Kerry was touting United States and Russian cooperation in finding a solution to end the Syrian civil war when he admitted that removing Assad is not the top priority.

“There’s actually more agreement even though our position has been that it’s impossible for me as an individual to understand how Syria could possibly be governed in the future by the man who has committed the things that we know have taken place,” Kerry said after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.

“But that’s not—I’m not going to decide that tonight,” Kerry said. “And I’m not going to decide that in the end.”

The State Department has repeatedly said Assad’s “days are numbered.”

President Barack Obama released a statement Tuesday that called for Assad to step down, saying that the Syrian regime needs to end its “violent war” and “step aside to allow a political transition in Syria.”

Obama first called on Assad to resign in August 2011, saying that it should be done “for the sake of the Syrian people.”’

Stepping back from the administration’s insistence on Assad stepping down comes as an attempt by the United States and Russia to work together on options for Syria, according to Foreign Policy:

Kerry framed his refusal to say that Assad should step down as in line with the June 2011 Geneva communiqué, which was supposed to provide a roadmap for a negotiated settlement in Syria. The communiqué, which was agreed to by both Russia and the United States, ducked the issue of Assad’s future by saying that each side — the Syrian opposition and the regime — would be able to veto candidates for an interim government who they found unacceptable. Presumably, the opposition would veto Assad while the regime would veto radical Islamist groups like the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra.

Washington and Moscow seem prepared to move quickly to get both sides to the negotiating table. Kerry said that Russia would try to arrange a conference as early as this month.

The song the former Senator from Massachusetts was thinking of was Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” which the Boston Red Sox play at home games.

Kerry is reportedly a huge Sox fan.

[H/T Rosie Gray]

“I really wish there were” answers or even basic contact from the Obama administration, Charles Woods, Tyrone’s father, told the Free Beacon Wednesday afternoon on Capitol Hill. “If they were forthcoming with information it wouldn’t be necessary to be here.”

Woods, who has been working with members of Congress to pressure the Obama administration to disclose all details surrounding the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attack, said the administration’s silence has been troubling.

“I’d rather be in Hawaii or somewhere,” he said. “But we’re here because we need to be here.”

Woods and several members of Congress held a press conference outside the Capitol Wednesday in an effort to highlight what they say is the Obama administration’s failure to fully disclose the circumstances that led to the deaths of four Americans, including Woods and U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.) and more than 110 of his colleagues propose to establish a Watergate-style select committee that would be charged with investigating every aspect of the terrorist attack and be able to subpoena key administration officials to testify.

“I know nothing more [about the attack] than what’s been made public. No one has contacted me,” Woods told reporters. “Seven months later, we still don’t know what has happened.”

“We don’t just want another paper report,” Woods said. “We want people who were on the ground” to testify and explain “why they failed to provide support and protection” to Tyrone and others.

“They fought a battle for eight hours and not one airplane, not one armed drone, not one bit of military support [was] given to them” despite the presence of U.S. assets in the region, Woods said. “This is extraordinary and we need to know … who was it that gave the order to stand down.”

Wolf, the committee’s lead sponsor, said it is clear that the American public wants to know more.

“I don’t think the American public is satisfied with the answers we’ve received,” Wolf said. “More importantly, the families [of those killed] are not satisfied.”

“They along with the America public want to know why no one came to the rescue of their loved ones,” Wolf said.

Such a committee would likely summon United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, who became the face of the administration’s botched response to the attacks after she appeared on television repeating false talking points in the weekend following the attacks.

Rice claimed the attack was “spontaneous” despite evidence it was coordinated and planned in advance by terrorist operatives.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R., Ala.) told those in attendance that Congress is failing to uphold its constitutional responsibility to fully investigate the circumstances surrounding Benghazi.

Brooks and other lawmakers had pressured Secretary of State John Kerry to provide detailed information about the attacks during a hearing earlier in the day.

“We have made request after request about, for example, just to get the list of the names of the people who were evacuated from Benghazi, and we haven’t even gotten that, much less some of the important questions,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.) said to Kerry during Wednesday’s hearing.

“Mr. Secretary, we think there was a cover-up of some kind of wrongdoing that led this administration to lie to the American people about the nature of the attack immediately after the attack and for a week after that attack,” Rohrabacher added. “We need to have these questions answered.”

Kerry responded that he does not “think anybody lied to anybody,” urging lawmakers to move past the issue.

We got a lot more important things to move on to and get done,” Kerry said.

Brooks expressed outrage at Kerry’s answers and his refusal to promise to investigate Rice’s false statements.

“That is hubris,” Brooks said at the Benghazi press conference. “This is not the way we expect our secretary of state to act. And that is why we need a committee” that has independent investigatory powers.

Kerry’s statements are “adding unnecessary pain and suffering to those who lost loved ones,” Brooks added.

Wolf has petitioned Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) to create a select committee late last year.

While Boehner has not directly responded to Wolf, he has expressed support for further inquiry in to the Benghazi attacks.

“We are determined to get to the truth regarding the terrorist attack in #Benghazi, will not let it be buried in a haze of bureaucracy,” Boehner tweeted earlier today.

Preparations for the visit come as Secretary of State John Kerry returns to the Middle East this weekend to patch up relations between Turkey and Israel. Kerry will spend Saturday visiting Israel, the West Bank, and Turkey as he seeks to find common ground between skeptical Middle East leaders, according to reports.

Erdogan’s trip will follow a tenuous diplomatic breakthrough between the Islamist Turkish prime minister and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently apologized to Erdogan for a deadly 2010 incident between the two nations that claimed the lives of eight Turks.

It remains unclear just how much headway Kerry will be able to make given Erdogan’s hesitance to embrace Israel fully and back away from his support for Iran and Hamas, according regional experts.

Erdogan has long acted as one of Hamas’s top cheerleaders, leading the charge to legitimize the terrorist group. The relationship blossomed long before the deadly 2010 flotilla raid harmed relations between Turkey and Israel.

“This certainly didn’t start with the flotilla,” said David Pollock, a former Middle East adviser at the State Department. “It goes back not only longer, but deeper because support for Hamas is not just against Israel but is in line with Erdogan’s overall Muslim Brotherhood orientation, his Islamic orientation.”

“The question that I would ask is not only why does Erdogan support Hamas against Israel but also support Hamas against the Palestinian Authority and [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas,” said Pollock, who currently serves as a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The PA has opposed Erdogan’s planned trip to Israel, claiming it will only “deepen divisions among the Palestinians,” according to regional media reports.

Erdogan announced he would visit Gaza and Hamas after Netanyahu offered his apology, leading State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell to express “deep concern” during a press briefing on March 27.

Erdogan, recently dubbed by President Barack Obama as one of his top five international friends, is attempting to consolidate power by appealing to all sides, experts said.

“He tries to play both sides,” Pollock said. “He patched things up supposedly with Netanyahu on Obama’s recent visit [to Israel], but he continues to show support for Hamas. It’s possible in his mind he actually believes Hamas can be brought around to accept peace with Israel, but if he does, it isn’t true. There’s a real contradiction here.”

Erdogan has said he is Hamas’ champion, even claiming in the past that he wants to “represent Hamas on international platforms.”

The Turkish prime minister remains committed to engaging Hamas at every opportunity despite its ongoing terrorist activities.

“We should not be squeezing them into the corner,” he said in a 2009 speech before the European Union.

Erdogan has even vowed to personally escort any flotilla that seeks to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip—a promise that was made well after the deadly 2010 incident.

Hamas leaders also view Erdogan as a top ally.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh named his grandson after Erdogan so that the Turkish leader’s name “reverberated on every tongue” in the Gaza Strip, according to a 2010 report in Today’s Zaman.

Erdogan and Hamas have rallied around their opposition to Israel.

Erdogan has dubbed Israeli military operations against Hamas fighters “state terror.”

When Israel launched its 2008 military incursion into Gaza to combat ongoing terrorist rocket attacks, Erdogan described it as “an act of disrespect toward Turkey.”

“The crucial break point for Erdogan in this area was not the flotilla, but the Gaza war in December of ’08,” said Pollock. “That was the turning point. He took it very personally.”

Hamas attacks on Israel are justified in Erdogan’s view.

“I do not think that Hamas is a terrorist organization,” he said in April 2010, according to the Hurriyet Daily News. “I said the same thing to the United States. I am still of the same opinion. They are Palestinians in resistance, fighting for their own land.”

Erdogan’s recent bid to soften tensions with Israel are aimed at boosting his own image, according to Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).

“Turkish officials are of the belief that, ‘We are going act as a mediator that is going to lead the [peace] process,’” Badran said. “That’s how they’re putting it out. He’s trying to raise the profile of Turkey as a mediator once again, specifically using the Palestinians as a platform”

The United States has been left with few diplomatic options given the regional climate.

“Realistically, we have to deal with this guy,” said Pollock. “He’s in charge of a very, very important country for the region and for us. I think he has his mishegas [craziness], but he’s demonstrated that he can be quite pragmatic toward us and even toward Israel. We have to make the best of not a great situation.”

According to U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports, the government of President Mohamed Morsi is covertly taking steps to take control over the pro-Western military and the police forces as part of a campaign to solidify Islamist control.

Egypt for decades had banned the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islamist groups from both the military and police academies after Islamic terrorists in the military assassinated Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat in 1981.

The Egyptian military also for decades has maintained close ties to the U.S. military. Analysts in the U.S. intelligence community and the military are viewing the introduction of Islamists into the national military academy, disclosed last week, with concern.

Muslim Brotherhood members and hardline Salafi groups are regarded as dedicated first to jihad, or holy war, and other Islamist principles rather than to the country.

“Any opening of the Egyptian military to Islamist elements would be a big and complicated change,” said one U.S. official. “It’s not clear how it would be managed or how well the rank and file would absorb it.”

Disclosure that the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamists are now being admitted to the military academy was made public March 19 in Egyptian news reports.

The head of the military academy, Ismat Murad, told reporters the new batch of Islamist students included the nephew of Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials said intelligence agencies are investigating reports that Morsi recently concluded a secret agreement with the Palestinian terror group Hamas, another disturbing sign the Egyptian government is shifting away from its former pro-Western stance and toward radical Islam.

There are concerns the agreement involves collusion between the Muslim Brotherhood and a plan to settle Palestinians in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Hamas militants in recent days have attacked Egyptian troops engaged in demolishing tunnels from the Sinai into Israel. Hamas has asked the Egyptian government to halt the tunnel demolition. The tunnels are a major source of covert support into Gaza.

Morsi was elected president last year. His Freedom and Justice Party was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, an anti-democratic Islamic political movement whose motto states, “Jihad is our way.” The group claims to be nonviolent but has spawned numerous Islamic terror organizations including al Qaeda.

Under Morsi, the Egyptian government has appointed hardline Islamists as presidential advisers and assistants, including members of the Salafist Al-Nour Party.

In addition to the military academy, Cairo also is taking steps to Islamicize the police forces.

According to recent reports, the Muslim Brotherhood is planning to restructure the Egyptian Interior Ministry. The restructuring is said to include plans to place Brotherhood members in key ministry positions.

On the secret agreement with Hamas, Egyptian daily Al-Watan published documents in early February purportedly exposing a secret agreement between the government and Hamas. One document stated that Hamas’ military wing was sending militants to Egypt to defend the current regime from supporters of the ousted Mubarak government.

A second document was written by a Qatari foreign affairs official granting Hamas $250 million to support Morsi.

The Morsi administration has agreed to several construction deals in Gaza, along with security and intelligence-sharing agreements with Hamas.

Morsi also has sought closer ties to Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Cairo in February. Intelligence officials said the two intelligence services also are collaborating.

Many Persian Gulf states are worried about the threat to their regimes posed by the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, with the exception of Qatar emerging as a connection point for Brotherhood’s expansion efforts.

In Saudi Arabia, several Islamist Saudi clerics are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood transformation in Egypt, putting them at odds with Riyadh’s opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood government there.

There are concerns that Egypt will create religious police along the lines of Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, as the Sharia-law enforcement police are called.

Thousands of police in Egypt went on strike to protest the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist efforts earlier this month. Riots broke out March 22 between pro- and anti-Muslim Brotherhood protesters. The police went back to work after the government said it would bring in contractors, raising fears of further Islamicization.

The Brotherhood announced it planned to form vigilante groups to prevent attacks on Islamists.

An Egyptian military adviser went public with concerns about Muslim Brotherhood activities in Egypt on March 11. Maj. Gen. Abd-al-Munim Katu, an adviser to the Egyptian Armed Forces Morale Affairs Department, told the Dubai news outlet Al Bayan Online that the military is resisting Morsi’s Islamicization efforts.

Specifically, Katu said the Muslim Brotherhood was pressuring Egypt’s Defense Minister Abdul-Fattah Al-Sisi to ignore the Sinai tunneling into Gaza.

“I think that the current situation in Egypt is alarming and confused, in general,” Katu said.

Asked if Morsi will complete his term as president, Tatu said: “The vision is blurry. Indicators suggest that he may not be able to complete his term. The people have legitimate demands, but the Muslim Brothers are busy seizing control of the joints of the state. The gap between the two parties is widening.”

The Obama administration, whose religious outreach advisers include several Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers, is not directly challenging the far-reaching campaign of Islamicization being carried out by the Morsi government in Egypt.

Instead the administration adopted conciliatory policies toward the current government in Egypt. The administration hopes to continue working with Egypt’s government but has not pressured Cairo into making needed democratic reforms, U.S. officials said.

Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cairo March 4 and mentioned U.S. hopes for democratic reform. He also announced the release of $250 million in U.S. aid out of $1 billion promised by President Barack Obama after Egypt’s revolution overthrew long-time ally Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak last year.

Kerry said he urged Morsi to initiate “homegrown reforms.”

Pro-democracy protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square carried banners during the visit that read “Kerry, member of the Brotherhood,” and “Kerry, you are not welcome here.”

Analysts have compared Obama’s policy toward Egypt to those of President Jimmy Carter who in the late 1970s tacitly supported Iran’s exiled radical cleric Ayatollah Khomeini. Carter eventually abandoned the Shah of Iran, a longtime U.S. ally, and paved the way for 1978 revolution that brought the current hardline Islamist state in Tehran into power, a regime that is now on the verge of developing nuclear weapons for its large ballistic missile force.

Frank Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy, said Obama’s foreign policy has been accurately described as “Jimmy Carter’s policies on steroids.”

“What’s happening in Egypt today with the Muslim Brotherhood takeover and the ascendancy of Islamist throughout the Middle East and North Africa, makes Jimmy Carter’s debacle in Iran pale by comparison,” Gaffney said.

This taxpayer aid constitutes a “poll tax” that America must pay to placate the Muslim Brotherhood, according to Khaled Said, a cleric who serves as the official spokesman for the country’s Salafi Front, an extremist political party that has called for Islamic law in Egypt.

“They pay so that we will let them be,” Said stated in a recent interview on Egyptian television.

Said’s remarks come on the heels of Secretary of State John Kerry’s announcement that the United States has allocated another $250 million in aid to Egypt.

“If the revolution declares a framework for dealing with the West and America – they will accept it, kiss our hands, and double the aid they give us,” Said said during his television appearance, according to a translation of his remarks by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “We consider this aid to be jizya [poll tax], not regular aid.”

The United States is obligated to pay millions in aid, said Said, who frequently appears on Egyptian television toeing the radical Salafi line.

“The aid the Americans give us is the jizya tax they have to pay?” an interviewer asked.

“Yes, it is,” Said replied. “They pay it for the right of passage through our airspace and territorial waters.”

“Is this the rhetoric of the revolution?” the interviewer asked

“It certainly is,” Said responded.

Egypt has imposed this aid payment on America, Said said.

“We must strive to realize the goals of the revolution, and to establish a sovereign, Arab Islamic state in Egypt,” he said. “Then this state will impose payment of aid upon America as jizya, in exchange for allowing it to realize its interests—the ones that we approve, get it?

“They must pay reparations for destroying our country and the Islamic nation—them and others in the West—so that we will agree to cooperate with them,” Said added.

“It’s significant that this sheik is willing to say this publicly,” said David Reaboi, vice president for strategic communications at the Center for Security Policy. “Maybe he’s savvy enough to know US media, for the most part, is allergic to understanding or even presenting what’s said in Islamic societies in their shariah or Muslim contexts.”

The comments are important “because it’s incomprehensible divorced of its meaning in Islamic law,” Reaboi said. “In covering it at all, the media is forced to try to explain what he’s saying in Islamic legal terms—something they’ve gone through great pains to both avoid and obfuscate. The sheik, communicating this to both his followers and the wider Islamic world, is heard very clearly.”

Karzai accused the United States of working with the Taliban in a televised speech on March 10 before he was scheduled to hold a joint press conference with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.

“The explosions in Kabul and Khost yesterday showed that they are at the service of America and at the service of this phrase: 2014,” said Karzai. “They are trying to frighten us into thinking that if the foreigners are not in Afghanistan, we would be facing these sorts of incidents.”

The Afghan leader said his comments were “misunderstood,” an explanation Kerry appeared to accept Monday.

“Saying it was successful for Kerry is like being proud of being valedictorian of a summer school class,” said the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin.

“[Karzai has] been doing this for years, he’s gotten away with it,” Rubin added.

“You can’t simply dismiss [Karzai’s comments] as misunderstood when they were broadcast on national TV.” 

“This whole recent outburst is part of this reoccurrence that we see with President Karzai,” said Luke Coffey, a Margaret Thatcher fellow at the Heritage Foundation.  “Karzai will make these sort of statements, knowing that it will ruffle some feathers and get some attention in the United States because it plays well to his home audience.”

“[Karzai] saying it’s a mistranslation allows everyone to win,” said Coffey. “Kerry comes in looking like the hero of the day because he smoothed things over.”

Kerry was in Afghanistan to mark the U.S. military’s handover of a Bagram air base prison to Afghan forces.

Rubin said the United States should have taken a stronger stance against Karzai’s comments and spoken directly to the Afghan people.

“We can talk publicly about corruption. We can talk publicly about the increase in violence, and how government dysfunction going right to [Karzai’s] office was responsible,” said Rubin. “If he’s slamming us, what I’m saying is we should be slamming him right back.”

While Karzai said his comments about the United States and Taliban were misunderstood, he also rehashed previous claims that U.S. Special Forces were linked to mistreatment of Afghans in Wardak province, an accusation the U.S. military has said has no basis.

Rubin said Karzai’s opposition to Special Forces in Wardak is dangerous for Kabul since the Taliban has used the province as a gateway for launching attacks on the capital.

“When Karzai is saying that Special Forces has to be pulled out from Wardak, not only are the accusations libelous, but he is putting all the citizenry of Kabul in great danger,” said Rubin. “And it’s up to the United States to make sure the Afghans know that the next time there’s a bombing in the center of Kabul, the blood is actually going to be on Karzai’s hands.”

“If the Weekly Standard report is accurate, I urge you to immediately rescind the nomination of Samira Ibrahim and instead grant the award to a more deserving candidate, such as Nasrin Sotoudeh from Iran,” Kirk wrote in a letter to Kerry Thursday.

The State Department said Thursday it would “defer” presenting the award to Ibrahim this year so that it could “look further into” her statements.

Ibrahim has made anti-American and anti-Semitic comments on Twitter on numerous occasions, according to the Weekly Standard.

“Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning,” she wrote last September.

Ibrahim reportedly tweeted, “An explosion on a bus carrying Israelis in Burgas airport in Bulgaria on the Black Sea. Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news,” after five Israeli tourists were killed in a terrorist attack in Bulgaria.

She also last August reportedly described the Al Saud family as “dirtier than the Jews”  and later wrote, “no crime against society, takes place, except with the Jews having a hand in it.”

Ibrahim said Wednesday that she did not write these comments and that her Twitter account had been hacked on many separate occasions.

The State Department had planned to honor Ibrahim with its International Women of Courage Award for her fight against sexual violence in Egypt. Ibrahim drew international attention last year when she sued the Egyptian military for allegedly subjecting her and other female activists to brutal “forced virginity tests.”

Kirk proposed in his letter that the State Department instead give the award to Nasrin Sotoudeh, an imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer who was active in child and domestic abuse cases.

“As stated on the State Department’s website, the International Women of Courage Award ‘honors women around the globe who have exemplified exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for human rights, women’s equality, and social progress, often at great personal risk,’” wrote Kirk. “Based on this criteria, there is no more deserving candidate than Ms. Sotoudeh.”

First lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry will honor 10 women Friday by presenting them the International Women of Courage Award. However, one of the women, Samira Ibrahim, has a history of using Twitter as a forum to air anti-Semitic and anti-American views, the Weekly Standard reports:

On Twitter, Ibrahim is quite blunt regarding her views. On July 18 of last year, after five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver were killed a suicide bombing attack, Ibrahim jubilantly tweeted: “An explosion on a bus carrying Israelis in Burgas airport in Bulgaria on the Black Sea. Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news.” [...]