Obama gets the bad guys. Will he get the votes?

President Obama is quite efficient when he doesn't have to deal with Republican obstructionism. He didn't have to go to Congress to get permission to take out Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and other al Qaeda associates. When it comes to foreign affairs, the President is piling up mounting successes, and Moammar Gadhafi's death is further vindication of Obama's style of warfare.

Now Obama has announced the end of the war in Iraq, with all troops returning home by the end of the year. This is a popular move in an election year, and of course the Republicans are accusing Obama of playing politics. Although the political dividends are probably insignificant, being overshadowed by the economy, Obama can at least take credit for bringing this $1 trillion war that was one of the worst foreign policy blunders to an end. It should be remembered that Obama's opponents in 2008, including Hillary Clinton, had all voted to authorize the Iraq war in 2002. Obama was opposed to this war from the beginning.

Presidents can pretty much carry out foreign policy without congressional approval. The President has wide latitude in declaring war and other matters of national security. Although the Constitution says otherwise, the President does what he wants anyway. Imagine a protracted fight with Republicans in Congress about the best method of tracking down bin Laden. Obama's method worked just fine, even though members of his staff had warned him that such a strike was too risky. If he had failed, Obama's political career would have been toast. He took the courageous course. It worked, and the rest is history.

I can only imagine how much Obama could accomplish if he handled domestic issues the same as he handles matters of war. The Founding Fathers had a reason for making sure that there was a balance of power, but they couldn't have foreseen the insanity of what passes for politics today. As for the economic impact of the war, the Obama style of sending in drones instead of troops seems to be working, and at a relatively cheap price. And did we really need to spend $1 trillion in Iraq? Conservatives don't want to admit that this type of spending is what got us into this economic mess in the first place.

We paid a steep price in Iraq. There is no justification for the cost, not just financial, but in lives lost and troops injured. In the case of Gadhafi, a NATO warplane or U.S. drone is believed to have fired on his convoy outside his hometown of Sirte, allowing rebel fighters to capture him. “In this case, America spent $2 billion total and didn't lose a single life,” said Vice President Joe Biden. “This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has been in the past.”

Obama's foreign policy successes cannot be overlooked, no matter how hard his Republican detractors try to twist and distort the facts. But Obama's chances in 2012 hinge largely on the economy. Although the Republicans want him to be perceived as inept and lacking experience, it's hard not to blame our current economic problems on the complete lack of cooperation from the likes of John Boehner, Eric Cantor and the idiocy of the Tea Party movement.

Even though the focus of the next election will be on the economy, the Republican candidates will look pretty silly as they continue to label Obama weak on national security. Obama's solid leadership in foreign affairs may not be the biggest re-election topic, but it could be enough to put him over the top, given the weakness and utter lack of intelligence of the opposition. Compared to Obama, the GOP candidates look like contestants on “The Price Is Right”, only without the funny hats.

Good week for Obama - Bad week for bin Laden and Trump

That's one way to grab the media spotlight from Donald Trump. On Sunday night, President Obama delivered a speech that will go down in history, interrupting the Sunday night TV schedule, including Trump's “Celebrity Apprentice”, to announce the death of Osama bin Laden. It was 66 years to the day that Hitler was pronounced dead.

Criticized by Republicans for being soft on terrorism, Obama not only put a stop to that talk, but continued to confound his political critics with his calm and seemingly aloof demeanor.

The raid on Osama bin Laden's compound not only took extraordinary courage from the members of the military special forces who carried it out, but from the president himself, who by ordering it, opened himself up to some serious second-guessing if the mission had been unsuccessful.

What turned out to be a very good week for Obama turned out to be a very bad one for Donald Trump, who last week made a buffoon of himself by holding a press conference to announce that he was honored to be responsible for forcing Obama to turn over his long-form birth certificate.

It is now more than ever obvious that there are more important issues facing America than Trump's birther idiocy. The media was reporting Trump's bizarre antics as if it were news, but Obama was quietly going about his job running the country. On hindsight, Obama has not only shown that he's quite adept at multi-tasking, but that he's also one cool customer.

While the risky top-secret mission to bring down the most hated man since Hitler was being carried out, Obama was doing his stand-up comedy routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday night. The annual night of light-hearted fun was all the more remarkable when we realize that while Obama was delivering spot-on one-liners taking on Trump's paranoid birther conspiracy, Paul Ryan's budget proposal, funding cuts for NPR, and even his own sagging poll numbers, Obama's mission to root out Osama bin Laden was being meticulously planned and on the verge of being carried out.

Suddenly Obama's long-form birth certificate didn't seem so important, and Donald Trump had been relegated to the political trash heap reserved for losers and has-beens.

And Obama proved that he can calmly juggle matters of national security with idiotic pop-culture absurdities such as Trump and his right wing conspiracy theorists.

CIA Beerboarding Tactics Exposed

Earlier this week I commented on the use of sugarless cookies used by former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan to soften up Osama bin Laden's bodyguard Abu Jandal, a diabetic, who gave up the identities of seven of the 9/11 terrorists, according to Time magazine. This alternative to waterboarding is safe and effective, but I voiced my concern that sugar-free cookies might not be available in the "ticking time-bomb" scenario as seen on TV shows like "24" and countless movies. Let's say for instance, that we don't have any baked goods. On the other hand, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times, over the course of a month, so it seems his interrogators would have been able to get some cookies, candy, ice cream, or other goodies at some point after 20 or 30 waterboarding sessions. It turns out the interrogators used what was easiest and most available; water. Recent reports indicate that interrogators even used bottled water, which was easily available. I reported that 2-liter bottles of 7-Up reportedly work just as effectively. One of our readers, Marc (possibly a pseudonym), commented on a secret and highly classified form of torture. "The CIA has discovered a new enhanced interrogation technique that involves forcing terror suspects to down a six-pack of Miller Genuine Draft", Marc wrote. "By doing so, the suspects are given the illusion that they are getting drunk and having a good time, which lowers their inhibitions. This technique is known in the field as 'beerboarding'." Because of the highly classified nature of beerboarding, the CIA has seized my computer and they are now looking for Marc. It seems that terrorist suspects were getting fat as a result of this technique and that because of this, and this is a gray area, it could fall in the category of torture. To combat this problem, and to adhere to the Geneva Conventions, our reader Harrison suggests Light beer: "We don't want them to get fat, right?" he wrote in our comment section. This is not the first time the use of beerboarding has been mentioned. As early as November 3, 2007, the website flyingdebri.com mentioned the controversial technique. However, it's the first time it's been linked to Miller Genuine Draft, and this has caught the attention of the CIA. Marc has some explaining to do, but anonymous sources indicate he's claimed political asylum in Finland. In the meantime, Dick Cheney is defending the practice, and Fox News host Sean Hannity has agreed to be beerboarded for charity. For more on the "Waterboarding vs. Cookieboarding vs. Beerboarding" debate, check out our Tuesday, June 2 blog and the responses by Marc and Harrison in our comments section.