Contrasted with Newt Gingrich‘s insistent rhetoric on how President Obama should not be apologizing to the Muslim world for the Quran burnings that took place at a U.S. military camp in Afghanistan last month, Ron Paul said on CNN’s State of the Union today that it wasn’t necessarily the wrong thing to do. However, Paul did say it was irrelevant because an apology will do very little to sway the feelings of the Muslim world, and said that beyond any one apology, a change in U.S. foreign policy might be necessary.

Never one to mince words, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin angrily tore into President Obama‘s explanation that his apology for the burning of Korans in Afghanistan calmed things down in Afghanistan, saying it was an utter failure. “First of all, the apology didn’t work, obviously,” Malkin observed. “And it is just a measure of how much Obama lives in unreality!”

Rush Limbaugh is the provocative, outspoken voice of an army of conservative dittoheads, while The Young Turks‘ Cenk Uygur breathes fire from the left, so the two don’t often agree. However, the recent burning of Korans at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and subsequent deadly protests, have brought these two together for a brief moment that could throw open the gates of Hades and swallow civilization whole.

President Obama‘s decision to apologize for the accidental burning of the Koran at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan continues to nourish his critics, even as protests over the burned texts continues to cost lives. On Monday’s Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski tried to put the apology in perspective, asking, if another nation inadvertently burned an American flag, “Would that not require an apology from another leader if the same scenario played out?”

After the recent violent outcry over the accidental burning of Korans in Afghanistan, Rush Limbaugh harangued President Obama’s apology over the incident and lamented the decision by NATO to put the troops on trial for those responsible. “It’s gotten to the point of why are we there?” Limbaugh exclaimed. “If this is the end result of us being there, let’s get these people out and the hell with the place over there!”

On Monday, retired Army Col. David Lamm told Starting Point host Soledad O’Brien that the Taliban may be using the recent Quran burning in Afghanistan — a burning that the U.S. maintains was accidental and for which President Barack Obama has formally apologized — to its advantage.

Newt Gingrich has come out in full force against the Obama administration’s apologies to the Muslim world for an incident involving NATO forces burning a Quran. Apologies have been issued by President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, other assorted members of the Obama administration, and U.S. commander John Allen, who is currently overseeing NATO forces in Afghanistan. Gingrich appeared on CNN today and told Piers Morgan that Afghanistan has its own apologies to make before the U.S. can reciprocate.

CNN contributor and Editor-in-Chief of Big Journalism Dana Loesch took a lot of flak over the weekend for her declaration of solidarity with the four Marines who videotaped themselves urinating on the corpses of alleged Taliban fighters, in which she said “I’d drop trou and do it too.”

Countdown host Keith Olbermann and liberal watchdog Media Matters, among others, have called for CNN to fire Loesch over the remark, and according to Big Journalism, even Politico is in on the act.

On Saturday’s CNN Newsroom, host Don Lemon spoke with political analyst Goldie Taylor about the controversy surrounding the four US Marines who videotaped themselves urinating on the corpses of alleged Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Taylor, a former Marine, took the opportunity to call out CNN contributor Dana Loesch, calling Loesch’s remarks “disgusting,” adding “to say you would ‘drop trou’ and do the same thing, I question someone’s integrity who would say something like that.”

The Senate, led my efforts from the office of Sen. Joe Lieberman, may call on Twitter to ban accounts run by Taliban officers and supports in Afghanistan from disseminating anti-NATO information. According to the UK Telegraph, Sen. Lieberman– who worked to have al-Qaeda projects banned from Google as well– has contacted the social network’s leaders in an effort to remove accounts that promote and celebrate Taliban attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has never been known as a paragon of excellence in the human rights realm, but this recent video of Afghan police humiliating a man dressed in make-up and women’s clothing for their own amusement truly brings that reality home. The video– which, the Daily Mail notes appears to have come from an Afghan news source– shows the man pleading to be released and protesting his innocence of any crime while the police make him remove outer clothing and fake breasts.

Pakistan is blaming NATO aircraft for gunning down roughly two dozen soldiers at two separate military posts near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. President Asif Ali Zardari harshly condemned the attacks, and in retaliation Pakistan has closed off border crossings that were previously used by NATO forces to ship supplies to troops from Afghanistan.

On Fox News Sunday this weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) continued the tradition of politicizing foreign policy by accusing President Obama of politicizing foreign policy, telling anchor Chris Wallace that “Iraq and Afghanistan is being run out of Chicago, not Washington, in terms of decisions.” Graham also beat the familiar drum that “Israel has been thrown under the bus” by the administration, falsely claiming that the President’s “standing in the state of Israel is very low,” despite the fact that 81% of Israelis approve of his policies.

During a diplomatic meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joked with Afghani President Hamid Karzai about Republican frontrunner Herman Cain and his comments about “Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan.”

MTV co-founder Tom Freston has an unusually optimistic view of Afghanistan. “People assume that when the U.S. leaves, the Taliban will just resume control, but Afghanistan has become a different place,” he told New York Times‘ David Carr. Freston, who spent 17 years at the helm of MTV Networks, eight or so months as president at [...]

CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux has been on the ground in Afghanistan for nearly a week on a military embed. Since her arrival in Kabul on September 8th, she has conducted a series of interviews with those most intimately involved in attempting to move Afghanistan forward, both reporting from the region on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and on the Base attack from the region that had occurred the day before.

Malveaux, then, has something of a unique perspective on the various attacks that unfolded today around 1:30 p.m. local time in Afghanistan. Taliban suicide bombers targeted several high-profile locations, including the U.S. Embassy, NATO headquarters, an airport, and an area near a local high school. So far, seven have been killed in the attacks and ensuing violence, including Afghan police officers and civilians, and seventeen have been reported injured. Current reports also have three of the four attackers are dead.

While defending the United States’ current military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, Senator John McCain acknowledged that most Americans are not in favor of further military intervention in the Middle East, and discussed how changing mores in the region have affected the influence of terrorist groups.

Real Time may be on break, but Bill Maher took a respite from his hiatus to visit Jay Leno and give him an update on how he’s been feeling about President Obama’s moves lately. After a few quick jokes about Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann, Maher got to the President, with whom he is very dismayed. “I’m skeptical when he gives a speech because, where is the follow-up?” Maher suggested, noting that he did like the speech President Obama gave on Thursday but didn’t trust it all that much.

According to the Guardian, NATO has come forward in claiming responsibility for the death of BBC journalist Omaid Khpalwak. The 25-year-old Afghan stringer was one of 22 killed earlier this summer in an attack on the government buildings where he worked in Afghanistan’s southern Uruzgan province. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and subsequent [...]

In order for the nation-building operation in Afghanistan to be successful, most of those involved in the operation can agree that American soldiers on the ground need to express the maximum possible respect for the people and culture of the land, as Taliban sympathizers argue the U.S. forces are occupying without being welcome. This seems to be a bit of a stretch of that philosophy, however: Marines there have been told not to “fart audibly” in front of Afghans.

The Pentagon has released the names of the 30 servicemen who lost their lives when a Chinook helicopter was shot down over Afghanistan earlier this month.

As such, we’re now able to learn more about the men, one as young as 21, who died fighting for their country. CNN has interviews with some of the loved ones left behind — definitely worth a watch if you have a moment.

CNN’s John King assembled a panel yesterday to discuss whether the recent credit downgrade and the devastating loss of specialized troops in the ongoing war in Afghanistan mark these as the worst days of Barack Obama‘s presidency. He brought on a couple of individuals who know a thing or two about following presidents as they [...]

In light of the recent credit downgrade announced this weekend by the S&P (and the stock market plunge that has since followed), President Obama is speaking publicly from the White House today at 1pm. Sources reveal that he will also speak of the tragic weekend news of the downed Black Hawk helicopter in Afghanistan that led to over thirty deaths of US servicemen, many of whom who were members of SEAL Team Six.

ABC’s Martha Raddatz reports a helicopter crash in Afghanistan has killed 31 Americans, including as many as 25 Navy SEALs in one of the worst single-day U.S. losses of life since the war began. Raddatz says a senior military official told ABC News early this morning that a total of 38 people were on board the Chinook helicopter when it crashed overnight in the eastern Afghan province of Wardak. Initial reports indicate up to 25 Navy SEALs were on the aircraft at the time.

Rep. Paul Ryan took the House floor today to rail against what he considered “accounting tricks and budget gimmicks” by those attempting to carve out a budget that reduced spending. Among those, he explained, were the supposed “cuts” to defense spending that cut from predicted future spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he argued were not any different than repealing a bill proposing to “cover the moon with yogurt.”