I’ve been on a self-imposed blogging blackout for the past few days and so other than dealing with a cowardly commenter, I haven’t had much to say. I’ll be back to my normal News Roundup duties shortly, but I couldn’t let this Huck Whopper slide by without comment.

Early this morning reports started coming out of Pakistan about the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. She was a courageous woman who was taking the point in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism in Pakistan. She said what she thought and ended up paying for her political stand with her life. I’m not an expert on Pakistan by any stretch of the imagination, but this woman had a lot of guts to do what she was doing where she was doing it.

The issue of terrorism will dominate the upcoming election. Either a candidate has the chops to deal with it or they don’t. It’s that simple. The way each campaign reacted to Bhutto”s murder speaks volumes about each candidates foreign policy chops. Most of the candidates did a decent job with the glaring exception of one – Mike Huckabee.

Here’s what Huck originally said to a crowd of 150 supporters at Orlando Executive airport – as told by CBS News’ Nancy Cordes:

…Mike Huckabee strode out to the strains of “Right Now” by Van Halen and immediately addressed the Bhutto situation, expressing “our sincere concern and apologies for what has happened in Pakistan.”

The Huck campaign has since called Cordes to “revise and extend” his remarks, but the slip is out. Huck is dangerously naïve when it comes to foreign policy in general and terrorism specifically. He’s sending apologies for an action committed by Islamofasicts in a Muslim country.

Sorry, Huck. There are no mulligans in politics. Apology is not and cannot be policy. End Memo.