Politics Daily

Obama Getting Heat From Left and Right for U.S. Role in Libyan Attacks

Politics Daily Staff — 2011-03-22T09:32:00+00:00

Filed under: House, Democrats, Republicans, Terror, Obama Administration, National Security, Congress, Conservatives, Liberals, Moderates, United Kingdom, France, Military, Barack Obama

President Obama is getting blowback from both sides of the aisle for taking military action in Libya without first formally consulting Congress. Debate in Washington heated up even before reports Tuesday that a U.S. warplane, patrolling Libyan air space, had crashed.

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), a conservative member of the House Armed Services Committee, said Obama's "unilateral choice" to join a U.N.-backed coalition establishing a no-fly zone "is an affront to our Constitution," The Hill newspaper reported. The United States, Bartlett said, "does not have a king's army."

Meanwhile, a CBS News poll shows a full 50 percent of Americans approve of the president's handling of Libya.

Since the intervention started Saturday, U.S. Navy warships have launched Tomahawk missiles at Libyan air defenses, while American warplanes have joined other coalition aircraft in attacking military installations and some Libyan ground troops.

A U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet crashed late Monday near Benghazi, but its two crew members ejected and were rescued, the Washington Post and NPR said. Military officials said the plane apparently malfunctioned and was not shot down.

In the Senate, Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee and a White House ally on some issues, said Congress should have a full debate on the objectives and costs of the U.S. role in the attacks. And Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, a moderate, said, "This isn't the way the system is supposed to work."

But earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned pro-intervention lawmakers that setting up a no-fly zone was a major undertaking that would have to begin with attacks on Moammar Gadhafi's anti-aircraft systems.

Traveling with the president in Santiago, Chile on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney insisted Obama had consulted personally with congressional leaders on the Libyan situation. And last Saturday, Carney said Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough phoned top lawmakers "to inform them of the imminent action" about to happen. "We take very seriously the need to consult with Congress and we have been doing that," Carney said.

Under the Constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war. But the president, as commander in chief of the armed forces, has authority to take military action in emergencies or in the face of threats to national security. Obama, who was winding up a Latin American trip Tuesday, insists no U.S. ground troops will be deployed and that leadership of the intervention effort will soon be turned over to NATO partners such as Great Britain or France.

For Rep. Dennis Kucinich, that's not enough to justify what the U.S. has done in Libya. The liberal lawmaker called it "an act of war" and said Congress should be called back from a spring recess to decide whether to continue the military action.

On the website Raw Story, Kucinich (D-Ohio) went further, calling Obama's move in Libya "an impeachable offense." The president "didn't have congressional authorization; he has gone against the Constitution, and that's got to be said," Kucinich maintained.

Kucinich noted that then-Sen. Obama argued in 2007 that "the president does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

Kucinich, who has twice run for president as an anti-war candidate, said he was not actually proposing impeachment proceedings but only "raising the question" as to whether grounds exist. In any event, calls for a president's impeachment -- often coming from the far left or the far right on Capitol Hill -- are not unusual. Kucinich himself sought to initiate an impeachment article against President George W. Bush in 2008, but then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi wouldn't go along with it.

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Outlaw Justice: When Hackers Retaliate Against Cyber Security

Bonnie Goldstein — 2011-03-10T22:20:00+00:00

Filed under: National Security, Woman Up, PD Investigations, WikiLeaks

I used to be a hacker. It was a long time ago, decades before the future World Wide Web was available. I operated anonymously (except to my clients who paid me for what I discovered). I tracked down people whose cars, pledged as security on automobile loans, had been targeted for repossession.

I performed my "hacking" duties over the phone using codes and pretexts. I infiltrated semi-secure bureaucratic systems (unemployment claim offices, utility company billing desks etc.) to precisely extract the whereabouts of drivers who had borrowed money to buy automobiles and then skipped town without paying. To be clear, I didn't crack these systems for the challenge or the fun of it, as true hackers are said to, and it wasn't personal. I did it for hire. My tactics were not precisely illegal (the government had not yet passed fair credit and privacy laws), but some were on the line. Although I wasn't an outlaw, I knew where to find them.

It is a function of age and time that, as a grandmother, I've gotten squeamish about virtual breaking and entering, but I have retained a fondness for the current generation of hackers, some of whom have banded in a loose alliance called "Anonymous." I see these youngsters as natural extensions of the outlaws of my day -- inveterate snoops and mostly harmless believers in open access, driven by a commitment to transparency and a subtle addiction to cyber safe-cracking. (That said, hackers are sometimes impatient with boundaries and often go too far. Especially when technology, and the uses it can be put to, outpace a slow-by-design legislative and regulatory oversight process.)

Although they can take themselves very seriously and have lately been recast as "cyberactivists," and "hacktivists," hackers are historically seen as pranksters. (A key scene in last year's film "The Social Network," foretelling the creation of Facebook, depicts a prank by sophomore Mark Zuckerberg as he hacks into Harvard's content management system to retrieve images of co-eds while inviting fellow Cambridge-area classmen to rate them for attractiveness.) As fans of the 1995 Angelina Jolie film, "Hackers," recall, however, practitioners are ferociously loyal to their cultural values and you don't want to cross them.

Today's Anonymous group's members go by web handles such as "Q," alluding to the mysterious James Bond character, and have been known to break into government computers for both amusement and ideological reasons. The group is widely suspected of being a source for many documents that end up on WikiLeaks. In a statement last year, Anonymous claimed that its members "don't have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, [but] we fight for the same reasons."

For folks who obsessively fly beneath the radar, some Anonymous hackers raised their profile considerably last year by creating a "war of data" against companies that dropped WikiLeaks as their client, including Visa and MasterCard, painting the document repository as a venue for vigilante justice. In the hacker culture and perspective, they are good guys in a world where government and corporations keep secrets to the disadvantage of average citizens.

Where there are outlaws, however, there are sheriffs. Into that construct Anonymous hackers drew the attention of a cyber security firm with federal contracts that set out to get them to stop. The firm, HBGary Federal, waved a red flag in front of a bull last month when its CEO bragged to a Financial Times reporter in San Francisco that his company had unmasked Anonymous' ringleaders and planned to turn them over to law enforcement agencies. The HBGary Federal executive, Aaron Barr, told the FT that he had identified the hacker group's most senior organizers, a half dozen people scattered around the world who "co-ordinate and manage most of the decisions."

A few days later, DagBlog, a website read by hackers and those who admire their work, reported that Anonymous' hackers had "managed to breach every aspect of the HBGary Federal infrastructure. All of it. Even the phone system. They also breached the infrastructure of the parent company."

To make it clear they had trespassed and why they had done so, Anonymous left a calling card manifesto at HBGary Federal, taunting their targets as "a pathetic gathering of media-whoring money-grabbing sycophants who want to reel in business for your equally pathetic company."

Directing scorn and retribution at Aaron Barr, the executive who had spoken to FT, Anonymous immediately released tens of thousands of documents from Barr's personal e-mail account onto a torrent file. (Note to computer security experts: You do not need to save 50,000 e-mails. You are never going to read most of them again. Delete them as you go.)

What the purloined letters had to say aggravated the hackers even more. Files found on the security company's computers included proposals to potential clients (disturbingly referred by another client, the U.S. Justice Department), including a presentation for Bank of America proposing cyber-attacks against WikiLeaks servers. (WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange had hinted recently that his group plans to "take down" major financial institutions.)

The Anonymous hackers also retrieved a blueprint intended for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, touting the security firm's skills in beating the outlaws at their own game. Made public was a security plan seeking a $2 million contract to discredit critics of USCC, including creating and distributing counterfeit documents. The disclosure quickly brought forth disclaimers from the commerce group that the strategy "was not requested by the Chamber, it was not delivered to the Chamber and it was never discussed with anyone at the Chamber."

Although what the Chamber of Commerce knew, and when it knew it, has not been fully explored, the principal object of the security plan was a liberal, nonprofit oversight organization called ChamberWatch, organized in 2010 by "a federation of five unions and 5.5 million workers." Democrats on Capitol Hill quickly called for an investigation of a conspiracy to use "subversive techniques" and "possible illegal actions against citizens engaged in free speech."

HBGary Federal executives initially attempted damage control, announcing they had "been the victims of an intentional criminal cyberattack. . . . To the extent that any client information may have been affected by this event, we will provide the affected clients with complete and accurate information as soon as it becomes available." But as more embarrassing files were disclosed, the security firm's clients, business partners, and even HBGary Federal's parent company quickly distanced themselves from the firm's activities.

Rival security experts used the infiltrated files as a cautionary tale and (without noting the irony of a security company getting so thoroughly pantsed that, more than a month later its website is still offline) have developed security tips to avoid a similar attack. This week Aaron Barr was forced to resign. Moral: Don't try to beat outlaws at their own game.

In an observation of occupational drawbacks, a poster on a hacker blogsite noted that Barr had been bitten by the outlaw bug. "He was more or less riding the same high a hacker gets from cracking a system and had made it pretty personal."

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White House Disputes Predictions That Gadhafy Will Crush Rebels

David Wood — 2011-03-10T19:24:00+00:00

Filed under: Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, Military, White House

Top U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday they expect that Moammar Gadhafy will continue his bloody fight for survival and eventually crush the rebels and opposition groups that now hold almost half of Libya. But the White House sharply disputed that assessment, and is sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to meet with the rebels on the Egyptian border next week.

The dueling assessments of Gadhafy's fortunes emerged as the Obama administration turned aside growing demands that it take more concerted action, including military steps, to bring down the Libyan dictator and end the bloodshed.

Survey Rebuts Rep. Peter King's Claims on Radicals and Mosques

David Gibson — 2011-03-10T10:29:00+00:00

Filed under: Republicans, Religion, Investigations, Immigration, Terror, National Security, Disputations, Congress, Conservatives, al Qaeda, Islam

As Rep. Peter King opened his controversial hearing into "radicalization in the American Muslim community" on Thursday morning, researchers were noting that King's claims about mosques in the United States being controlled by "radical imams" who are producing extremists are apparently untrue.

King, a Long Island Republican under fire for once supporting Irish Republican Army terrorism but now pursuing Islamic extremism, has claimed that over 80 percent of American mosques are controlled by "radical imams" and that Muslims are "an enemy living amongst us" who are not helping authorities combat terrorism. He has also lamented the number of mosques in the United States because they breed "home-grown" terrorists.

But a 2008 survey of 1,410 Muslims that was the largest ever conducted showed that almost all Muslims who regularly go to a mosque are likely to agree with the statement that Islam and the American political system are compatible.

The study by Karam Dana, who teaches at Tufts University, and colleague Matt A. Barreto shows that among Muslims who do not attend religious services regularly, 77 percent answered "yes" when asked whether Islam and American political values are compatible. Among those who are regularly involved in a mosque, that figure rose to 95 percent. The research confirmed results from a smaller, earlier survey.

"The more religious American Muslims happen to be, the more they participate in American politics," Dana told Religion News Service.

Like other religious institutions in the United States, mosques have helped members assimilate into American society and promoted support for American civic and political values, Dana said.

"Decades of scholarship on religious institutions, be they churches or synagogues, have shown that they foster participation in the political system," said Dana. "We believe that mosques are no different."

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82nd Airborne Quick-Strike Force Gives Obama New Option in Mideast Crises

David Wood — 2011-03-08T22:24:00+00:00

Filed under: Iran, Foreign Policy, National Security, Afghanistan, Military, Middle East, Iraq

FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- As revolution zigzags chaotically across the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. Army is sharpening its readiness to launch rapid-reaction, kick-in-the-door combat forces, adding capabilities and skills that had atrophied during a decade of counterinsurgency missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the first time in years, the 82^nd Airborne Division here has stood up its "ready brigade," trained to a razor's edge and poised to move instantly, as one of its paratroopers said, "to the sound of the guns."

This new capability gives President Obama the option to swiftly land powerful military forces anywhere in the world for missions that could include evacuating American citizens, safeguarding fragile new democracies from counterattack, or violently taking down a renegade regime.

At the same time, the Army is considering reinforcing this Global Response Force with heavier combat units that could swiftly reinforce the 82^nd Airborne's lightly armed paratroopers.

With these steps, said the division commander, Maj. Gen. Jim L. Huggins, the United States is regaining the "strategic depth" it lacked during much of the past decade when the Army was struggling to man the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and simply lacked the troops to set aside for crisis response. "The resources are flowing, and we are building that capability back," he said.

And it's coming just in time. Few may hope more devoutly for peaceful, democratic change in the Middle East than the division's 20,000 hardened war-fighters, many of whom are facing their fifth or sixth combat deployment.

But hope is not a strategy.

Instead, Huggins' soldiers are honing their skills at "forcible entry" -- the ability to parachute into enemy territory with their armored gun trucks and 155mm howitzers, seize and defend an airfield to enable reinforcements to land, and fight their way to the objective. Safely landing 2,000 paratroopers and equipment at night on a three-mile-long, blacked-out drop zone and then swiftly organizing and moving out, Huggins observed dryly, "takes some practice."

But as political upheaval boils, from nuclear-armed Pakistan to the oilfields of the Persian Gulf fiefdoms and North Africa, sending in paratroopers may not be enough if heavy armed conflict begins to threaten vital U.S. national interests.

With the encouragement of Gen. Martin Dempsey, selected to become the Army's new chief this spring, the Army is considering adding "medium and heavy combat brigades" to the Global Response Force, said Col. Dan Baggio, a spokesman for the Army's Forces Command. The units being evaluated, which could include elements of a Stryker brigade and even heavy armored brigades, are stationed in the United States and would have to be airlifted into combat.

The idea is to provide a heavy force quickly for major combat, Dempsey wrote in a new addition to the Army's operations field manual, to "gain the initiative . . . and set conditions for stability operations" to follow.

All these steps seem in sync with an emerging vision for a leaner, smaller, faster Army after Iraq and Afghanistan. In a widely noted speech last month at West Point, Defense Secretary Robert Gates memorably trashed the idea of sending a massive land force into war in the Middle East or Africa, saying big wars should be the responsibility primarily of naval forces and aviation. But he strongly endorsed the "strategic rationale for swift-moving expeditionary forces" as "self-evident" for counterterrorism, rapid reaction, disaster response, stability or security force assistance missions.

The Obama administration also has proposed cutting the size of the Army by 27,000 soldiers beginning in 2015, assuming that by then the Afghan war will be winding down, Gates said last week.

Expanding from the narrow mission of counterinsurgency to quick-reaction missions -- which might demand a full spectrum of skills, from providing disaster relief to fighting the opening battles of World War III -- marks an abrupt change for the 82^nd Airborne Division. For a decade it has fought in small units, squads of nine to 12 soldiers and platoons of 30 or 40, working with local soldiers and villagers in a kind of armed nation-building. These operations required little or no coordination with neighboring units.

But now, with its ready brigade unhooked from this counterinsurgency mission, it can refocus on the skills required for larger company- and battalion-size maneuvers involving hundreds of soldiers in tight coordination with artillery, mortars, helicopter gunships and Air Force strike fighters. And the paratroopers, relieved of counterinsurgency duty, can catch up on the jumping skills they hadn't been able to practice in Iraq or Afghanistan. Before 2001, it was common to see a staff sergeant here with 60 or 70 jumps to his credit; today, a senior enlisted paratrooper may have fewer than 20, said 1^st Sgt. Christian Requejo of the 2^nd Battalion, 505^th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

They are getting the practice. In one exercise last month, the division and the Air Force coordinated an airdrop of 1,600 paratroopers, together with eight armored Humvee gun trucks, two howitzers, a dump truck and a grader (for building airfield defensive fortifications) from an air armada of 27 C-17 and C-130 airlifters.

Doing all that quickly and safely requires an immense amount of preparation. "We were not used to maneuvering as a company or a battalion," said one company commander, Capt. Mike Thompson. "It takes meticulous planning -- or it can be a goat-screw."

Early on a recent, chilly morning, a clutch of captains and lieutenants of the division's ready brigade gathered to rehearse a complex mission: coordinating air strikes from F-16s and attack helicopters with artillery and mortar fire as paratroopers maneuvered through bands of enemy to seize a small village.

A scale model of the terrain was laid out on the grass behind their barracks, with tape marking out routes and plastic blocks representing houses. In what is called an ROC (rehearsal of concept) drill, the lieutenants who lead platoons walked through their actions as they engaged the enemy and made quick decisions on whether calling in artillery strikes would endanger nearby troops or conflict with the Apache helicopter gunships and UAVs orbiting over the battlefield.

Their battalion commander, Lt. Col. Marcus Evans, is a demanding teacher and coach. "If you haven't run through this four or five times with a chalk board before you come out here, you're missing something," he told his young officers. "Drill it, drill it, drill it!" And plan for the unexpected, he added. "We can't war-game all the contingencies -- but we can do the top 10 and rehearse them!"

Brigades training in these skills will get severely tested at the Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., which has built extensive facilities for counterinsurgency training, including mock Afghan villages and Pashtun-speaking role players. But starting this August, the NTC will switch from training only for counterinsurgency, and instead will hold six month-long war games over the course of a year, pitting visiting brigades against the battle-hardened 11^th Armored Cavalry Regiment in simulated, but grueling, full-spectrum combat.

None of the skills and capabilities the Army is regaining may be applicable as upheaval sweeps across the Middle East and North Africa. As Gates and others have noticed, the Pentagon has a perfect record in predicting where and when future conflict will erupt: It has gotten it wrong every time. But that is one reason for the "full-spectrum" preparation of the 82^nd Airborne Division's ready brigade.

"We've been deficient as a great power in being overly committed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without having any additional capacity to do anything else that could come along," said John Nagl, a former West Point armor officer and Rhodes scholar who is president of the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan research institution in Washington, D.C. "The Army was really tapped out."

"Particularly with what's going on in the world, it's not hard to imagine the president needing a brigade of the 82^nd at short notice," Nagl said. "But having that capability doesn't mean we're going to use it."

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WikiLeaks Suspect Bradley Manning Hit With 22 New Charges

Tom Diemer — 2011-03-03T09:56:00+00:00

Filed under: Scandal, Investigations, Terror, National Security, Afghanistan, Military, WikiLeaks, Iraq

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, the suspected source of many of the hundreds of thousands of classified documents turned over to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, has been hit with 22 additional charges, including "aiding the enemy," which carries the death penalty on conviction.

Military prosecutors, however, have told Manning's lawyers they will not recommend capital punishment in the case that, if tried, would go before a court-martial. Manning, 23, is being held at a military brig in Quantico, Va., on earlier accusations related to leaks when he was an intelligence specialist in Iraq.

Charges brought Wednesday under the Uniform Code of Military Justice include aiding the enemy -- the "enemy" is not specified -- wrongly causing intelligence to be posted on the Internet, and violating Army regulations on information security, the Washington Post reported. The government asserts that WikiLeaks' posting of Iraq and Afghanistan war documents and also State Department cables put soldiers and civilians at risk.

"The new charges more accurately reflect the broad scope of the crimes that Pfc. Manning is accused of committing," Army spokesman Capt. John Haberland said. If convicted on all charges, Manning could face life in prison.

In a separate matter Tuesday in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appealed an extradition order that would force him to return to Sweden to answer sex offense complaints. The appeal could drag on for two or three months, an Assange attorney told CNN.

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U.S. Military Readies Libya Options -- With Caution

David Wood — 2011-03-01T15:29:00+00:00

Filed under: Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, Military, Analysis

FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- Officials looking at options for U.S. military intervention in Libya are recalling the lessons of Somalia, where American troops were sent to help feed starving children and 15 months later were evacuated ahead of howling mobs that then sacked the U.S. Embassy. Forty-two Americans were killed in combat and dozens were injured. Today in Somalia, an al-Qaeda franchise holds power.

Lesson No. 1, planners say: Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The spreading chaos in Libya and the bloody stalemate between rebels and defiant remnants of Moammar Gadhafi's regime have prompted demands for armed intervention on behalf of the popular uprising to topple the regime, help restore order and feed and house those who have fled the fighting.

Secrets and Lies: What Prevents the Next WikiLeaks?

Bonnie Goldstein — 2011-02-27T22:55:00+00:00

Filed under: National Security, Woman Up, WikiLeaks

With the verdict last week by a London judge to honor Sweden's request for his extradition, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, could soon be charged and tried in Swedish courts. Assange, wanted for questioning regarding "unlawful coercion, sexual molestation and rape," has said he plans to appeal the judge's decision but failing that effort, he will be transferred to Stockholm in March. If he is charged and convicted, his jail sentence could be as long four years. Even if fortune should turn in Assange's favor (not entirely unlikely as he has a book contract, discussions are under way for a movie about him, and he has recently been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize) there still is a very real chance his wiki-whistleblower days are over.

But leaks of classified U.S. intelligence will surely continue.

I personally believe Julian Assange is a disclosure vandal, and have said before that consequence-free anonymous disclosure makes me uncomfortable. Nevertheless, I agree with my colleague Delia Lloyd that WikiLeaks has "forever altered modern journalism."

We daily see the parenthetical attribution "according to diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks" in our international news analysis. Indeed, as reporters have examined and reported on the website's purloined State Department correspondence, they have provided readers and watchers of news with a rich, nuanced understanding of the serious unrest unfolding in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, as well as a sharper picture of regions from Brasilia to Dagestan

The lapse of security that allowed a cache of hundreds of thousands of classified documents to seep into the public domain through a hole in the secrecy net has prompted the U.S. government to roll back years of efforts to internally share information on terrorists and other threats. While Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton "strongly condemns" the illegal disclosure of classified information, there will be no way to stop continued access and study of the posted documents by scholars, journalists and even the very subjects of the diplomatic reports.

The stolen documents are widely believed to have been obtained when Pfc. Bradley Manning, an intelligence officer in his early 20s allegedly downloaded, from his military base in Iraq, a vast number of private, sensitive communications on to a disk disguised as a Lady Gaga CD. Many of those documents have been so widely disseminated by Assange that the only people curious about their contents that may not have already peeked are government employees concerned about jeopardizing their own security clearances.

We remember from the Pentagon Papers case that there were security breaches in the days before countless government terminals offered ready access to whomever held the right encryption key or password code, but there has never been a security rupture of the magnitude or range of the WikiLeaks violations. The sheer quantity of documents in our cyber repositories, the number of inexperienced or unsophisticated personnel at the keyboard and ubiquitous methods and opportunities to download, upload or unload make future unauthorized disclosures inevitable.

WikiLeaks comes out of the same controversial yet highly efficient Internet distribution engine for global sharing of data that resulted in Napster. It seems there is no way to completely put a lid on classified and secret documents, particularly in a networking environment populated by 20-year-old recruits.

So what's the answer? Less secrecy. Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists project on government secrecy recommends "stripping away the accretions of decades of over classification, a wholesale reduction in classified records would restore some integrity to the classification system ... and strengthen the security of residual classified secrets." Also calling for more transparency, Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archives at George Washington University testified to the House Judiciary Committee in December that "the government's national security classification system is broken [and] overwhelmed with too much secrecy."

Ironically, like Assange, these experts suggest releasing more documents as the solution. Only they suggest imposing a more orderly declassifying process first.

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After Egypt and Libya, What's Next for Those Still Under Dictatorships?

Alex Wagner — 2011-02-25T21:13:00+00:00

Filed under: Foreign Policy, National Security, Middle East, Egypt Crisis

As it stands, 2011 will be remembered as the year that a handful of harsh dictatorships around the world fell -- or at least teetered on the edge of collapse -- driven by largely peaceful public protest.

President Obama, in his remarks on the situation in Libya this week, eloquently summed up the moment as he recalled a plea from one Libyan protester: "We just want to be able to live like human beings."

Obama repeated the line for poetic emphasis, and though this device is something he deploys from time to time -- and despite the fact that the situation itself was quite familiar, with Egypt and Tunisia still in the collective rear-view mirror -- it resonated.

Poll: GOP Front-Runners Show Different Strengths on Different Issues

Bruce Drake — 2011-02-24T20:12:00+00:00

Filed under: Republicans, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Polls, Foreign Policy, Sarah Palin, 2012 President, National Security, Poll Watch, Newt Gingrich, Economy

While polls at this early stage have produced no clear favorite among Republicans for the 2012 presidential nomination, voters do have preferences for one candidate over another when it comes to how they view them on specific issues, according to a Gallup poll conducted Feb. 18-20.

Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who put a priority on reducing government spending and government power are most likely to favor Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney, while those focused on the economy favor Romney or Sarah Palin. Republicans who say social and moral values are most important favor Huckabee or Palin.

In general, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents rank government spending and government power as their top issue, with 35 percent taking that view. That's followed closely by business and the economy, chosen by 31 percent. In the distance were social issues and moral values (17 percent) and national security and foreign policy (15 percent).

Among the four Republicans who top the early presidential preference polls, Huckabee and Romney attract the most support on the issue of government spending and power, at 18 percent and 17 percent respectively, with Newt Gingrich at 13 percent and Palin at 11 percent.

Romney leads at 20 percent when it comes to business and the economy, followed by Palin (17 percent), Huckabee (13 percent) and Gingrich (8 percent).

On social issues and moral values, Huckabee is the clear leader at 28 percent, followed by Palin at 19 percent, Romney at 7 percent and Gingrich at 6 percent.

Palin leads with 22 percent on the issue of national security and foreign policy, followed by Huckabee at 20 percent, Romney at 17 percent and Gingrich at 9 percent.

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The Raymond Davis Case: Killings by CIA Operative Strain U.S.-Pakistan Ties

Alex Wagner — 2011-02-22T20:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Terror, Obama Administration, National Security, International, Middle East, White House, Analysis

Enraged Pakistanis on Monday called for the execution of Raymond Davis -- an imprisoned American accused of murdering two Pakistani civilians last month -- as U.S. officials sought to minimize damage to bilateral relations and persuade the government of Pakistan to spare Davis' life.

Negotiations were complicated by the revelation this weekend that Davis was not working in a diplomatic capacity, as American officials had previously maintained, but instead was a covert operative contracted by the CIA.

Davis' story reads like a John LeCarre novel: a former special operations agent, he gathered intelligence on Pakistani terrorist networks in urban centers. Working out of a "safe house" in Lahore, Davis maintained a low profile until last month, when he shot and killed two Pakistani men whom he claimed were trying to rob him.

An SUV sent to aid Davis apparently hit and killed another citizen. Few details about the incident, including who was driving, have been released. Later, the wife of one of the deceased committed suicide.

Details of the killings have raised questions -- including the fact that the two men were shot in the back -- and Davis' own account of his actions has changed slightly in the intervening weeks, casting doubt on his claims. Complicating this, the U.S. government did not initially acknowledge that Davis was working for the CIA and instead maintained he was a diplomatic official entitled to immunity.

Brian Katulis, an expert on national security issues in the Mideast and South Asia at the left-wing Center for American Progress, said the lack of initial candor by U.S. officials "fits into every frame that Pakistanis have about how America works in the world."

The Pakistani government, led by President Asif Ali-Zardari, has been increasingly under pressure from domestic political forces to resist American intervention. Davis' case, says Katulis, "plays into Pakistan's internal politics. It makes the current government look weak" and exploits the "opaque divide between its security services and its politicians. They tend to play these games."

At the same time, American relations with Pakistan are under scrutiny as congressional Republicans have criticized President Obama's request for a continued $3.1 billion in aid to Pakistan next year.

"If not a devastating effect," the Davis case "may have a very disruptive effect," on relations between the two countries, says Daniel Markey, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Markey acknowledges that, to some degree, the situation might have been preventable, speculating that if American authorities had made clear right away to the Pakistani government who Davis was, they might have won his immediate release. But he noted Davis was a contractor -- not a CIA official -- and says, "It's very difficult to manage a situation like this, even under the best of circumstances."

The issue now, Markey says, is how to resolve an incident that has been thus far "a diplomatic and political crisis, without having it turn into a strategic crisis."

Katulis, who just returned from Lahore last week, says that the Davis case was "front page news every day," and worries that after several years of concerted efforts aimed at improving U.S.-Pakistan relations, much of that work may be "washed away."

But, in his view, more disconcerting than the future of U.S.-Pakistan relations, is "how these intelligence agencies contract out," pointing to what he views as a lack of appropriate congressional oversight regarding intelligence gathering operations. Citing the use of contractors like Davis in covert missions, Katulis says, "There's a lot of these guys out there."

As for Davis, his future remains highly uncertain. "There are a lot of moving parts behind the scenes," says Markey. "Everything in Pakistan is difficult to read. This one especially."

Katulis, for his part, adds, "The prognosis does not look very good. I don't envy whoever is doing the quiet negotiations on this."

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Patriot Act: Congress Sends Obama Short-Term Wiretap Authority

Tom Diemer — 2011-02-17T13:41:00+00:00

Filed under: Senate, House, Democrats, Terror, National Security, Congress

Congress gave President Obama what he wanted Thursday: a bill extending federal authority for use of "roving wiretaps" and other surveillance techniques. But the president wanted the so-called Patriot Act continued until 2013 and this extension is only for 90 days.

The caution comes from concern over three sections of the broader law: reauthorizing use of moveable wiretaps that don't require multiple court orders; giving the FBI access to tangible items like library records in international cases; and permitting surveillance of "lone wolf" suspects not connected to specific terrorist groups. The Senate version of the bill allowed for more time to examine whether such post-9/11 techniques are still needed. And on Thursday, the House -- by a 279-143 vote -- agreed.

Without action, the entire law would have sunset at the end of the month. With Thursday's vote, another due date will fall at the end of May.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) again led opposition to the extension, saying the law "issues from pestiferous soil laced with lies and distortions." After the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, "we created a national security state which threatens our Constitution and weakens our basic liberties," Kucinich said. ". . . We have been sold a bill of goods, lies about WMDs, questions about the nature of the anthrax attack, which caused us all too willingly to limit our civil liberties."

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Patriot Act Passes House With Wiretap Authority -- a Week After It Was Rejected

Tom Diemer — 2011-02-15T09:01:00+00:00

Filed under: House, Democrats, Republicans, Terror, National Security, Congress, John Boehner

What a difference a week makes. House Republican leaders lowered the bar and won approval for extension of the Patriot Act -- complete with its "roving wiretaps" provision -- one week after the bill was rejected by the same body.

The difference: This time the bill, which passed on 275-144 vote Monday, needed only a simple majority to advance -- not the two-thirds super-majority required last week when House Speaker John Boehner attempted to zip it through on a fast-track procedure. The Senate followed up Tuesday with a short-term extension.

The bill authorizes the FBI to use moveable wiretaps on investigative targets without getting multiple court orders, gives the government access to tangible items such as library records in certain international terrorism cases, and allows surveillance of "lone wolf" suspects not linked to any specific terrorist group.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), a leading critic, said the three surveillance provisions, approved in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, "were given sunsets in recognition of their far-reaching and unprecedented powers." The law, he said, effectively allows government to carry out "domestic surveillance and demand material from people not connected to any terrorism investigation, including librarians and peace groups. Yet [the surveillance sections] have been extended . . . without any reform."

Boehner, making sure the controversial measure went through all of its readings and other regimens, found the votes he needed Monday night, with 65 Democrats joining with most Republicans, the Washington Post reported.

Democratic opponents had tried to kick the bill back to the House Judiciary Committee to add language assuring that intelligence probes of U.S. citizens are conducted "in a manner that complies with the Constitution of the United States." That motion failed, although it got the support from two Republicans: Reps. Ron Paul of Texas and Walter Jones of North Carolina.

Update: On Tuesday, the Senate voted 86-12 to extend the three surveillance provisions -- due to expire at the end of February -- for 90 days. That allows time for a review of the language and another vote in the spring.

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Egypt Update: Obama Welcomes Army Promise of 'Democratic' Transition

Politics Daily Staff — 2011-02-12T19:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, International, United Kingdom, Military, Middle East, Barack Obama, Egypt Crisis

President Obama welcomed Saturday the announcement by Egypt's military that it would oversee a peaceful transition to a democratic system as the country faced a new day and uncertain future in the wake of the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.

In Cairo, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said it aspired "to guarantee the peaceful transfer of power within the framework of a free democratic system that allows an elected civilian power to rule the country, in order to build a free democratic state," the New York Times reported. The statement said Egypt would continue to abide by international and regional treaties -- that would include the 1979 peace accord with Israel.

U.S. Vulnerable to Terrorism, Especially Cyber Attacks, Intelligence Chiefs Say

Alex Wagner — 2011-02-10T16:00:00+00:00

Filed under: House, Terror, National Security, International, al Qaeda, Egypt Crisis

The United States remains vulnerable to attacks by both foreign and domestic terrorists, particularly on the nation's vast computer networks -- systems that coordinate everything from power grids to financial markets to the government itself.

"This is the battleground for the future," CIA Director Leon Panetta said during a hearing Thursday before the House Subcommittee on Intelligence. "The next Pearl Harbor may very well be a cyber attack."

Calling the cyber threat "increasing in scope" and saying "its impact is difficult to overestimate," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper noted that as many as 60,000 new malicious software programs are being developed every day.

Noting that Russia, China, Iran and other countries had begun developing capacities to launch cyber attacks, Panetta said it was imperative that the U.S. begin developing its defenses to warn of an attack.

When pressed by Rep. James Langevin (D-R.I.) as to whether the country could, at present, stop such an attack, Undersecretary of Homeland Security Caryn Wagner did not offer a definitive answer. "We are working on it," she said, adding that American intelligence networks are in "a better position than we were before."

Both FBI Director Robert Mueller and Clapper also stressed the need to reauthorize the Patriot Act through the end of the year -- a bill that a bipartisan group of House members initially rejected on Wednesday.

Highlighting the act's "roving wiretap" provision, Mueller said such a law is critical in allowing the federal government to monitor potential terrorists as they switch communications among devices such as cellphones, iPads and gaming consoles. "This is critically important to all of us," said Clapper.

Another section of the act, dubbed the "lone wolf" provision, was described by Mueller as a necessary provision that allowed the government to identify individuals deemed national security risks even though they may not be linked to a terrorist network.

Mueller said that "the threat in this day and age is increasingly lone wolves" -- persons who are radicalized domestically. Panetta said these "self-radicalizers" are "less sophisticated, but trickier to find."

Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, called a "lone wolf attack with a conventional weapon" the likeliest threat. "We have seen a heightened state of radicalization and mobilization among homegrown extremists," he said.

Citing established terrorist networks, including al-Qaeda and its affiliates, Leiter said that al-Qaeda senior leadership in Pakistan remains "committed to obtaining all types of weapons of mass destruction," but noted that "thanks to outstanding and effective action" by law enforcement teams, "their ability to do so is greatly diminished since 9-11."

Al-Qaeda affiliates, including those in Yemen, also remain committed to obtaining weapons of mass destruction -- with particular emphasis on chemical and biological weapons, according to Leiter.

The intelligence chiefs were asked to respond to criticism that their agencies had been inadequate in predicting the national revolution in Egypt.

Likening the situation to predicting an earthquake in California, Panetta said, "People can tell you where the tremors are, where the fault lines are ... but they can't tell you exactly when the earthquake is going to take place."

The CIA director said that in the wake of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, he had told his chiefs of station to better monitor triggers on the ground. Specifically, Panetta has assigned a 35-member task force to focus on issues such as popular sentiments, the strength of the opposition, and the role of the Internet.

Asked to grade the federal intelligence gathering efforts overall, Clapper said he would give them a B+ -- but said he would defer his explanation as to why until a classified briefing later in the day.

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House Republicans Botch Second Bill as New Majority Is on Tough Learning Curve

Tom Diemer — 2011-02-10T12:54:00+00:00

Filed under: House, Democrats, Republicans, Gaffes, Foreign Policy, National Security, 2010 Elections, Congress, Conservatives, Tea Party, John Boehner

For a second day, the new House Republican majority botched a bill that leaders were so certain would pass they put it on a fast-track procedure that required a two-thirds vote for approval.

The measure, a demand for a $179 million repayment from the United Nations, fell short of that super-majority on Wednesday. In setting themselves up for failure, the GOP leadership violated a well-known Capitol Hill rule: Don't allow a bill to go to the House floor unless you are certain ahead of time that you have sufficient votes for its passage.

"We have been in the majority for four weeks," House Speaker John Boehner told the New York Times after the U.N. bill missed the two-thirds mark by 25 votes. "We are not going to be perfect every day."

A less than perfect day got worse early Wednesday evening when New York Rep. Christopher Lee, a Republican, resigned his House seat. That came after a racy, shirtless photo showed up on the Internet from a Craigslist posting in which Lee appeared to be advertising himself to an unnamed single woman.

Lee, who is married, was in his second term. But 87 Republicans are freshmen -- many aligned with the conservative tea party movement -- and it seems they don't take direction very well.

The U.N. bill should have been a no-brainer for the Republican leadership: a claim that the United States had overpaid the international organization and should be reimbursed. But at least some of the money being demanded has been pledged for security improvements at the U.N. headquarters in New York City. And the threat to those funds turned Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and one freshman Republican against the measure, Bloomberg reported.

King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) joined with most of the Democrats in denying the legislation the votes it needed. The embarrassment came one day after more than two dozen Republicans defected during a House roll call that ended up seven votes short of passing extensions of surveillance provisions in the Patriot Act.

Boehner, an Ohio Republican in his 11th term, served as minority leader before succeeding Rep. Nancy Pelosi as speaker after the GOP captured the majority last November. He is expected to bring both of the challenged bills back for second votes -- this time using parliamentary procedures requiring only a simple majority.

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House Rejects Extension of Patriot Act Wiretaps -- for Now at Least

Tom Diemer — 2011-02-09T09:46:00+00:00

Filed under: Democrats, Republicans, Obama Administration, National Security, 2010 Elections, Congress, Conservatives, Tea Party, Barack Obama

In a setback for the new Republican leadership, the House refused to extend surveillance sections of the Patriot Act that allow government to use roving wiretaps on terror suspects and also gain access to tangible items such as library records.

An unlikely alliance of Republicans and Democrats -- joined by a concern for individual liberties -- brought the bill down Tuesday night. It mustered majority support in the 277-148 vote, but fell seven short of the two-thirds needed to pass under a speed-up procedure.

GOP leaders blamed Democrats for the measure's defeat and said they had voted against the wishes of President Obama, who favors an extension until late 2013. The bill at hand would have re-authorized the controversial provisions, due to expire at the end of the month, through Dec. 8. They were enacted in reaction to 9/11, when many members of both parties feared more large-scale terrorist attacks were imminent.

"Democrats in Congress voted to deny their own administration's request for key weapons in the war on terror," Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told the Washington Post.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), a civil libertarian and persistent critic of the Patriot Act, didn't apologize. Noting that 26 Republicans -- some of them elected with tea party backing -- voted against the extension, he said he now has company in his fight to rein in threats to individual liberties made in the name of national security.

"Remember the American Revolution: We didn't hear 'Give me liberty or give me a wiretap,' " Kucinich said. "We didn't hear 'Don't tread on me . . . but it's okay to spy.' "

"Many members of Congress, including those supported by my friends in the tea party, maintain their goal is to get rid of big government, to get government out of our lives," Kucinich said during House debate on the measure. ". . . Some want to get government out of health care, some want to get government out of retirement security. How about getting government out of people's bedrooms -- out of people's financial records and people's medical records? Vote no."

Enough did -- this time. House leaders are expected to bring back the bill later this month under regular rules, requiring only a simple majority to pass.

In addition to maintaining the government's authority to move wiretaps around on targets without getting multiple court orders, the bill permits the FBI to apply for special authority to get access to "any tangible item" in foreign intelligence, international terrorism and certain other intelligence cases. It would also allow surveillance of terror suspects not linked to any specific group.

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Obama Sends Religious Freedom Nominee Back to Senate Despite Concerns

David Gibson — 2011-02-08T13:05:00+00:00

Filed under: Senate, Republicans, Religion, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, Disputations, Conservatives, Middle East, White House, Barack Obama, Islam, Human Rights

President Obama has re-nominated a New York pastor and motivational speaker, Suzan Johnson Cook, also known as "Dr. Sujay," to be his ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom despite widespread concerns about her qualifications for the post and a Senate "hold" that halted her confirmation last year.

Obama waited until last June to fill a post that had already been low on the diplomatic pecking order despite the critical importance of the issue, as recent events in Egypt and the rest of the Muslim world have shown. And Johnson Cook, a Baptist pastor from the Bronx, was from the start cast as too much of a lightweight for such a job: She has been a chaplain to the New York City Police Department, has written books of spiritual uplift, and was described in a 2002 New York Times story as "Billy Graham and Oprah rolled into one."

That wasn't what Sen. Jim DeMint, the conservative South Carolina Republican, was looking for in the nation's chief promoter of religious freedom overseas, and he reportedly put a hold on her nomination, which then expired over the Christmas recess. But it didn't seem there was a lot of enthusiasm for Cook anywhere else, either. Her November confirmation hearing was perfunctory -- she was asked one question, and Sen. John Kerry, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee vetting her, wasn't present.

Obama did not include Johnson Cook among his recess appointments in early January, and some advocates for religious freedom rights used that opening to drum up support for the issue, and perhaps for a different nominee if necessary.

For example, Thomas F. Farr, a former diplomat who heads the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, sent out an e-mail appeal in late January asking activists to lobby the White House to put a greater emphasis on international religious freedom and the post of ambassador-at-large.

"There is, it seems to me, good reason to be alarmed by the administration's utter indifference to reinvigorating US international religious freedom policy," Farr wrote. An influential and experienced voice in that post was necessary "to address more effectively, for example, the increasing persecution of Christians in the Middle East, or the continued growth of Islamist extremism."

Farr wrote that if no pressure were forthcoming, Johnson Cook would likely be re-nominated and the issue would probably continue to take a back seat. That seems to be what happened, as Farr had predicted:

"Bottom line: there is virtually no pressure -- public or private -- for the White House, the State Department, or the Democrat-controlled Senate to treat US religious freedom policy with any seriousness."

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At Risk in Egypt's Turmoil: U.S. Military Access to the Middle East

David Wood — 2011-02-05T22:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Iran, Foreign Policy, National Security, International, Military, Analysis, Iraq, Egypt Crisis

Three hundred combat-armed paratroopers from the 82^nd Airborne Division plummeted from a cobalt Egyptian sky. U.S. and Egyptian marines swarmed ashore in waves of armored vehicles, and American jets streaked low overhead. It was October 2009, the most recent -- and perhaps the last -- of the massive combat maneuvers staged in Egypt every two years in an assertive demonstration of U.S. power and resolve in the troubled Middle East.

Whatever the outcome of the tumult wracking Egypt, those who eventually consolidate power in Cairo may not welcome back the biannual Bright Star military exercises.
Also suddenly at risk, along with Bright Star, is the access of U.S. military forces to Egypt's sprawling naval facilities at Alexandria and the huge Cairo West air base, as well as over-flight rights and guaranteed transit for U.S. warships through the Suez Canal -- all critical underpinnings of the U.S. ability to project power in the region, to contain Iran, reassure Israel and strengthen stability.

Egyptian Crisis Biggest Foreign Test Yet for Obama Administration

Andrea Stone — 2011-01-31T21:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Hillary Clinton, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, National Security, International, al Qaeda, Middle East, White House, Analysis, Barack Obama, Islam, Egypt Crisis

WASHINGTON -- A week of protests in Egypt neared a climax as a million people prepared to march in Cairo and the army vowed to recognize "the legitimacy of the people's demands," all but spelling the end of President Hosni Mubarak's iron-fisted rule and signaling the start of a new strategic relationship for the United States.

"Orderly transition means change," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, explaining what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meant when she said the United States was "ready to help with the kind of transition that will lead to greater political and economic freedom."

Though no one in the administration has directly called on Mubarak to step down after nearly three decades in office, the State Department said Monday that former Ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner was in Cairo to meet Egyptian officials to help them plan for free and fair elections.

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