Politics Daily http://www.politicsdaily.com Politics Daily http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.politicsdaily.com/media/feedlogo.gif Politics Daily http://www.politicsdaily.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/Obama Getting Heat From Left and Right for U.S. Role in Libyan Attackshttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/22/obama-getting-heat-from-left-and-right-for-u-s-role-in-libyan-a/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/22/obama-getting-heat-from-left-and-right-for-u-s-role-in-libyan-a/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/22/obama-getting-heat-from-left-and-right-for-u-s-role-in-libyan-a/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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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]]>dennis kucinichImpeachmentJames Webbrichard lugarroscoe bartlettPolitics Daily Staff2011-03-22T09:32:00+00:00Survey Rebuts Rep. Peter King's Claims on Radicals and Mosqueshttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/10/survey-rebuts-rep-peter-kings-claims-on-radicals-and-mosques/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/10/survey-rebuts-rep-peter-kings-claims-on-radicals-and-mosques/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/10/survey-rebuts-rep-peter-kings-claims-on-radicals-and-mosques/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , , , , , ,

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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]]>dailyguidancehearingsIRAmosquesPeter Kingradical IslamRadicalIslamDavid Gibson2011-03-10T10:29:00+00:00Should Rep. Peter King Investigate the Catholic Church?http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/09/should-rep-peter-king-investigate-the-catholic-church/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/09/should-rep-peter-king-investigate-the-catholic-church/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/09/should-rep-peter-king-investigate-the-catholic-church/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , , ,

Rep. Peter King, the Long Island congressman who for years supported the Irish Republican Army as it waged a terror campaign to eject the British from Northern Ireland, says that track record has no bearing on his controversial decision to hold hearings this week on what he calls the "radicalization" of Islam in America.

The two examples are different, he argues, and the main reason is that unlike radical Muslims, the I.R.A. never launched attacks in the United States. (That made sense, since Irish-Americans were sending crucial material support to the I.R.A.)

"I understand why people who are misinformed might see a parallel. The fact is, the I.R.A. never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States," King, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told The New York Times.

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Okay, so how about investigating the Roman Catholic Church, another religious community -- like Islam -- and one to which the Irish-Catholic congressman also professes great loyalty?

As Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen pointed out on Tuesday, if Congress is going to start investigating religious groups whose members have attacked Americans, that could be bad news for the Catholic Church given the extent of the clergy sexual abuse scandal. (And Cohen's piece was published hours before the latest shocker, the mass suspension of 21 priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia following a grand jury probe -- the second since 2005 -- of the sexual abuse of children by clergy in the city.)

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League jumped on Cohen -- as is his wont -- for citing an exaggerated figure of 100,000 possible victims of clergy abuse, noting, correctly, that the figure is more like 12,000 (though this crime is notoriously under reported). Donohue did not, however, dispute Cohen's central premise about the problematic nature of King's investigation of Islam (though he followed-up this story with a criticism of the premise and a full-throated endorsement of King's hearings).

Still, a toll of thousands of children abused over five decades is hardly what the lawyers might call exculpatory evidence.

Little wonder that former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a Republican, onetime FBI agent and federal prosecutor, and devout Catholic, likened some bishops to the Mafia when he was named in 2002 to be the first head of a lay oversight board to keep the hierarchy honest in its abuse-prevention policies.

Such characterizations got Keating forced out by the bishops after a year in the post, and his resignation letter still minced no words: "To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my church."

Of course, a congressional investigation of the Catholic Church would be met with howls of protests from the likes of Donohue and most certainly Peter King, and rightly so.

The point is that the religious community that Muslims today most clearly resemble is the Roman Catholic Church, and it was thus as recently as King's own youth, when John F. Kennedy barely won election due to concerns that one could not be a "good Catholic" and a "good American."

Indeed, during the campaign Kennedy famously had to assure Protestant pastors that he would never take orders from the Vatican (a pronouncement many conservative Christians today now hold against Kennedy and his Catholic heirs in the Democratic Party -- sometimes you can't win for losing).

King's hearing set for Thursday has been compared to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, while others speculated that they would be akin to holding congressional hearings on the role of Christianity in promoting violence against gays or abortion providers.

But the Islamic-Catholic analogy is most apt.

Like Muslims in America today, Catholics were seen as foreign-born immigrants who were subject to a foreign ruler, namely the Pope in Rome, who did not recognize religious freedom and democratic governance.

The latter charges were actually true, more or less, until the reforms of the 1960s, though American Catholics took little notice of such teachings, much as American Muslims would stare blankly if asked about the latest fatwa from some imam in Iran.

(In 1928, New York Gov. Al Smith, the first Catholic nominated as a presidential candidate, was challenged by a prominent Episcopal layman to explain how he could expect to uphold the Constitution if elected while at the same time accepting the teaching in papal encyclicals. "What the hell is an encyclical?" Smith reportedly asked. He still got creamed by Herbert Hoover.)

During the 19th century a major political party was founded to combat Catholic influence, and Catholic students were unable to attend public schools without having to imbibe Protestant teachings. Catholics were subject to outbursts of popular violence, and when the pope donated a stone for the construction of the Washington Monument in 1854, an anti-Catholic mob threw it into the Potomac River. Thomas Nast's famous 1875 cartoon, "The American River Ganges," showed St. Peter's Basilica in the background with mitred Catholic bishops as crocodiles attacking the United States to devour the nation's schoolchildren.

Such sentiments were all too common, as were efforts -- as Paul Moses noted in Commonweal magazine -- to stop the construction of Catholic churches in U.S. cities, almost a mirror image of the fierce arguments last year against construction of the so-called "ground zero" mosque, also known as the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan.

It was King, in fact, who had a key role in fomenting opposition to the Islamic center, saying early last year that it was "particularly offensive" because "so many Muslim leaders have failed to speak out against radical Islam, against the attacks" of 9/11.

Those arguments laid the ground work for King's subsequent charges that American Muslims and their leaders are not cooperating with authorities to thwart terrorist plots and that 80 percent of mosques in America are controlled by radical imams. Even though King has provided no evidence for the charges -- and the latest research counters his claims -- he is going ahead with a hearing to "test" his hypothesis.

King continued his line of argumentation on the eve of the hearing, telling the Associated Press that radical Islam is a distinct threat that must be investigated regardless of whose sensibilities are offended.

"You have a violent enemy from overseas which threatens us and which is recruiting people from a community living in our country," King said. He could have been talking about his own Catholic community in the 1800s.

It is also interesting to note that Catholics often reacted to such denigration by trying to prove they were more patriotic than the Founding Fathers which, as Notre Dame church historians R. Scott Appleby and John T. McGreevy have pointed out, sometimes led to excesses like Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist hearings of the 1950s.

That's a historical parallel Peter King may also want to remember.

 

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]]>911anti-CatholicismhearingsIslamPeter KingDavid Gibson2011-03-09T16:40:00+00:00Peter King's IRA Support Resurfaces as Lawmaker Probes Muslim Radicalism in U.S.http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/09/peter-kings-ira-support-resurfaces-as-lawmaker-probes-muslim-ra/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/09/peter-kings-ira-support-resurfaces-as-lawmaker-probes-muslim-ra/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/09/peter-kings-ira-support-resurfaces-as-lawmaker-probes-muslim-ra/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

As Rep. Peter King gets ready to open hearings Thursday on Muslim radicals in the U.S., the New York lawmaker is facing questions about his own past as an unapologetic supporter of the anti-British Irish Republican Army.

From his days as the elected Nassau County comptroller in the early 1980s, King has spoken out for the IRA, a nationalist group that waged a bloody bomb-and-bullet campaign for three decades in an effort to drive the British out of Northern Ireland. To King and other supporters, the IRA volunteers were freedom fighters. But to others, including many Irish Americans, the Provisionals (as the main IRA group was known) were terrorists.

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In 1982, the New York Republican told a pro-IRA rally on Long Island, "We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry," according to an extensive account in the New York Times that traced King's IRA ties. A few years later, King said, "If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the IRA for it."

The IRA, which emerged in 1916 as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, did attack British military installations and soldiers, but also Protestant paramilitary members, Northern Irish police (the Royal Ulster Constabulary) and sometimes pubs and shops. In the 1980s, the IRA bought weapons from Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.

Yet King is also credited with playing a role in peace talks that brought together members of Sinn Fein -- the IRA's political wing -- Protestant political leaders, British government officials and representatives of the independent Republic of Ireland. King told CNN he helped bring peace about in the six counties in the north of Ireland. "This isn't me saying it, it's Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, among others." He even has a signed photo of former British Prime Minister Blair on his office wall.

King, 66, still insists the rebel army was a "legitimate force" in a "dirty war on both sides." Although the IRA Provisional command gave up its arsenal in the aftermath of the 1998 Good Friday Accord, one or two IRA splinter groups are still in existence.

King, son of a New York City police officer and grand-nephew of an IRA member, was profoundly affected by the 9/11 attacks on his hometown, New York City, and rejects any comparisons between the IRA and al-Qaeda. "I understand why people who are misinformed might see a parallel," he told the Times. "The fact is, the IRA never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States."

As the Homeland Security Committee he chairs opens hearings Thursday examining reports of radicalization in the American Muslim community, King has received a flurry of threats, including worrisome phone calls from abroad, according to The Hill. Extra security will be on hand at the hearing, although King said he had not requested it.

He has claimed that 85 percent of the leaders of American mosques have extremist views and that Muslims often do not cooperate with law enforcement. Critics of the hearings fear that they will spread blame for the acts of a few to the wider, law-abiding Muslim community. First-day witnesses include Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who is Muslim, and Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim physician and activist.

"This hearing is not focusing on the acts of a criminal fringe, but is broad-brushing an entire community," Muslim Public Affairs Council analyst Alejandro J. Beutel said to the Times.

Folo Tom Diemer on Twitter http://twitter.com/tomdiemer

 

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]]>al-qaedadailyguidanceirairelandpeter kingTom Diemer2011-03-09T11:09:00+00:00Rep. Peter King Says Threat of Domestic Islamic Terrorism Justifies Upcoming Hearinghttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/06/rep-peter-king-says-threat-of-domestic-islamic-terrorism-justif/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/06/rep-peter-king-says-threat-of-domestic-islamic-terrorism-justif/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/06/rep-peter-king-says-threat-of-domestic-islamic-terrorism-justif/#commentsFiled under: ,

Rep. Peter King of New York defended on Sunday a congressional hearing he will hold this week on the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism that focuses on Muslim-Americans, calling it an issue "which is not being talked about publicly" and needs to be.

"People in this country are being self-radicalized, whether it's Major Hasan or whether it's Shahzad or whether it was Zazi in New York," King said on CNN's "State of the Union." "These were all people who were identifying, in one way or another, with al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. So it's an international movement with elements here in the United States."

King was referring to Army Major Nidal Malik Hassan, a military psychiatrist whose shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009 claimed 13 lives; Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born man living in Colorado charged in 2009 with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction; and Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born man living in suburban Connecticut, whose attempt to blow up a bomb in Times Square last June was foiled.

King said the hearing by his Homeland Security Committee, scheduled for Thursday, will "go forward; and it's going to talk about something which is not being talked about publicly, which I think should be."

Asked about a recent report saying that 48 of 120 cases involving terrorist plots came from tips from the Muslim-American community, King said he did believed there has been "insufficient cooperation" and that this would be a key focus of the hearing.

"Certainly in my dealings with the police in New York and FBI and others say they do not believe -- they do not get the level of cooperation that they need, and even in Minneapolis we had occasions with Somali-Americans who felt that there were imams in their own community who were telling them not to cooperate with the FBI," he said.

Rep. Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat who was the first Muslim to be elected to Congress, said on the same program: "It's absolutely the right thing to do for the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee to investigate radicalization, but to say we're going to investigate a religious minority ... is the wrong course of action to take."

Ellison said King's hearing would play into the hands of terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, by enabling them to "stand up and claim, you know, 'See, we told you; America's at war with Islam.'"

"That's one of their main recruiting arguments," Ellison said. "That's why I think that we need to be careful about how we use the instrumentality of the government in investigative hearings."

"The strategy should be to engage the community, don't frighten the community, engage the community and help, and say 'Look, we embrace you as fellow Americans. Let's all together hold hands and meet the security challenge.'"

 

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]]>dailyguidanceFaisal ShahzadFort Hood shootingsHomegrown Islamic TerrorismHouse Homeland Security CommitteeIslamic terrorismIslamic Terrorism HearingsKeith EllisonNajibullah ZaziNidal Malik HassanPeter KingTimes Square bomberBruce Drake2011-03-06T12:27:00+00:00Libya and Iraq: Two Ways of Opposing a Tyrant -- but One Stole the Nation's Pridehttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/05/libya-and-iraq-two-ways-of-opposing-a-tyrant-but-one-stole-t/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/05/libya-and-iraq-two-ways-of-opposing-a-tyrant-but-one-stole-t/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/05/libya-and-iraq-two-ways-of-opposing-a-tyrant-but-one-stole-t/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , , , , , ,

The historic anti-authoritarian, pro-democratic uprisings that have swept across North Africa raise an intriguing and troubling question: Absent American intervention, could a similar movement have unseated Iraq's Saddam Hussein?

Communism came to Eastern Europe in the kit bag of the Red Army, according to the old glib-but-accurate gibe. This is essentially how the U.S. military installed democracy in Iraq.

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It didn't have to be that way. In the wake of Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which pushed the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, U.S. policy-makers urged Iraq's Shia and Kurds to rise up against the reeling regime. Then, when they did, American forces left them to be crushed by the dictator's untender mercies (just as the Dulles brothers did with Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956). Under George W. Bush, neo-cons insisted that the oppressed and demoralized Iraqi people would never again summon the wherewithal to overthrow Hussein on their own, so the U.S. had to invade.

However, events in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia challenge that assumption. True, Iraq's Sunni-dominated army was in no way a potentially neutral (and decisive) third force, as it was in Tunisia and Egypt. At the time, political observers saw just one alternative to invasion for deposing Hussein: a bloody, U.S.-instigated military coup. Without the invasion, Bush administration strategists might now argue, the regime could have lasted another decade, and made untold mischief in the region. But what if they were wrong?

What has been sacrificed in the intervening years? For us, thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. On the Iraqi side, hundreds of thousands of lives -- many, if not most, civilians -- and untold damage to infrastructure. But in the process, something more enduring was also taken from the Iraqi people: their history, and not just the antiquities looted from the National Museum in the wake of the invasion.

Unlike other nations in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia that cherish their revolutionary and anti-colonial origins, Iraqis will always know that their freedom was handed to them by a foreign power. Even the war's greatest photo op -- pulling down Saddam's statue in a Baghdad square -- was accomplished with a U.S. military vehicle.

In Libya, Western military intervention may yet prove crucial -- it's no coincidence the U.S. Marine anthem includes the phrase, "to the shores of Tripoli," recalling another action. But if it does there will be little question that the bulk of the credit should go to the Libyan people who mounted the insurrection, doing their own fighting and dying in the face of daunting odds.

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee Tuesday, "We are also very conscious of the desire by the Libyan opposition forces that they be seen as doing this by themselves on behalf of the Libyan people, that there not be outside intervention by any external force. Because they want this to have been their accomplishment. We respect that."

Even Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, acknowledged the lesson in his opening remarks to the Arab League in Cairo on Wednesday, saying all of the region's governments "desire for no foreign intervention" in Libya.

"We hope the Libyan people can overcome these difficult conditions, and that the Libyan leaders take brave stands to stop bloodshed and respect the legitimate desires and rights of its people to live in a free, democratic nation," Zebari said, according to a Reuters report.

Even if, in the end, Western military intervention does prove critical to victory, it will fall into the category of support, much like the French, Polish and Irish assistance provided to the 18th century American revolutionaries. American conservatives don't like to admit it, but the French fleet ensured the colonists' final triumph at Yorktown.

In Afghanistan, the national narrative was already established long before U.S. troops arrived. The country has defeated foreign invaders and occupiers for centuries, up to and including the Red Army of the Soviet Union. In all likelihood, they will simply wait out the Americans and the client regime in Kabul, and go back to telling their country's glorious story in classrooms and around campfires.

All that has been taken from the Iraqis -- forever.

 

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]]>Iraq warlibyaMoammar GadhafiSaddam HusseinMark I. Pinsky2011-03-05T22:00:00+00:00WikiLeaks Suspect Bradley Manning Hit With 22 New Chargeshttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/03/wikileaks-suspect-bradley-manning-hit-with-22-new-charges/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/03/wikileaks-suspect-bradley-manning-hit-with-22-new-charges/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/03/03/wikileaks-suspect-bradley-manning-hit-with-22-new-charges/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , , ,

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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]]>Bradley Manning and Julian AssangedailyguidanceTom Diemer2011-03-03T09:56:00+00:00Obama Says Gadhafi Must Leave Libya 'Now'http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/26/obama-says-gadhafi-must-leave-libya-now/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/26/obama-says-gadhafi-must-leave-libya-now/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/26/obama-says-gadhafi-must-leave-libya-now/#commentsFiled under: , , , , ,

President Obama said Saturday Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi lost his legitimacy after resorting to mass violence against his own people "and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now."

The White House said Obama talked about the need for Gadhafi to surrender power in a private telephone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It was one of his strongest statements yet on the deteriorating situation in Libya.

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"The president and the chancellor shared deep concerns about the Libyan government's continued violations of human rights and brutalization of its people," an administration release said.

Obama and Merkel discussed "appropriate and effective ways for the international community to respond" and agreed that Gadhafi's government must be held accountable for the violence.

In Libya, the Associated Press said British military planes had rescued oil field workers and others in desert locations and flown them safely to the island of Malta. Few planes have been able to enter Libyan air space, but the C-130 Hercules aircraft managed to pick up more than 150 civilians, including British citizens, south of the port of Benghazi, British Defense Minister Liam Fox told the AP.

 

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]]>Angela Merkel - Germany - World LeaderdailyguidanceTom Diemer2011-02-26T17:51:00+00:00In Libya's Escalating Chaos, an Opening for al-Qaeda?http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/24/in-libyas-chaos-an-opening-for-al-qaeda/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/24/in-libyas-chaos-an-opening-for-al-qaeda/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/24/in-libyas-chaos-an-opening-for-al-qaeda/#commentsFiled under: , , , , ,

In yet another bizarre outburst, embattled Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is claiming that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are behind the uprisings across Libya, an absurd assertion given the breadth of the popular demonstrations and the protesters' demand for political freedoms.

But U.S. and international counterterrorism officials aren't laughing. Al-Qaeda already has a foothold in Libya -- albeit a small one -- along with another armed radical Islamist organization. And the growing chaos across Libya could be the perfect medium to trigger an explosive growth of Islamist extremism, some terrorism experts say.

That's a prime factor in the Obama administration's deepening concern that at least parts of Libya could collapse into ungoverned spaces, joining Somalia and Yemen as places where al-Qaeda and its franchises are active and growing, threatening not just surrounding countries but capable of mounting attacks inside the United States as well.

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On Thursday, the immediate concern of the Obama administration was the safety of Americans and others caught inside Libya. President Obama conferred with major allies, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, to coordinate a response to the deteriorating situation, the White House said.

"We expect to take action in the near term to -- with the international community -- to . . . compel the Libyan government to stop killing its own people,'' White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday. "We have a situation in Libya that demands quick action.''

Asked whether a U.S. military response was being prepared, Carney said, "there are no options we're taking off the table, but what we're focused on are the options that we can take to affect the situation in the near term.''

Economic sanctions were under discussion, but given that it would be weeks or months before they could take effect, a joint international military response seemed increasingly likely. Gadhafi's security forces have sufficient weapons and ammunition for the foreseeable future, officials said, making an arms embargo irrelevant. And an embargo to halt Libya's oil exports would raise international oil prices even higher.

Beyond the plight of foreigners caught in Libya's growing violence are the longer-term repercussions of intensifying violence as Gadhafi sets his security forces against the civilian uprisings in Tripoli and other cities in western and central Libya. To the east, most cities, including Benghazi and Tobruk, are in the hands of demonstrators and defecting Libyan army units, although sporadic fighting was reported there as well. Bloody fighting continued Thursday in Tripoli.

Given the inability of the Gadhafi regime to regain control, "the likely near-term scenario is protracted conflict between the two sides,'' said Fred Wehrey, a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corp., who returned last week from Libya.

Wehrey said Thursday that an al-Qaeda "franchise" or affiliate called al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) has been particularly active in southwestern Libya, along the border with Algeria and Niger. AQIM has long been active in Algeria.

But according to assessments by the State Department and the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, AQIM has expanded its operations, becoming more aggressive across the region. It has attacked police stations, detonated suicide bombs, and focused on kidnapping Westerners and holding them for ransom or killing its hostages. AQIM sent squads of fighters into combat against U.S. forces in Iraq, and according to European police officials, has recently expanded into Europe, becoming what some U.S. officials characterize as a true regional terrorist organization.

In Libya, Wehrey said AQIM, exploiting tribal animosities, has used local training camps and smuggling routes in southwest Libya. Whether AQIM and other Islamist groups can exploit the growing chaos there and in eastern Libya, he said, "is an open question.''

Gadhafi became a special target of radical Islamist groups after 2003, when he renounced his long practice of supporting and financing terrorist operations. He severed relations with Islamist organizations, turned to the West, and even gave up his nuclear weapons program. Given his close collaboration with President George W. Bush on issues of nuclear weapons and terrorism, Gadhafi clearly became an object of suspicion by groups like al-Qaeda.

The feeling apparently was mutual. Gadhafi's hatred of al-Qaeda rang clear Thursday as he ranted on state television about al-Qaeda being the cause of the uprisings. "It is obvious now that this issue is run by al-Qaeda,'' he declared, asserting that al-Qaeda was manipulating under-age, drug-crazed youth. "They are taking advantage of the young age of these people because they are not legally liable!'' he shouted.

The rift between Gadhafi and Islamic groups likely led to a merger between AQIM and a home-grown Libyan organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, engineered in 2007 by Ayman al-Zawahiri, a senior al-Qaeda strategist. The LIFG has conducted a sporadic but violent insurgency against the Gadafi regime, and was the target of several Libyan assaults by air and ground forces against its bases in eastern Libya.

Not everyone shares the concern about al-Qaeda in Libya. "They don't have the numbers to put together some kind of expeditionary corps and send it to Libya,'' said Andrew McGregor, an expert in radical Islamic groups at Aberfoyle International Security in Toronto and an editor of the Jamestown Foundation's Global Terrorism Analysis publications.

The Libyan Islamic Fighting group, he said, was virtually wiped out in a massacre of prisoners inside a Libyan prison in 1996 and only remnants of the organization still exist.

While the repercussions of Libya's popular revolution may be unclear, McGregor said, one thing is obvious and important. In the demonstrations in Libya as in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia and elsewhere across the Arab world, what the protesters are demanding is more freedom, more openness, greater opportunity -- not a sharp turn toward a fundamentalist Islamist society. Even if AQIM and others were gathering in the wings to seize power, he said, "None of the protests are being done by people who are calling for radical movements to take over.''

 

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]]>GadhafiGadhafi al QaedaLibyalibya and al-qaedalibya chaoslibya crisisLibya violenceLibyan Islamic Fighting GroupMoammar GadhafiQaddafitripoliDavid Wood2011-02-24T22:00:00+00:00Suspected Terror Plotter's Targets Included Home of George W. Bushhttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/24/suspected-terror-plotters-targets-included-home-of-george-w-bu/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/24/suspected-terror-plotters-targets-included-home-of-george-w-bu/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/24/suspected-terror-plotters-targets-included-home-of-george-w-bu/#commentsFiled under:

A 20-year-old Saudi man studying in Texas has been arrested and accused of amassing bomb components and compiling a list of possible targets, including nuclear power plants and the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush.

Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, who attended South Plains College near Lubbock, was charged with attempting to build and use a weapon of mass destruction, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

The FBI said Aldawsari apparently has no links to international terrorist organizations. He is in the U.S. on a 2008 student visa.

Aldawsari allegedly kept a detailed journal outlining plans for attacks and listed the home addresses of three former U.S. military officers from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where inmates were tortured, according to an FBI affidavit cited in The Los Angeles Times.

He allegedly listed hydroelectric and reservoir dams in California and Colorado, described nuclear power plants as "nice targets," and disparaged Bush's Texas home as the "tyrant's house," the Times said.

The FBI said Aldawsari bought chemicals and other bomb-making materials, including wiring, clocks and lab equipment, over the Internet.

Aldawsari is scheduled to appear in federal court in Lubbock on Friday and faces up to life in prison if convicted.

 

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]]>bombCommunity Collegedailyguidancedamsfbigeorge w. bushkhalid ali-m aldawsari arrestedNuclear power plantsChristopher Weber2011-02-24T20:51:00+00:00Does Free Speech Radicalize Youth? In the U.K., Two Answers to a Divisive Questionhttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/23/does-free-speech-radicalize-youth-in-the-u-k-two-answers-to-a/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/23/does-free-speech-radicalize-youth-in-the-u-k-two-answers-to-a/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/23/does-free-speech-radicalize-youth-in-the-u-k-two-answers-to-a/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , ,

LONDON -- How much free speech is good for young people? Does exposure to extremist views enlighten young people or radicalize them?

Here in the U.K., where I live, there are two competing answers to this question.

On one hand, you have Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, who recently employed quite aggressive rhetoric on the topic of Islamic extremism. In a much talked-about speech in Berlin, he denounced Britain's long-held tradition of multi-culturalism as a "failure," calling for a more "active, muscular" approach to the issue. Cameron's view is that the U.K. has for too long allowed Islamic youth to live in what are effectively separate communities, and it is precisely this "passive tolerance" that has allowed home-grown terror groups to flourish.

As a result, the British government is now cutting funding to programs that had reached out to young Muslims considered at risk of being drawn into terrorist networks. Tougher criteria will henceforth be applied, with hundreds of thousands of pounds withdrawn from groups deemed too soft on extremism. In a similar vein, the British government recently banned anti-Islamist Pastor Terry Jones from entering the U.K. on the grounds that his extremist views were not conducive "to the public good."

Contrast this hard-nosed approach with that taken by British universities. In a surprising and highly controversial move, eight university vice chancellors issued a report that rejected demands to ban controversial speakers on campus, arguing that you need to "engage, not marginalize" extreme political views.

The report came in response to the arrest of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- the so-called Christmas Day bomber -- who was charged with attempting to blow up a passenger jet over Detroit in late 2009. Abdulmutallab had been a student at University College London, where he studied engineering and was the head of the Islamic Society. Following his arrest, there was a huge concern here and abroad that universities had become "breeding grounds" for home-grown terrorism.

While noting that meetings of student societies must be open to all rather than just one group, the report's authors clearly came down on the side of engagement over censorship. "By being places where ideas and beliefs can be tested without fear of control," they wrote, universities act as a safeguard against ideologies that threaten Britain's open society. "Unless views can be expressed, they cannot also be challenged."

This debate is taking place inside the halls of Westminster and on British campuses, but it is hardly a British problem alone.

The utility and advisability of hate speech codes on American college campuses has long been debated. And while not about youth per se, the whole "Ground Zero mosque" debate last year was in some ways about whether society should embrace and engage the American Muslim community (even a group that softly supports Hamas) or ostracize it.

Heaven knows that this issue is relevant to what's taking place on the Arab streets. Each day seems to yield a new revolution, often propelled by young people. The ideas and political movements that these young people engage with -- which ones are tolerated and which are circumscribed under the emerging political orders in this new Middle East -- will define their future -- and ours -- for years to come.

Let's hope for all of our sakes that we all strike the right balance between disorder and dissent.

Follow Delia on Twitter.

 

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]]>christmas day bomberfree spech and extremismfree speech and universitiesGround Zero mosquehate speechhate speech vs. free speechIslamic extremismmulticulturalismuniversities and terrorismyouth and extremist ideologiesDelia Lloyd2011-02-23T21:52:00+00:00Mike Huckabee Keeps Up Criticism of Islam in Americahttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/23/mike-huckabee-keeps-up-criticism-of-islam-in-america/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/23/mike-huckabee-keeps-up-criticism-of-islam-in-america/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/23/mike-huckabee-keeps-up-criticism-of-islam-in-america/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , , , , , ,

Just days after stirring Muslim ire for ripping Islam as "the antithesis of the gospel of Christ," Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee again sharply critiqued the religion, telling an evangelical magazine that Muslims are receiving special treatment "at the expense of others" -- apparently referring to Christians -- and that is "un-American."

In the interview with Christianity Today, Huckabee was asked about New York Rep. Peter King's controversial plan to hold hearings in March on the alleged radicalization of American Muslims, and Huckabee responded by talking about concerns that Muslims wanted to "impose" the Islamic religious law code known as Sharia on Americans.

Sharia law cannot be used to trump U.S. laws, but conservatives, including Newt Gingrich -- another GOP hopeful for 2012 -- have gained traction with their base by arguing that it can, and Huckabee seemed to be joining that camp.

"We live in a country where people are free to be Muslim. They're not free, however, to impose a Muslim law as if it were civil law," Huckabee, a Baptist and former pastor, said. "If I were to say, okay, everyone must tithe to their local church, people would be outraged."

Huckabee cited a story from 2007 when a campus of the University of Michigan installed foot baths to accommodate Muslim students -- who comprised 10 percent of the student body -- who wanted a safe facility to wash before their daily prayers. At least 18 other universities also have foot baths for Muslims and any others who want to use them.

"I don't remember anyone ever accommodating me and saying we're going to erect a cross so that we can make sure you're comfortable when you walk across campus," Huckabee said. "I find that the accommodation we're making to one religion at the expense of the others is very un-American." (Many universities do have Christian facilities and symbols, such as chapels and crosses, to accommodate believers or as a legacy of their original church affiliation.)

Appearing on a Fox News show over the weekend, Huckabee also took aim at Islam as he criticized two Protestant churches that allowed Muslims to worship in their facilities when mosques in the area were too small or under construction.

"If the purpose of a church is to push forward the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then you have a Muslim group that says that Jesus Christ and all the people that follow him are a bunch of infidels who should be essentially obliterated, I have a hard time understanding that," Huckabee, a Fox host, said while he was a guest on "Fox & Friends." "I mean if a church is nothing more than a facility and a meeting place free for any and all viewpoints, without regard to what it is, then should the church be rented out to show adult movies on the weekend?"

Huckabee added that Islam "is the antithesis of the gospel of Christ." A leading Islamic advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), called Huckabee's remarks "inaccurate and offensive" and asked him to apologize. CAIR said it would also help arrange a meeting between the former Arkansas governor and Muslim leaders "to discuss growing Islamophobia in American society."

Huckabee has not responded to either request.

In his Christianity Today interview, Huckabee did weigh in on the "birther" controversy -- about those who allege President Obama was not born in the United States -- and suspicions among many conservative Christians that Obama is not a Christian or may even be a Muslim. He said Obama is clearly a Christian and dismissed as "inappropriate, wrong-headed, and not helpful to the overall discussion when people try to say he doesn't have a birth certificate or he's a Muslim."

He said people should be focusing on whether Obama's policies are good for the country, "not what did he hear when he sat in church."

"If people went back and heard every sermon I heard when I was a little kid and some of the more fundamentalist pastors were yelling from the pulpit at me, if they took every one of those sermons and lifted out of them certain phrases and things, it could be scandalous, but only out of the context of the bigger picture."

In a similar vein, Huckabee seemed to give his close rival in the Republican sweepstakes, Mitt Romney, a boost when he said evangelicals should not consider Romney's Mormon faith when they weigh their preferences.

"I don't think they should, unless that person advances something truly bizarre," Huckabee said. (Evangelicals remain deeply suspicious of Mormon beliefs despite the fact that the two groups share many conservative values.) Huckabee said he was more interested in whether candidates live up to the teachings of their own faith.

Elsewhere in the interview, Huckabee maintained his standard line about a 2012 presidential run, saying he has not made up his mind. He said he projects a late summer decision, which would likely be three or four months after candidates including Mitt Romney make their official announcements.

He also casts social conservatives like himself as integral to fiscal conservatism and conservatism in general, pushing back at some of the more libertarian-minded conservatives who want to focus on economic issues at the expense of opposition to things like gay marriage and abortion.

 

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]]>birthersEvangelicalsHuckabeeMormonsmuslimsreligious rightReligiousRightDavid Gibson2011-02-23T21:50:00+00:00The Raymond Davis Case: Killings by CIA Operative Strain U.S.-Pakistan Tieshttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/22/the-raymond-davis-case-killings-by-cia-operative-strain-us-paki/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/22/the-raymond-davis-case-killings-by-cia-operative-strain-us-paki/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/22/the-raymond-davis-case-killings-by-cia-operative-strain-us-paki/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , ,

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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]]>CIApakistanraymond davisterrorismterroristsu.s-pakistan relationsAlex Wagner2011-02-22T20:30:00+00:00Amid Chaos in Libya, Gadhafi Vows to 'Die Here as a Martyr'http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/21/libyas-gadhafi-last-days-for-the-mad-dog-of-the-middle-east/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/21/libyas-gadhafi-last-days-for-the-mad-dog-of-the-middle-east/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/21/libyas-gadhafi-last-days-for-the-mad-dog-of-the-middle-east/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , ,

Vowing to "die here as a martyr,'' Libya's mercurial strongman, Moammar Gadhafi, said he would fight to the end to stay in power, even as violence spread, major cities were abandoned by security forces and came under the control of pro-democracy demonstrators, and senior Libyan diplomats were calling for the dictator to step down.

"I shall remain here defiant," Gadhafi insisted in a TV speech Tuesday.

Calling the protesters tools of the Americans, Gadhafi said he would give them until Wednesday to disband. After that, he said, he would set security forces on them, and activists would be executed without mercy. "They will beg for pardon, but they will not be pardoned,'' Gadhafi said.

Defiant or not, it looks increasingly like these are the last days of the man President Reagan in 1986 famously termed "this mad dog of the Middle East.''

What lies ahead for Libya, a major oil-producing North African nation held under Gadhafi's erratic dictatorship for 41 years, remains unclear. Unlike Egypt and some other Middle East nations being shaken by popular protests, Libya has no obvious successor to the current regime. In particular, it lacks the cohesive, well-disciplined military that has taken over in Egypt.

Analysts are already noting evidence that Libya's military is splintering under the pressure from the streets. At least two Libyan air force jets landed in Malta Monday as their pilots defected after refusing orders to bomb civilian demonstrators, and there were reports of some army units joining the protesters. The army chief of staff reportedly has been placed under house arrest.

"If the regime cannot hold the loyalty of the army, then power in the country falls to the tribes,'' said Reva Bhalla, director of analysis and a Middle East expert at Stratfor, a private international intelligence firm. And with some of Libya's powerful tribes already turning on the Gaddafi regime, "the threat of civil war is very real,'' she said.

Amid the violence in Libya, where at least 300 people have been killed in clashes with pro-government thugs, oil prices leapt to a 2 ½ year high above $108 a barrel. A spokesman for OPEC said it would boost production of crude if Libyan supplies were disrupted.

Gadhafi, who has favored flamboyant costumes and dark aviator glasses, remains the only modern Middle Eastern despot who has taunted the United States to attack him - and survived. He has veered erratically between the vicious domestic crackdowns on display this week, and odd feints toward popular revolution and democracy. Ironically, he has insisted on being called, among other things, "Leader of the Revolution.''

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After he seized power in a September 1969 coup, Gadhafi set up a socialist regime, outlawed alcohol and gambling, and declared Libya a "Jamahiriya,'' which he defined as a state run by the masses. He boasted periodically of his intention to dismantle the government and distribute oil revenues to the people. But as elsewhere in the region, the regime kept itself in power by divvying up oil revenues among a small ruling class, using armed repression against growing popular frustrations at official corruption and the scarcity of jobs and housing.

Dissidents who fled Libya were tracked down and killed, including in an incident in London in 1984 when protesters outside the Libyan embassy came under machine gun fire from the embassy building. The assailants inside fled under diplomatic immunity.

Outside Libya was a different story. Under Gadhafi's rule, Libyan oil revenues were used widely to support anti-colonial rebellions, liberation movements and Islamic and other terrorist groups in the 1970s and 1980s, including the Irish Republican Army and the Black September movement responsible for the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Although Iran was more clearly complicit in major acts of terror, including the bombings in Lebanon in 1983 and 1984 that killed 316 Americans, Gadhafi seemed to become an obsession for Reagan, whom he said "has a goal of a world revolution, Moslem fundamentalist revolution.'' After several minor clashes with Libya, the Reagan administration blamed Gadhafi for the 1986 bombing of a popular GI hangout in Berlin, La Bella, which killed Army Sgt. Kenneth Ford and injured dozens of others.

In an Oval Office speech on the evening of April 15, Reagan announced that a punitive raid was under way to convince Gadhafi to stop his support for terrorism. Operation El Dorado Canyon involved some 55 strike fighters and bombers and dozens of support aircraft targeted against Libyan military barracks and bases. In four minutes, some 60 tons of bombs were dropped, killing 60 Libyans but narrowly missing Gadhafi, who rushed out of his compound just before the bombs fell. But Gadhafi's 15-month-old adopted daughter Hanna was among the dead. One U.S. aircraft, an FB-111 bomber, was shot down over the Gulf of Sidra.

The raid was condemned by the U.N. General Assembly, but Reagan retorted: "If necessary, we shall do it again.''

Gadhafi wasn't deterred. Two years later in December, a Pan Am jumbo jet, Flight 103, exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 on board and 11 people on the ground. Two Libyan agents, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, an intelligence officer, and Lamin Kalifah Fhimah, were subsequently charged with having planted the bomb, and the Libyan regime, after years of denial, accepted responsibility in 2002. Fhimah was acquitted, but Al-Megrahi served in a Scottish prison until 2009, when he was released on compassionate grounds because he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer. Libya in 2008 paid $1.5 billion into a fund to help compensate the victims of the Lockerbie bombing as well as the Libyan victims of El Dorado Canyon.

After the funds were paid, President George W. Bush signed an executive order providing Libya with immunity from terror-related lawsuits.

Gadhafi was widely lauded by the United States and others for offering to give up Libya's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, including a budding nuclear weapons project. The Bush administration asserted that its 2003 invasion of Iraq had scared the Libyan strongman into cooperating with the United States lest he, too, become a victim of "regime change.''

More recently, Gadhafi's erratic behavior has accelerated. In a long-winded, maiden speech to the United Nations in 2009, Gadhafi tore up a copy of the U.N. charter in front of startled delegates, compared the Security Council to al-Qaeda, demanded that Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be tried for war crimes, ordered $7.7 billion in compensation for colonialism in Africa and demanded to know who killed John F. Kennedy.

Gadhafi also complained of sleep deprivation after the New York City Council turned down his request to set up an air-conditioned tent in Central Park, forcing him to camp out in a hotel.

 

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]]>GaddafiLibya demonstrtionsLibya protestsLibya unrestLibya uprisingQadaffiDavid Wood2011-02-21T17:41:00+00:00Patriot Act: Congress Sends Obama Short-Term Wiretap Authorityhttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/17/patriot-act-congress-sends-obama-short-term-wiretap-authority/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/17/patriot-act-congress-sends-obama-short-term-wiretap-authority/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/17/patriot-act-congress-sends-obama-short-term-wiretap-authority/#commentsFiled under: , , , , ,

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."

Folo Tom Diemer on Twitter http://twitter.com/tomdiemer

 

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]]>911dailyguidancedennis kucinichpatriot actTom Diemer2011-02-17T13:41:00+00:00Patriot Act Passes House With Wiretap Authority -- a Week After It Was Rejectedhttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/15/patriot-act-passes-house-with-wiretap-authority-a-week-after/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/15/patriot-act-passes-house-with-wiretap-authority-a-week-after/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/15/patriot-act-passes-house-with-wiretap-authority-a-week-after/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , ,

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.

Folo Tom Diemer on Twitter http://twitter.com/tomdiemer

 

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]]>911dailyguidancedennis kucinichTom Diemer2011-02-15T09:01:00+00:00The Afghanistan War: Tactical Victories, Strategic Stalemate?http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/13/the-afghanistan-war-tactical-victories-strategic-stalemate/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/13/the-afghanistan-war-tactical-victories-strategic-stalemate/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/13/the-afghanistan-war-tactical-victories-strategic-stalemate/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, likes to describe the tactical gains his troops are making against insurgents. But a stream of independent data and analysis suggests a wide gap between those battlefield gains and the strategic progress needed to convince a skeptical President Obama, Congress and the public to stay with the war effort for at least three more years.

Recently, for instance, Petraeus asserted that his forces "achieved what we set out to achieve in 2010, which was to reverse the insurgency momentum.'' He has said that Taliban insurgents "are losing momentum in some key areas'' and noted that many are turning themselves into Afghan authorities.

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But an estimated 7,000 insurgents who had given up and come over to the government later went back to fighting because of poorly managed and underfinanced programs to resettle and reintegrate them, according to a detailed study by the Afghan Analysts Network, an independent nonprofit research organization.

If lavish programs to court Taliban fighters are put in place in the future, large numbers might switch sides, said the study's author, Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. But unless they are integrated into social, economic and political life, disillusioned Taliban might flood back to fighting, ultimately contributing to "strategic failure'' of the United States in Afghanistan.

An Army brigade commander in Afghanistan recently put his finger squarely on the problem, using the military term "tactical " to refer to "battlefield'' and "strategic'' to refer to the grand purpose of the fighting. Tactical is how you fight; strategic is why you fight.

"We've made a lot of progress ... a lot of tactical gains,'' said Col. Dan Williams, who commands the 4th Infantry Division's Combat Aviation Brigade. "The question is, has that had a strategic ... effect?''

In nine years of firefights, pitched battles, attacks, ambushes and raids, American troops have never lost. But what do those victories add up to?

Williams' unanswered question put me in mind of a long-ago conversation between two bitter foes, American Army Col. Harry G. Summers and a North Vietnamese officer. It took place at the Paris peace talks five days before the fall of Saigon marked America's final defeat in Vietnam. In a later essay he called "Tactical Victory, Strategic Defeat,'' Summers recalled saying, "You know you never defeated us on the battlefield.'' The North Vietnamese officer pondered this remark. "That may be so,'' he replied, "but it is also irrelevant.''

Tactical victories were the theme of a Feb. 1 briefing for Pentagon reporters by Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, in charge of day-to-day fighting in Afghanistan. Citing progress in wrecking Taliban sanctuaries primarily in southern Afghanistan, Rodriguez reported that "in the last 12 weeks we have discovered, cleared, 1,250 [weapons] cache sites.'' During the same period a year ago, he said only 163 enemy weapons caches had been uncovered.

Rodriguez said the most important reason for the increase is that more Afghans are tipping off U.S. and Afghan troops about local arms caches. The U.S. command in Kabul didn't respond to questions about the number and increase in such tips.

The strategic effect, though, was unclear, given widespread reports that insurgents actually increased the tempo of fighting. A year-end analysis by the Afghan NGO Safety Office, an independent project that advises humanitarian organizations on conditions in Afghanistan, found "indisputable evidence that the situation is deteriorating.''

While Petraeus and other commanders say the higher tempo of fighting is because of increased U.S. attacks on Taliban strongholds, the NGO Safety Office survey found a 64 percent increase in attacks initiated by insurgents, mostly small arms ambushes. Noting that its findings are sharply at odds with public reports of the U.S. command, Safety Office Director Nic Lee observed that the military's public assessments "are solely intended to influence American and European public opinion.''

U.S. commanders talk glowingly about the increased number of Afghan soldiers and police being trained, but the strategic benefit has yet to appear. More police are on duty in southern Afghanistan, for example. But a detailed public survey by the U.N. found favorable views of the national police dropped by 24 percentage points in the past year, to 54 percent in Helmand Province. Nationwide, 6 in 10 Afghans report "significant'' corruption among the police, and more than a quarter reported having seen police using drugs. And despite the U.S.-led effort to build a criminal justice system, about half of Afghans polled said they would not take criminal complaints to the police, but would rely on tribal leaders or others.

Petraeus also has asserted that constant pressure from U.S., allied and Afghan troops has begun to crack the Taliban's spirit and its ability to carry on the war through the winter.
"They've tried to keep their fighters fighting through the winter,'' he told NATO TV on Feb. 9. Trying to direct their fighters by cell phone or radio ("they lead from the rear,'' Petraeus said disparagingly), the Taliban high command has told its soldiers to "get back in the fight. 'We know it's winter and cold but you all stay at it because we've lost a lot this year,''' Petraeus said the Taliban command directed.

"Those orders have not been obeyed in all cases, so there's a degree of friction, discord ... that has not been characteristic of the past,'' Petraeus said.

The suggestion of the Taliban on the run, though, doesn't square with the independent reporting of John McCreary, former senior intelligence watch officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Using unclassified sources, McCreary reported that armed clashes in November were double the previous month and almost evenly divided between attacks initiated by insurgents and those initiated by U.S., allied and Afghan forces. He reported 1,381 armed clashes in November, up from 311 in October 2008 and 533 in October 2009.

Insurgents "displayed a new ability to sustain attacks for a month over a wider area than ever before,'' McCreary said, and the number of fighters they can muster rose from the 10,000 to 15,000 they fielded in 2008 to about 25,000 today, "a measure of increased popular support,'' he said.

But neither side seems able to turn its tactical gains into strategic advantage, despite the cost of the fighting and casualties (the Taliban lost 1,115 killed and wounded in November, a 70 percent increase over the October total of 657. U.S. combat dead and wounded declined slightly, to 556 in November from 633 in October). In the Pashtun strongholds of Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where Petraeus has concentrated his forces, security deteriorated significantly, McCreary found, but "the Taliban still remained unable to secure their heartland.''

Overall, McCreary found that for both sides, "their achievements never seem worth their costs on the battlefields. They produce a lot more fighting without changing the security situation.''

If the United States maintains its current level of effort, "the security situation should be containable but not permanently improvable,'' he concluded. "The government in Kabul will remain dependent on NATO forces for its survival for an indefinite period.''

On a broader canvas, the United States continues to suffer a negative strategic impact, in part because of its involvement in Afghanistan, according to James Clapper, director of national intelligence.

He testified in Congress on Thursday that al-Qaeda continues to be able to recruit willing new fighters by aggressively exploiting such explosive issues as "the presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. support for Israel'' all of which "fuel their narrative of a hostile West determined to undermine Islam.''

 

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]]>Afghan National PoliceAfghanistan Small Wars JournalAfghanistan waral-qaedaGen. David RodriguezPetraeusTalibanTaliban casualtiesDavid Wood2011-02-13T22:00:00+00:00U.S. Vulnerable to Terrorism, Especially Cyber Attacks, Intelligence Chiefs Sayhttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/10/u-s-vulnerable-to-terrorism-especially-cyber-attacks-intellig/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/10/u-s-vulnerable-to-terrorism-especially-cyber-attacks-intellig/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/10/u-s-vulnerable-to-terrorism-especially-cyber-attacks-intellig/#commentsFiled under: , , , , ,

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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]]>CIAcomputerscyber attacksfbiHosni MubarakJames Clapperleon panettaMichael Leiterpatriot act extensionRobert MuellerwiretapsAlex Wagner2011-02-10T16:00:00+00:00Obama Now Backs Gradual Transition in Egypt as Crisis Continueshttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/05/obama-now-backs-gradual-transition-in-egypt/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/05/obama-now-backs-gradual-transition-in-egypt/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/05/obama-now-backs-gradual-transition-in-egypt/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

With the sands shifting in the crisis in Egypt, the Obama administration on Saturday gave its support to a gradual transition in government to prepare for new elections in September.

The decision to support efforts by Egypt's vice president, Gen. Omar Suleiman, to forge a compromise with opposition groups was announced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a conference of European leaders in Munich, the New York Times reported.

Clinton's statement was a departure from President Obama's demands as recently as Friday afternoon calling on the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, to make immediate changes and consider whether he should leave office soon in the face of the 12-day-long popular uprising and violent clashes in his country.

"This takes some time," Clinton said, explaining that it was important to support Suleiman as he tries to engage opposition groups to end the street protests. "There are certain things that have to be done in order to prepare."


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The White House said the president made a number of calls to foreign leaders Saturday. He discussed his concern about the targeting of journalists and human rights groups, and reaffirmed that the government of Egypt has a responsibility to protect the rights of its people and to release immediately those who have been unjustly detained. The president emphasized the importance of an orderly, peaceful transition.

Clinton's statement suggested that Washington was not insisting that Mubarak leave office first. According to the Times, she said that Mubarak, having announced that he would not seek reelection in September, has in effect taken himself out of the political picture.

The U.S. government's call for gradual change was supported by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu and other countries represented at the conference.

It appeared that the U.S. and its allies have decided that the best and safest way out of the crisis in Egypt -- a tinderbox that threatens to incite unrest in other Middle Eastern nations -- is a gradual change in government led by Suleiman. He is a key figure in Egypt's establishment and has backing from the military.

Vice President Biden spoke by phone Saturday with Suleiman and stressed "the need for a concrete reform agenda, a clear timeline, and immediate steps that demonstrate to the public and the opposition that the Egyptian government is committed to reform," the White House said.

The United States, and the other like-minded governments, are seeking a transition to democratic pluralism that would keep the Muslim Brotherhood from becoming a dominant political force in the post-Mubarak era, according to Carl Bernstein, writing in The Daily Beast Saturday.

Obama and Hillary Clinton "have been working toward a solution that would permit him [Mubarak] to stay for a brief period as a powerless, de facto head of state," Bernstein wrote. "He would remain as such until new mechanisms, and perhaps a new Egyptian constitution, are in place."

Bernstein said a transition government under Suleiman could amend the constitution, end the state of emergency under which Murabak has ruled since 1981, and propose reforms including rights to assembly, free speech, religious freedom, presidential term limits, and the rules for the next presidential election, set for September.

Meantime, in Cairo, it was not clear whether a gradual transition would satisfy the pro-democracy protest movement which has demanded Mubarak's overthrow and the creation of a reformist government.

On Saturday, thousands of protesters held forth at Tahrir Square, but with foggy and drizzly weather the crowd seemed smaller than in past days.

Other major developments underlined the combustible situation in Cairo.

An assassination attempt on General Suleiman earlier this week was reported by Fox News and other media outlets but denied by the Egyptian government. Still, Fox News said a motorcade accompanying Suleiman was attacked but the general was not harmed.

In Munich, Secretary of State Clinton took note of the unconfirmed assassination attempt and, separately, an explosion at a gas pipeline in the Sinai Peninsula.

She said it "certainly brings into sharp relief the challenges we are facing as we navigate through this period."

In possible fallout from the uprising, it was reported by Al Arabiya television and other news media that Mubarak had resigned as head of the national ruling party and that other party leaders had also quit on Saturday, including Mubarak's son, Gamal. But late Saturday, Al Arabiya retracted the report that President Mubarak had left the party leadership. However, MSNBC confirmed that other party leaders, including Gamal Mubarak, had indeed resigned. The Associated Press also said ruling party leaders had relinquished their posts.

As the uprising ebbs and flows in Cairo, a consensus appears to be building among diplomats, heads of state and other experts that Mubarak should not be pushed out immediately and that gradual change and orderly elections are the best course for moving away from the upheaval that imperils the heart of the Arab world and the security of Israel.

By the end of the day in Cairo, the demonstrators were still in Tahrir Square and Mubarak remained in the presidential palace.

Around the world, protests were called to support the revolt. In the U.S., demonstrations were planned in California and Louisiana. And hundreds gathered in the cold rain in front of the United Nations in New York City to show solidarity with the Egyptian protesters.

 

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]]>Ahmet DavutogluAl ArabiyaAngela MerkelArab worldCairo uprisingdailyguidanceDavid CameronEgypt revoltFox NewsGamal MubarakHenry KissingerHillary Rodham ClintonHosni MubarakIsraelMiddle East and North Africa MENA fundMSNBCNeil CavutoObama administrationOmar SuleimanPresident Barack ObamaSecretary of State Hillary Rodham ClintonSenator Lindsay GrahamLuisita Lopez Torregrosa2011-02-05T15:46:00+00:00Journalists Attacked, Detained in Egypt; White House Denounces Violencehttp://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/03/journalists-attacked-arrested-in-cairo-chaos/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/03/journalists-attacked-arrested-in-cairo-chaos/http://politicsdaily.com/2011/02/03/journalists-attacked-arrested-in-cairo-chaos/#commentsFiled under: , , , , , , , ,

The White House is condemning what it calls the "systematic targeting" of foreign journalists covering the political unrest in Egypt, many of whom have been detained by security forces and roughed up and threatened by unruly mobs, according to multiple reports Thursday.

Obama administration spokesman Robert Gibbs called for the immediate release of any journalist being held by Egyptian officials.

"I think we need to be clear that the world is watching the actions that are taking place right now in Egypt," Gibbs said, adding the detentions were "unacceptable."

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The attacks near Tahrir Square, the center of the protests, came from supporters of President Hosni Mubarak, foreign journalists told the Associated Press. Demonstrators backing Mubarak have clashed with anti-government protesters as a peaceful uprising turned violent over the past 48 hours.

Journalists said they were punched and kicked and had their equipment smashed. Mobs shut down news media outlets that had set up in buildings near the square, The New York Times reported.

Egyptian police detained CBS News correspondent Lara Logan and her crew, according to Time magazine. Logan, who has been in the country since Monday, was reporting from outside Cairo's Israeli embassy. On Wednesday Logan said she and her crew had been regularly followed by officials.

ABC News said one of its crews was carjacked by angry Egyptians who threatened to behead a reporter, cameraman and two other network employees. They were let go after cameraman Akram Abi-hanna, a Lebanese national, appealed to the captors. "We thought we were goners," correspondent Brian Hartman was quoted as saying. "We absolutely thought we were doomed."

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, a reporter for National Public Radio, said she and her driver faced a tense confrontation after their car was stopped.

"Then at least a dozen men surrounded us demanding to see our IDs," she said. "We were asked if we were Israeli spies, or employees of the Arabic news network Al-Jazeera, who have been a particular target of the authorities here."

Garcia-Navarro said her driver was repeatedly punched in the face until the army intervened. She and her driver were briefly detained.

The New York Times said security forces and pro-government gangs were even hunting down journalists at their offices and in hotels where many had taken refuge. The Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya television networks said they couldn't cover the scene at Tahrir Square live because their crews had been harassed on the streets and at a vantage point above the square where cameras had been set up.

Earlier, the Times said two reporters working for the newspaper were released Thursday after being detained overnight in Cairo. Washington Post Foreign Editor Douglas Jehl said witnesses on the street in Cairo reported that his paper's bureau chief, Leila Fadel, and photographer Linda Davidson were among two dozen journalists arrested by the Egyptian Interior Ministry.

The Greek newspaper Kathimerini said its correspondent was briefly hospitalized after being stabbed in the leg by supporters of Mubarak. A Greek newspaper photographer was also reportedly beaten.

In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley condemned the violence. "There is a concerted campaign to intimidate international journalists in Cairo and interfere with their reporting," Crowley said.

On Wednesday, ABC correspondent Christiane Amanpour had to make a quick getaway when demonstrators yelling that they "hate America" banged on her car and smashed part of its windshield.

Mubarak, who has held power for 30 years, agreed earlier this week not to seek reelection in six months, but the street demonstrations continued as his foes demanded that he step down immediately.

 

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]]>egypt demonstrationsegypt protestsHosni MubarakChristopher Weber2011-02-03T12:15:00+00:00