Blog Posts by Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News

John Kerry with Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino on May 9. (Mladen Antonov/AP, Pool)Secretary of State John Kerry promised Thursday to leave “no stone unturned” in the investigation into the deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, and vowed that anyone guilty of wrongdoing would be disciplined "appropriately."

Kerry did not directly comment on the contentious House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the tragedy a day earlier, but vowed to consider "any recent evidence." And he pledged his full cooperation with a Republican-led investigation being conducted by five key House committees.

"I will tell you this: The State Department will leave no stone unturned," the top U.S. diplomat told reporters as he met with Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino. "I am absolutely determined that this issue will be answered, will be put to bed, and if there’s any culpability in any area that is appropriate to be handled in some way with some discipline, it will be appropriately handled."

Kerry said he had "made it crystal clear" to the Republican committee chairman that his chief of staff, David Wade, would work "to answer any questions that they have."

The attack, which took place on Sept. 11, 2012, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, claimed the lives of four Americans including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

One of President Barack Obama's most trusted aides, Valerie Jarrett, hosted a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers on Thursday to discuss ways to combat sexual assault in the military, the White House said, emphasizing that such crimes "will not be tolerated."

"The group discussed various legislative proposals as well as actions that the administration could take to hold offenders accountable, improve the reporting process, support victims and work towards the prevention of sexual assault," an Obama aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Yahoo News.

The meeting included Republican and Democratic lawmakers from the Senate and House of Representatives.

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, one of the participants, took to Twitter to hail the effort.

V productive meeting at the @whitehouse this AM w/@vj44, Tina Tchen & my colleagues re legislation to address sexual assault in the military

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) May 9, 2013

Below is the list of attendees as provided by the White House:

Gina McCarthy testifies before a Senate committee on April 11. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)The White House on Thursday ripped Senate Republicans for stalling votes on the confirmation of President Barack Obama's nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy.

“There has been a historic level of obstructionism, absolutely, from the Senate on this nomination and others,“ press secretary Jay Carney told reporters after all eight GOP members of the Senate Environment Committee refused to take part in a scheduled vote that would have sent McCarthy's confirmation to the full Senate for approval.

(Later in the day, a senior Republican Senate aide emailed the verbal equivalent of an eye-roll and a link to this New York Times story, which shows the Democrats using the same tactic in 2003.)

Republicans have reportedly deluged McCarthy with more than 1,000 written questions since her confirmation hearing, drawing charges from Democrats that the purpose is to kill the nomination.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai during a ceremony at Kabul University on May 9. (Anja Niedringhaus/AP)The White House on Thursday refused to confirm or deny Afghan President Hamid Karzai's claim that the United States wants to keep nine military bases in his war-torn country after 2014, when the bulk of U.S. combat troops are supposed to withdraw.

"The United States does not seek permanent military bases in Afghanistan," press secretary Jay Carney assured reporters aboard Air Force One as President Barack Obama headed to Texas. "Any U.S. presence after 2014 would only be at the invitation of the Afghan government, and aim at training Afghan forces and targeting the remnants of al-Qaida."

Here's the thing: Carney's words are essentially meaningless. Officially, no American military base on foreign soil is labeled "permanent"—not even the vast facilities anchored in England, Japan and Korea for more than a half-century. The bases all depend on the host country's continued willingness to host U.S. forces.

The issue came up in a very similar context in the later years of then-President George W. Bush's term, when his administration was negotiating with Iraq on the future of the American military presence there. The Obama administration has been negotiating with Karzai on the size and role of a "residual force" after the bulk of NATO forces leave by the end of 2014.

President Barack Obama at a news conference at White House on May 7. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)President Barack Obama defiantly defended his handling of Syria’s civil war on Tuesday, warning that Iraq showed the danger of acting on “perceived” evidence of weapons of mass destruction. And for those who doubt his determination to see Syrian leader Bashar Assad ousted from power, Obama bluntly pointed to the fate of Osama bin Laden and slain Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

"I don’t make decisions based on 'perceived,' and I can’t organize international coalitions around 'perceived,'" Obama said during a joint press conference with South Korean President Park Geun-hye. "We tried that in the past, by the way, and it didn’t work out well," he added, in a reference to Iraq.

Obama's comments came amid a chorus of questions and criticisms in response to the apparent use of chemical weapons by Assad's regime. The president last August labeled that kind of action a "red line" that could lead him to escalate America's role in the conflict, which the United Nations estimates has claimed the lives of at least 70,000 people. Republicans in Congress have pushed him to consider air strikes or the creation of a U.S.-enforced "no-fly zone" off limits to Syrian air power, and warned that the White House is sending a message of weakness to Assad.

"I would just point out that there have been several instances during the course of my presidency where I said I was going to do something, and it ended up getting done," Obama countered. "And there were times when there were folks on the sidelines wondering, 'Why hasn’t it happened yet?' and 'What’s going on?' and 'Why didn’t it go on tomorrow?'"

But in the end, Obama said, "whether it’s bin Laden or Gadhafi, if we say we’re taking a position, I would think at this point the international community has a pretty good sense that we typically follow through on our commitments." Elite U.S. commandos killed bin Laden in a May 2011 raid. And (after prodding from Congress) Obama made Gadhafi's removal a key part of the NATO-led campaign in Libya. Gadhafi was killed, apparently by Libyan rebels.

The Heart of Chechnya mosque in the Chechen capital Grozny (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)Six months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, just 25 percent of Americans said Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions. That number has climbed to 42 percent, according to a new poll released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

The survey, conducted after the Boston bombings, found that opinions have not changed much as a result of those attacks. In March, 40 percent of Americans said Islam is more violent, 42 percent disagreed.

In the newly released poll, 46 percent of Americans disagree, Pew reported. And there are vast partisan gaps: 62 percent of Republicans say that Islam encourages more violence, compared with 39 percent of independents and 29 percent of Democrats. (The gap grows with partisan differences: 69 percent of self-described conservative Republicans say it does, 71 percent of professed liberal Democrats disagree.)

The United States will "shortly" begin arming Syrian rebels, looking to boost moderate factions over al-Qaida-affiliated extremists whose rise would be a national security "nightmare," the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told CBS News on Tuesday.

"I do think we’ll be arming the opposition shortly," Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee said in an interview. "We’re doing a lot more there on the ground than really is known, but we do have to change the equation."

"I think you all know the moderate opposition groups that we support are not as good at fighting, they’re not as good as delivering humanitarian aid, and we need to change the balance," Corker said.

President Barack Obama has resisted giving high-tech weapons to rebels fighting to topple strongman Bashar Assad in a civil war that has claimed at least 70,000 lives, according to United Nations estimates. But there have been news reports over the past year that the United States has agents on the ground helping to

President Barack Obama answering a question about Syria during a news conference in Costa Rica on May 3. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)Did President Barack Obama really shock senior aides in August 2012 when he warned Syria publicly that using chemical weapons would cross a "red line"? No, the White House said Monday, rejecting a New York Times report.

"The president's use of the term 'red line' was deliberate and was based on U.S. policy," press secretary Jay Carney told reporters at his daily briefing.

Carney also dismissed claims from a U.N. investigator that Syria's rebels, not President Bashar Assad's forces, used chemical weapons. "We find it incredible, not credible, that the opposition has used chemical weapons," he said. "We think that any use of chemical weapons in Syria is almost certain to have been done by the Assad regime."

His comments came after The New York Times, citing anonymous Obama advisers, had reported Saturday that the president's warning was "unscripted," and "went further than many aides realized he would." It also noted that advisers felt "surprise" and "wondered where the 'red line' came from." The daily cited one aide as saying that "Mr. Obama was thinking of a chemical attack that would cause mass fatalities, not relatively small-scale episodes like those now being investigated, except the 'nuance got completely dropped.'"

The Times report came with Obama under heavy fire for drawing a "red line"—Syrian strongman Assad's use of chemical weapons against rebels fighting to oust him—but seemingly not responding now that the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that the regime has likely done so.

"What the president made clear is that it was a red line, and that it was unacceptable, and that it would change his calculus," Carney said. "What he never did—and it is simplistic to do so—is to say that 'if X happens, Y will happen.' He has never said what reaction he would take."

Some Republicans have charged that that's precisely the problem, that drawing a "red line" without specific consequences dents America's credibility.