The decision comes amid an international debate around future of the diplomatic approach in Syria. The United States has advocated largely for diplomatic and economic efforts to pressure the al-Assad regime, but critics say these pressures don't do enough to get the government to stop its oppression.
“It’s not clear to us that arming people right now will either save lives or lead to the demise of Assad’s regime,” Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey D. Feltman said at a Senate hearing on the crisis Thursday.
But a senior Arab diplomat said, “People are more and more frustrated, and are coming to the conclusion that diplomatic efforts are not enough in light of continuing abuse by the regime.” The Saudis and Qataris, said the diplomat speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss national decision-making, are prepared to move “as soon as they physically can,” within days, or weeks at the most. “The delays,” he said, “are logistical, not political.”
The moves Saudi Arabia and Qatar are talking about making are arming the Syrian National Council. The international community expressed growing concern in the past few weeks as news from the city of Homs reached the west. Homs made headlines last week when journalist Marie Colvin and photographer Rémi Ochlik were killed in a shelling, grabbing the attention of international leaders.
"That's enough now," he said. "This regime must go and there is no reason that Syrians don't have the right to live their lives and choose their destiny freely. If journalists were not there, the massacres would be a lot worse."
The foreign secretary, William Hague, said the deaths were "a terrible reminder of the suffering of the Syrian people – scores of whom are dying every day". He added: "Marie and Rémi died bringing us the truth about what is happening to the people of Homs. Governments around the world have the responsibility to act upon that truth – and to redouble our efforts to stop the Assad regime's despicable campaign of terror in Syria."
Even the U.S., which maintained its nonviolent approach through the Homs crisis last week, seems to be edging towards more agrressive solutions according to an Arab diplomat cited by The Washington Post.
“I don’t think anyone will stand up and scream” in opposition to weapons shipments, the Arab diplomat said. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has led the administration effort to coordinate a unified international effort, “is not going to stop the Saudis,” he said.
Photo: A shelled building in Homs, Syria. Creative Commons/Flickr user FreedomHouse.
Photo: David Petraeus and Leon Panetta, now CIA director and Secretary of Defense respectively, doubt Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Creative Commons/Flickr user U.S. Embassy Kabul Afghanistan
Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.
This amid a growing furor about Iran's nuclear program, in which media are widely citing official reports of expanded enrichment efforts, but failing to make a key distinction:
There is no dispute among American, Israeli and European intelligence officials that Iran has been enriching nuclear fuel and developing some necessary infrastructure to become a nuclear power. But the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to resume a parallel program to design a nuclear warhead — a program they believe was essentially halted in 2003 and which would be necessary for Iran to build a nuclear bomb.
To say uneqivocally that Iran is a nuclear threat is analog to saying that every Republican voter who owns a gun poses a legitimate threat to the life of the president.
The Times article is careful to make that distinction, as are U.S. intellicence officials. The story hints at the reason why:
Iran’s efforts to hide its nuclear facilities and to deceive the West about its activities have also intensified doubts. But some American analysts warn that such behavior is not necessarily proof of a weapons program. They say that one mistake the C.I.A. made before the war in Iraq was to assume that because Saddam Hussein resisted weapons inspections — acting as if he were hiding something — it meant that he had a weapons program.
As [David A. Kay, who was head of the C.I.A.’s team that searched for Iraq’s weapons programs after the United States invasion] explained, “The amount of evidence that you were willing to go with in 2002 is not the same evidence you are willing to accept today.”
It seems the Times and few others learned from this mistake, as American and Israeli media run away with fear-driven half-truths, failing to deal exclusively in facts and leaning instead on speculation about the meaning of what isn't known.
A top secret cable from the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan stressed the growing threat posed by the largely Pakistani Haqqani network, The Washington Post reports.
The cable, sent over a CIA transmission network -- officials cited security concerns due to the sensitivity of its contents -- said Haqqani operatives working out of Pakistan threaten the stability of eastern Afghanistan. Due to the country's rocky political relationship with the U.S., American attacks on known Haqqani hotbeds are too few to have a dramatic effect.
The group’s patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was a major mujaheddin fighter in the CIA-backed effort to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s. He has relinquished control to his son, Sirajuddin, who carries a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head and runs day-to-day operations from the network’s Pakistani base in Miran Shah.
The location has given the Haqqani leadership a measure of protection. The CIA has repeatedly refrained from launching missiles at known Haqqani targets, including a prominent religious school the network uses as a base of operations, out of concern for civilian casualties and the backlash that could ensue.
The cable also drew attention for its delivery method. Usually, State Department officials send communications through State Department channels -- the same channels over which the cables from WikiLeaks' Cablegate release were sent. This cable was sent over the CIA's more secure network. Officials familiar with the cable, however, shared information about its contents, possibly to generate support for more aggressive military action within Pakistan.
The cable, which was described by several officials familiar with its contents, could be used as ammunition by senior military officials who favor more aggressive action by the United States against the Haqqani havens in Pakistan. It also could buttress calls from senior military officials for a more gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan as the 2014 deadline for ending combat operations approaches.
Photo: U.S. Forces Afghanistan Protective Service Detail Sgt. Jaclyn Guzman at the ready during the Sept. 13, 2011 attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. Creative Commons/Flickr user DVIDSHUB.
News outlets and twitter were abuzz yesterday with the death of Anthony Shadid, a veteran foreign correspondent covering Syria for The New York Times. He reportedly died of an athsma attack at the end of a week-long reporting trip to Syria.
Today, the web was full of tributes to Shadid. Many successful reporters who either knew him personally or were influenced by his work paid tribute to Shadid. Here are a few such tributes:
NBC correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin says he saw Shadid's death as the loss of more than a journalist, but a great person. "Anthony the person ... inspired by his example and came with a professional and personal kindness possessed by no one else," he wrote.
The Boston Globe published what seemed to be a solid article on Jan. 17, alleging that former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor had been a U.S. intelligence informant. The article was based on a Freedom of Information Act request and stated that:
After a quarter-century of silence, the US government has confirmed what has long been rumored: Taylor, who would become president of Liberia and the first African leader tried for war crimes, worked with US spy agencies during his rise as one of the world’s most notorious dictators.
The disclosure on the former president comes in response to a request filed by the Globe six years ago under the Freedom of Information Act. The Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s spy arm, confirmed its agents and CIA agents worked with Taylor beginning in the early 1980s.
The story goes into methodology to some extent, stating their reasons for drawing that conclusion, etc.
A journalism professor professor of mine, Dan Kennedy, wrote up the case in more detail on Media Nation. If there's anything fishy about this case, one of Kennedy's readers, 'dm wilson' summed it up in a comment:
it’s a troubling editor’s note. don’t you think Bender would have had to have this conversation with his editors before the piece was published?
Yes. Without a doubt, an investigative story that the Globe knew would make a worldwide splash would be thoroughly checked out for holes and flaws, but the editor's note seems to imply the paper did no such fact-checking.
Either the Globe made an extreme oversight, giving free reign to a rogue journalist or they allowed an outside source undue influence over their editorial process. Both scenarios seem unlikely.
It's a strange case, as Kennedy says.
Bender is a good and careful reporter, and it seems pretty clear that there are other shoes yet to be dropped. The only thing we can say for certain at this point is that it’s all way too weird to come to any conclusions.
Disclosure: I spent the fall of 2011 working for boston.com, the Globe's free website. I'm no longer on the company's payroll.
A human rights group set up by the Russian president, meanwhile, has called for snap elections.
The Kremlin's rights panel also called for the resignation of the election chief on Saturday in a statement about what it called "discredited" polls that have sparked mass demonstrations.
Recommendations by the panel - which advises Medvedev on rights and social issues - are not binding but will add to pressure on the authorities for radical changes in the wake of the polls.
It said that there was "mass distrust of the poll results" which showed significantly diminished support for Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, but still gave it a majority in parliament.
The Kremlin panel added that new election laws should be put in place "with the aim of then calling snap elections" to replace the current parliament that met for its first session on Wednesday.
"Numerous reports of ballot stuffing, re-writing of protocols of ballot results, an unjustified removal of observers and journalists [from polling stations], a ban on photography and video recording and other violations of electoral rights as well as inexplicable paradoxes of electoral statistics lead to mass distrust of the poll results," the panel's statement said.
"I'm happy that I have lived to see the people waking up. This raises big hopes," the 80-year-old Gorbachev said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
He urged Putin to follow his example and give up power peacefully, saying Putin would be remembered for the positive things he did if he stepped down now. The former Soviet leader, who has grown increasingly critical of Putin, has little influence in Russia today.
Photo: In Brussels today, a group showed solidarity with the Russian protestors, holding up signs calling for fair elections. Creative Commons/Flickr user Max Mayorov
As online communities and lawmakers alike get fired up over SOPA and PIPA legislation that would regulate the internet by blocking access to some sites, it has become clear that the U.S. government will never, in its current form, be able to significantly regulate the internet.
“I feel that the general public is not aware of the gravity of SOPA and Congress seems like they are about to cater to the special interests involved, to the detriment of Internet, for which I and many others live and breathe,” DeSopa developer T Rizk explained to TorrentFreak.
“It could be that a few members of congress are just not tech savvy and don’t understand that it is technically not going to work, at all. So here’s some proof that I hope will help them err on the side of reason and vote SOPA down,” he added.
As T Rizk explains, the goal of the browser addon is not to break the potential law, but to prevent it from coming into existence. These developers have rendered obsolete a law that is still grinding through the legislative process.
Under a government that offers the transparency and opportunity for debate that the U.S. does, such legislation can never succeed. The extrmely adaptive and quick-acting online community can render obsolete any regulatory bill before it can go into effect and inhibit the net's ability to defend against it, as DeSopa has shown.
In short, America's system of governance, developed before computers had even been thought of, is too slow to regulate the ubiquitous yet agile internet.
The only way and sort of regulation could succeed in reigning in the internet would be through a secret project, developed over months or years, that would go into effect without warning, laying down extreme surveillance and limitations all at once. Within the American political system, such a project is unlikely to be concieved and even more unlikely to succeed.
Western intelligence agencies have failed to secure any consistent flow of information from North Korea, the New York Times said today. It took 48 hours for outside nations to get word of Kim Jong-Il's death. Their source? North Korean state media.
For South Korean and American intelligence services to have failed to pick up any clues to this momentous development — panicked phone calls between government officials, say, or soldiers massing around Mr. Kim’s train — attests to the secretive nature of North Korea, a country not only at odds with most of the world but also sealed off from it in a way that defies spies or satellites.
North Korea, arguably the greatest threat to national security in Asia, is an enigma to even the highest levels of U.S. intelligence. Sattelite imagery is easy to beat: put up a roof. Without assets inside the county and inside the highest levels of government, there can be no advanced knowledge of anything unfolding in North Korea, where a new leader is still largely unknown to outside nations.
“We have clear plans about what to do if North Korea attacks, but not if the North Korean regime unravels,” said Michael J. Green, a former Asia adviser in the Bush administration. “Every time you do these scenarios, one of the first objectives is trying to find out what’s going on inside North Korea.”
In many countries, that would involve intercepting phone calls between government officials or peering down from spy satellites. And indeed, American spy planes and satellites scan the country. Highly sensitive antennas along the border between South and North Korea pick up electronic signals. South Korean intelligence officials interview thousands of North Koreans who defect to the South each year.
And yet remarkably little is known about the inner workings of the North Korean government. Pyongyang, officials said, keeps sensitive information limited to a small circle of officials, who do not talk.
The pilots brushed off the common criticism that they are too removed from the battle to properly consider the lives they may be taking.
The pilots said that it’s not just their aircraft that are misunderstood. They’re well aware of a public perception that pilots like them simply push a button to blithely drop bombs on people they’ve never seen in countries they’ve never visited, all from the comfort of their US air base.
Pilots at Holloman said they’re not surprised the public may have such a view, since even some experienced flyers arriving for training here have mistaken ideas about what it’s like to be the human element in a UAV. After all, these guys walk out the door of their simulated cockpits and go home to their families at the end of a work day.
In fact, the pilots' take on the differences between manned and unmanned flight hints that it might be safer for everyone. No rushed decisions, no over-defensiveness out of fear.
“Your visibility is like looking through a soda straw because you’re just looking at one thing at a time, based on the capabilities of the camera, whereas in a real aircraft you can look around very easily,” he said.
But a simulated cockpit has distinct advantages as well. These pilots, who have all seen combat duty themselves in manned aircraft, said the safety allows them to do their job more effectively.
“You’re going slow and you’re not worried about ejecting or the environmental factors you have in a manned aircraft, your ability to really concentrate on exactly what’s happening is much better,” Brent said.
Mike agreed. “You’re not in a rush to make a decision because you’re not pressured by fuel or speed or anything like that,” he said.
But Yosef Lapid, a professor at Mexico State University who studies terrorism, said the dangers of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) should be considered carefully.
“When you look at how the laws of war have emerged, there’s a sense that the underdog should have some decent chance of challenging,” he said. “I think these technologies violate that sense of justice.”
Lapid also worries about the long-term effects of using UAVs in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. In all the countries where armed UAVs are flown, large protests have erupted among the civilian population, which has at times suffered enormous casualties.
“It’s important to ask that question … not only how many terrorists we’re eliminating but how many new terrorists we are creating,” he said.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made a surprise visit to speak at the closing ceremony, where the American flag was lowered, symbolizing the United States' withdrawal. In his speech, Panetta pointed to "a new chapter in history" for the nation. Iraq's president and prime minister were not present for the ceremony.
No senior Iraqi government officials showed up for the event, though the name tags attached to two chairs in the front row indicated American hopes that they might. One was labeled for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the other for President Jalal Talabani.
The American withdrawal from Iraq was required by Dec. 31 according to an agreement between the nations. Once it became clear that the deadline was inflexible, U.S. officials determined there was no reason to keep troops away from their families for the holidays.
U.S. commanders had openly urged Iraqi leaders to extend the military’s presence beyond the agreed Dec. 31 deadline, so that they could continue to train the Iraqi security forces, build the country’s almost non-existent conventional defenses and allow more time for the wobbly political consensus forged after last year’s elections to solidify.
But in a rare display of consensus, Iraq’s usually squabbling factions united to insist that troops could stay only if they were subject to Iraqi law, a condition that the U.S. military had made clear from the outset would not be possible.
The time and date of the ceremony was kept secret to reduce the possibility of a planned terrorist attack, and it seems to have worked. The event was uneventful, in stark contrast to the beginning of the war.
