CNN foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria – who has recently had off-the-record conversations with President Obama on foreign issues – noted the president's “restraint” in his dealing with the “Arab Spring” and the war in Libya Wednesday. Zakaria previously gave a thumbs-up for Obama's Mideast speech in May and defended the president's plan for removing American troops from Afghanistan. The point-of-note is that this is the same analyst who, according to the New York Times , President Obama “sounded out” while shaping his foreign policy. The two simply had “off-the-record” conversations on foreign issues, according to Zakaria, and the CNN host claimed he was not an advisor to the President.