President Obama has bowed his way into controversy yet again.

Pictures of the U.S. president bowing deeply to Japanese Emperor Akihito during a state visit to Japan have incensed some commentators, who say the U.S. head of state should not lower his head before foreign crowned heads.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly, hit with questions about the bow at a regular news briefing, appeared stumped.

“I saw I’m sure for what it was intended, which is a sign of respect to the emperor. But I don’t have anything from the State Department on it,” Kelly told a news briefing.

Kelly dismissed reports that some critics have gone so far as to call the bow a sign of treason as “a bit extreme,” but said he would check into exactly what sort of protocol briefing the president gets before meeting foreign leaders overseas.

Obama has sparked critical comment with a bow before — there was some harrumphing after Obama lowered his head before Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah at a G20 meeting in April.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama greeted by Japan’s Emperor Akihito at Imperial Palace)

The depth or angle of U.S. President Barack Obama's bow -- and handshake -- with Japan's Emperor Akihito has become a heated on-line topic, with sides arching into political camps on whether the greeting went too far -- literally -- or was appropriate based on customs and culture.

I don't pretend to be an expert on bowing in Japan, but a few basic rules of thumb, or backbone, are: the more important a person you are greeting, the deeper and longer you bow, with hands generally at one's sides; and multiple purposes can be served by this act including greeting as well as displays of respect, recognition, apology or gratitude.

While no one called the president's bow an expression of apology or thanks, a number of blogs examined his and other U.S. leaders' historical bent in stooping to diplomatically conquer, with a few labelling the U.S. commander-in-chief "O-Bow-Ma".

The Fox network and the Los Angeles Times blog offered details of Obama's and other official U.S. greetings with the imperial family, including a photo of Vice President Dick Cheney shaking Akihito's hand, and one posted a comment that bowing and handshaking should not be done simultaneously.

A blog from ABC news Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper, citing an academic friend, says both sides have it wrong, as the bow was not over -- or under -- the top in precedence, although it did not display the cultural understanding intended, rather weakness in Japanese terms.

The Huffington Post, meanwhile, seeming to anticipate a "bow row" ahead, noted criticism Obama had already received for a greeting of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in April, with Republican Senators blasting him and the White House calling the president "bent over" to shake hands but not in a bow.

Rounding out coverage, Japan's Sankei Shimbun/MSN on-line carried news of the Fox report that Obama's bow was too low for a head of state as well as the comparison to Cheney's 2007 Akihito handshake, adding a slate of imperial photos with slightly different angles and framing.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jim Young

Today seems a day of numbers: 8, 11, 5, 3000, 13. Put another way, more than 8 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the brutally violated City of New York learns that 5 men accused in the deaths of the nearly 3,000 people will face an actual criminal trial — in New York.

Oh, yeah, and the news comes on Friday the 13th.

The lead defendant, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, initially confessed to masterminding the 2001 attacks that set the United States on the road to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he later told a Pentagon war crimes court that the interrogators “were putting many words in my mouth.” He also said he wants to be put to death and become a martyr.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will formally announce later today that KSM and four other defendants will be sent to New York City to stand trial for the attacks.

It’s part of President Barack Obama’s plan to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which has long been a target of human rights allegations against the United States.

The proceedings in New York will be an important test of how a U.S. civilian court might handle cases involving detainees who were subjected to U.S. interrogation techniques that some describe as torture.

“I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people will insist on it. My administration will insist on it,” Obama said in Tokyo where he was on a weeklong trip through Asia.

Survivors of those who died aboard the USS Cole in 2000 have waited longer for their day in court. But they also learned on Friday the 13th that the accused mastermind in that attack will be tried in military tribunals along with other suspects in the case.

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Photo Credits: Reuters/Brad Rickerby (Twin Towers); Reuters/Janet Hamlin (KSM and Waleed bin Attash); Reuters/Aladin Abdel Naby (USS Cole)

The shooting rampage that killed 13 people at Fort Hood in which a Muslim Army psychiatrist is the suspected gunman has set off a chain of inquiries into who knew what when.

In the post-9/11 era, government officials want to show that they are doing everything they can to protect the public and, when something happens, that they will get to the bottom of it.

The FBI says there is no information that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was involved in a “broader terrorist plot.”

But that hasn’t stopped questions about whether authorities missed signs that could have somehow prevented the shooting.

U.S. officials say intelligence agencies learned that Hasan contacted an anti-American cleric in Yemen who was sympathetic to al Qaeda and relayed the information to law enforcement authorities, but it’s unclear whether any action was taken.

President Barack Obama has ordered an inventory of all intelligence in U.S. government files related to Hasan, and a review of how any intelligence was handled by government agencies.

Members of Congress are talking about launching congressional investigations.

It has only just begun.

Congressional inquiries are notorious for dragging out. The White House review will likely be done first.

But the bottom line in the usual Washington blame game is going to be finding who messed up.

After the Sept. 11 attacks and the large-scale revamping of U.S. intelligence operations in which a whole new entity was created — the  Director of National Intelligence — that is no small question.

“There is still a reluctance among different (intelligence and law enforcement) actors to share across what they consider to be their own turfs. It seems difficult to understand,” counterterrorism expert Evan Kohlmann said.

What do you think?

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Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (soldiers at Fort Hood memorial service), Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi (Obama at Fort Hood memorial ceremony)

A Republican-controlled Congress could be a real possibility for the second half of President Barack Obama’s four-year term, according to the latest Gallup poll.

The poll of 894 registered voters suggests Republicans would win the U.S. House of Representatives by 48 percent to 44 percent if the 2010 congressional election were held today.

The Republican lead is well within the poll’s 4 percentage point margin of error. But the results indicate that Republicans might have some momentum after gaining steadily on Democrats since July.

People who participated in the survey were asked only about their local House districts, so the results mean little for that other congressional chamber, the U.S. Senate.

It’s way too early to gauge the outcome of a congressional election that won’t be held until November 2010. The primaries that choose the parties’ respective candidates don’t even begin until early next year. And as Gallup points out, the poll measures only voter preference, not likely voter turnout. 

But a revival of Republican popularity could spell trouble for Obama, given that the GOP appeared to gain ground as the president’s main domestic priorities — healthcare and climate change reforms — gained public attention.  Meanwhile, Democrats slipped 6 percentage points overall and plunged 12 points among independent voters. 

Republicans would be in a very strong position to shut down much of Obama’s agenda if they won control of the House for 2011 and 2012. A Republican House would also pose a greater challenge for a 2012 Obama reelection campaign.

Tangible risks for Obama’s agenda could also lie closer at hand, if the whiff of electoral defeat encouraged enough Democrats today to avoid White House initiatives that might have political consequences tomorrow.

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Photo Credits: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (U.S. Capitol); Reuters/Jason Reed (House Republican leader John Boehner); Reuters/Jim Young (Obama)

President Barack Obama walked in the rain among the graves of U.S. casualties from the Iraq and Afghan wars at Arlington National Cemetery and took an unscheduled detour into section 60, a thicket of simple white headstones, to mark Veterans Day.

Underscoring the poignancy of the visit, Obama was due to hold a war council later on Wednesday as he tries to decide whether to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan, where U.S. forces experienced their bloodiest month in October.

The president, accompanied by first lady Michelle Obama, bent down briefly at the headstone of 19-year-old Specialist Ross McGinnis, who was awarded the United States’ highest military decoration for valor, the Medal of Honor.

McGinnis was killed when he threw himself onto a grenade during a patrol in Baghdad in  2006.

The first couple, bareheaded and ignoring the miserable weather, spoke and shook hands with visitors they found by the gravesides, one of whom Michelle Obama hugged.

The president, confronted by fading public support for the war, is expected to decide in coming weeks about boosting U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, even as he draws them down in Iraq.

His stop at a section of Arlington Cemetery in Virginia that is the burial ground for U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan followed the somber Veterans Day ceremony at which Obama acknowledged the cost of fighting in both places.

“In this time of war, we gather here mindful that the generation serving today already deserves a place alongside previous generations for the courage they have shown and the sacrifices that they have made,” he said.

More than 4,300 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq and some 900 in Afghanistan.

Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Obama in Arlington National Cemetery to mark Veterans Day)

Presidential reading lists have a tendency to set Washington abuzz.

Last month, when the Wall Street Journal reported that President Barack Obama was reading Gordon Goldstein’s “Lessons in Disaster,” pundits wondered if the book about the mistakes of the Vietnam War might hold clues to the president’s thinking on his Afghanistan strategy.

Yesterday, during a Reuters interview, when Obama asked what I was reading with my 12-year-old son (”Great Expectations”), he revealed that he was reading the best-selling fantasy-adventure book “Life of Pi.”

His 11-year-old daughter, Malia, is reading it on her own and Obama, who read the Harry Potter series to her when she was younger, finds it compelling too.

“It’s a wonderful book,” Obama said of the prize-winning novel by Yann Martel about an Indian boy cast adrift in a lifeboat with a tiger, a hyena, a zebra and an orangutan.

“There are whole…chapters that really have to do with talking about Hinduism and Christianity and comparing it … there’s a lot of philosophical stuff in there,” Obama said. “But for some reason she’s hanging in there.”

Without revealing the ending, Obama may be in for a nasty surprise… (if you want a hint click here.)

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Photo credit: Reuters/Peter MacDiarmid (Author Yann Martel after winning Booker Prize for Fiction 2002 for “Life of Pi”)

As President Barack Obama nears a decision on whether to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, some experts say he should consider the signal his decision will send about his broader commitment to the war, which has grown increasingly unpopular at home.

The White House has been frustrated that its internal deliberations on the Afghanistan strategy have leaked into public view, something that Obama acknowledged on Monday in an interview with Reuters.

But will perceptions of the deliberations affect the decision itself?

In the view of some, Obama might risk sending a signal of a weakening commitment in Afghanistan were he to approve anything short of the 40,000 troop increase requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

Obama says concern about such perceptions won’t be a factor for him.

“That’s not how I think about the problem,” he said in the Oval Office interview. “My obligation — my solemn obligation, as commander-in-chief, is to get this right. And then I worry about people’s perceptions later.”

In a separate interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper, Obama talked at some length about the factors that will influence his decision-making.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama answers questions during Reuters interview)

Former President Bill Clinton is due to visit Capitol Hill today to talk healthcare reform with Senate Democrats and their independent allies.

The meeting’s important because Democrats have yet to find the 60 votes they need to stop Senate Republicans from blocking President Barack Obama’s signature domestic issue. House Democrats got their end of the job done over the weekend by passing landmark legislation.

Clinton’s presidency was overshadowed by his own failed bid to reform the healthcare system in the 1990s. But NBC said he could help sway Democrats wavering in the current debate, including Sen. Blanche Lincoln of his home state, Arkansas. 

A big obstacle that Clinton, Obama and Senate Democrats face seems as old as human nature: people who will cooperate — if they get their own way.

This time, a small clutch of moderates want their own way on the so-called public option, a proposal to offer government supported low-cost health coverage that is anathema to Republicans and the insurance industry.

Some senators are categorical about what they want.

For independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut — a state long associated with insurance interests — opposition to the public option is a moral issue. “If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” he said at the weekend on Fox News.

But his independent neighbor to the north, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, sounds like Lieberman’s polar opposite: “It would be outrageous to me, that when you have an overwhelming majority of Americans wanting a strong public option, that we do not deliver that.”

Others are not so categorical — until you get to the nitty gritty.

Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska told NBC he could back a public option, but not if states have to make the effort to opt out. Why? Because he doesn’t want them in the system unless they want to be there.

“I don’t think there is anything to be gained by opting out,” Nelson said. “I would look at the ability of the states to opt in, so that the states could make the decisions themselves.”

It seems a small distinction but may prove important. Reform advocates fear their adversaries could easily defeat healthcare reform at the state level, where small numbers of health insurers can sometimes hold a near monopoly.

Obama hopes to sign a healthcare reform bill by the end of the year.

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Photo Credits: Reuters/Chip East (Clinton); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Lincoln); Reuters/Mike Segar (Lieberman); Reuters/Chris Helgren (Sanders); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Nelson)

Barack Obama says he probably makes one mistake a day, but doesn’t think he has made any fundamental ones in almost 10 months as president of the United States.

Toward the end of his first term, his predecessor George W. Bush famously said in answer to a question that he could not think of any mistakes he had made — a comment which long dogged him as the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 led to chaos in Iraq.

When Obama was asked the same question on Monday, he was quicker on his feet.

“Oh, we make at least one mistake a day,” he said with a smile.

“But I will say this, I don’t think we’ve made big mistakes,” he told Reuters in an interview in the Oval Office. “I don’t think we’ve made fundamental mistakes.”

When asked to give a few examples of errors, Obama regretted how his team had handled some of the early vetting of administration appointments, a reference to problems with personal taxes that knocked some key picks out of contention.

He also mentioned regret over how he had “phrased commentary” on the controversial arrest of a prominent African American Harvard University scholar in Cambridge earlier this year, when he said police had acted stupidly and was later forced to backtrack.

“I mean, there are constant sort of things that I think have proven unnecessary distractions,” he said.

“But in terms of the core decisions that we’ve made to rescue the economy, to move forward on a path for moving our troops from Iraq, on making sure that we’ve gone through a rigorous process in Afghanistan, to how we have moved healthcare to a place that seven presidents have not been able to get to, I feel very good about our progress.”

Highlights from the Interview

For more from the interview, click on the story links below:

Obama warns of strains with China

Obama on Iran nuclear deal

Obama on Copenhagen climate summit

Obama says expect to sign START pact in December

Obama reading Life of Pi

Photo Credit:Reuters/Jim Young (Obama answers questions during Reuters interview in Oval Office)