis are anything but “comfortable” with U.S. drone strikes.

Romney made the assertion in the following exchange with debate moderator Scott Pelley:

ROMNEY: Right now they’re comfortable with our using drones to go after the people who are representing the greatest threat. I would continue to do that.

PELLEY: Are the Pakistanis ‘comfortable’ with us using drones?

ROMNEY: We have agreement with the people we need to have agreement with to be able to use drones to strike at the people that represent a threat.

Watch it:

A Pew poll (PDF) from July, 2010, found that 93 percent of Pakistanis who are familiar with drone strikes think they are a bad idea, and 56 percent of Pakistanis who have heard of drone attacks say they are unnecessary to defend against extremist groups. Ninety percent thought the strikes kill too many innocent people.

Last week, Pratap Chatterjee at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, reported on the death of Tariq Aziz, a 16-year-old Pakistani who attended a “Waziristan Grand Jirga,” an official meeting, to discuss the impact of drone strikes on local communities. Three days later, Aziz and his cousin were killed in a drone strike.

Opposition to drone strikes has become a popular political position in Pakistan. Last month, cricket legend Imran Khan held a rally with more than 100,000 supporters in which the opposition politician spoke out against U.S. drone strikes, telling the crowd:

Our leaders owned this war on terror for the sake of dollars. Let me curse you. You sold out the blood of innocent people.

Indeed, Romney is correct the U.S. has an “agreement with the people we need to have an agreement” in order to conduct drone strikes. But polling and popular politics in Pakistan would indicate that the Pakistani public is far from “comfortable” with the growing civilian death-toll from the CIA’s drone program.