IN a curious twist of fate, the Taoiseach will be the flagbearer of the EU when he meets President Trump at the White House today. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was to have met the President yesterday but snow storms in the US have delayed that meeting until tomorrow.

The former Exxon Mobil oil giant boss has more influence than most presidents and knows how to cut a deal. He would be an able secretary of state, says Amir Handjani

In 2002, the notoriously evasive US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld made his famous observations on “known knowns”, “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”.

Anyone who  believes that suicide bombings are the dying sting of Islamic State is mistaken writes Peter Van Buren

Former US president George HW Bush has criticised one-time defence chief Donald Rumsfeld and former vice president Dick Cheney in a new biography.

You’ll have a tough job finding much worth watching on the regular networks this evening — perhaps this double bill of repeats from Game of Thronesseason two will keep you entertained.

Those of us still implacably wed to the notion of Irish neutrality — whatever that really means in 2015 — will undoubtedly be at least disturbed by the weekend declaration by EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, who suggested that a common European army would be a timely deterrent to further Russian aggression on the continent.

EARLIER this week the all-powerful, life-giving or life-denying European Central Bank published the results of its stress tests on 130 of Europe’s banks. Only 25 failed and just one — and what a welcome “just” that is — is Irish.

The interconnectedness of conflicts in the Middle East seems beyond comprehension to those who ignore that the root causes are inappropriate Western political and military intervention.

It’s probably someone or other’s law. Not Murphy’s, not Sod’s, but one of that crew.

The best way to describe the latest furore over the electric pylons, and whether or not they are safe, is to use the rational words of former US Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld.

Germany’s US and European allies welcome Berlin’s promise of a more robust foreign and security policy, but with no appetite at home for troops to fight, it may mean little more than extra logistical help and tougher rhetoric.

Retired US General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who commanded the international coalition that drove Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait in 1991, has died. He was 78.

Of all the things that will exercise Brian Cody ahead of the All-Ireland hurling final replay, few will grate more than the thought that Anthony Cunningham has his measure.

By way of laying our scene for the new hurling championship, two conversations from the evening of May 6, shortly after the National League final.

THE next 12 months are, as Donald Rumsfeld might say, a known unknown.

A lawsuit accusing former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of personal responsibility for US forces allegedly torturing two American whistleblowers who worked for an Iraqi contracting firm will be allowed to move forward, a federal appeals court in the US has ruled.

Marking Osama bin Laden’s death where the terrorist inflicted his greatest damage, US President Barack Obama soberly laid a wreath at New York’s Ground Zero today and declared to the city and the world: “When we say we will never forget, we mean what we say.”

EVEN though the US presidential election is more than 12 months away, support for President Barack Obama has soared following the killing of Osama bin Laden.

“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.

Former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said his biggest mistake during his six years in the Pentagon was not resigning after shocking photos of the treatment of Iraqi inmates by American soldiers at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison were published.

GEORGE W Bush, all but invisible since he left the White House nearly two years ago, reclaimed the spotlight yesterday with the release of a new memoir defending his “war on terror” and the Iraq invasion.

Two former heads of the British Army will give evidence to the Iraq Inquiry today.

A senior British Army officer described today how he warned Tony Blair two days before the invasion of Iraq that there were insufficient preparations for dealing with the aftermath of the conflict.

Osama bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of US troops in the mountains of Tora Bora when American military leaders made the crucial and costly decision not to pursue the terrorist leader with massive force, a Senate report said.

THE decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama so extraordinarily early in his presidency — less than nine months after he took office — was as unexpected as it is unprecedented.

Politicians are the worst culprits for using gobbledegook, with a George W Bush comment topping the list of puzzling pronouncements, according to a poll.

Former US homeland security secretary Tom Ridge claims in a new book that he was pressured by other members of George Bush’s Cabinet to raise the US terror alert level just before the 2004 presidential election.

POLITICIANS will take the unusual step of turning up to the Dáil next Friday for a special debate on the financial crisis after two separate reports predicted growing unemployment, bank losses and a shrinking of the economy.

The Obama administration is trying to protect top Bush administration military officials from lawsuits brought by British prisoners who say they were tortured while being held at Guantanamo Bay.

IN the early stages of this recession, politicians assured us we were not returning to the 1980s. Now we are facing something much, much worse. How bad will it get? How long will it last?

IN the inimitable phrase of former US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, there are ‘known knowns’ in regard to this house at 38 Hartland’s Avenue — and then there are ‘known unknowns.’

A secret 2004 order gave the US military the authority to attack al-Qaida targets anywhere in the world, according to a US report today.

IN Washington DC at the weekend, the Bush joke books piled high in the stores’ discount sections told their own story.

PATRICK SEALE might be a writer on Middle East topics, but he knows little about American politics (May 26). If he did, he would not spend time in a vitriolic diatribe against a president who has done just about all that he can because he is working with a Congress, the majority of whom are not of his party and without whose approval he cannot spend money.

John Breslin on a court case that throws a spotlight on the murky world of international espionage and shady deals struck in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon is dropping charges against a Saudi incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay who was said to have been the “20th hijacker” in the September 11 attacks.

IT’S sad but true. You know it and I know it. The way things are going, one of these days — perhaps not so far into the distant future — some coked-up young scumbag in Dublin, Limerick or Cork is going to murder an unarmed garda.

US PRESIDENT George W Bush has his eye firmly on history, believing he and his actions will be vindicated in the coming years and decades.

A CHILDREN’S charity will today ask for the go-ahead to try to bring the US government to court in Britain for an alleged war crime in Iraq.

A study by two non-profit journalism organisations says US president George Bush and administration chiefs issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terror attacks.

US defence secretary Robert Gates, making his first official visit to China, is expected to press the country to do more to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capabilities.