Gates on Iran sanctions, Biden and biggest mistakes as defense secretary
By Dana Davidsen
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is defending his criticism of Vice President Joe Biden's record on national security.
Gates writes in his new book, "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War," that Biden was "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
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How Syria talks were derailed before they started
By Elise Labott
When Secretary of State John Kerry first took office he talked of changing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's calculus.
Assad "needs to know that he can't shoot his way out of this," Kerry said in March at a Rome meeting with members of the Syrian opposition.
When he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov first conceived the idea of bringing the regime and the opposition together for peace talks in Geneva, they believed strengthened international support for both the political opposition and rebel forces would leave the Syrian leader ready to negotiate his own ouster.
U.S. policy since then has had the opposite effect.
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