No area of public policy is so shrouded in secrecy, obfuscation and outright deception than foreign policy. Most of the time it doesn't seem to matter much to the majority of voters who have more pressing things to worry about. But when Canadians read a headline that says "Russia mobilizing for war" one would hope they would take notice. A more absurd declaration is hard to imagine but there it was -- coming out of the offices of CSIS, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. It was just the latest alarmist rhetoric in a steady stream of anti-Russian propaganda that coincided with the largest NATO military exercise -- dubbed Anaconda -- since the end of the Cold War.

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ISIS militants attacked a European city this week, setting off three bombs in Brussels that killed 31 and injured 260. In the United States, the response was immediate, first with the outpouring of support from the public, then, unsurprisingly, with a flurry of bellicose pronouncements from most of the remaining major-party presidential candidates.