The Best Defense Against Cyber Insurgents is a Good Offense

Danger Room is doing an outstanding job covering the story regarding insurgents capturing data from drones by eavesdropping the airwaves first revealed by the Wall Street Journal. Additional stories have covered other systems potentially vulnerable, potential ramifications of insurgent data interception, and my personal favorite – a discussion with Rex Buddenberg of the Naval Postgraduate School regarding the broader problem where the DoD focuses primarily on link security (communication protection) as opposed to data security (information protection).

But most of the conversation to date has taken a traditional military view of the problem. Ask an Army General what it means when the enemy is using specific tactics to infiltrate your lines of communication, and the General is unlikely to give you any good news. Ask a cyber soldier what it means when the enemy is using specific tactics to infiltrate your lines of communication, and you might notice a slight smile cross the soldiers face. When the enemy is in your lines it means bad news in traditional military terms, but in the asymmetrical world of cyber warfare this development should be seen as an opportunity.

Consider the details surrounding this massive security breach and consider whether things are as they appear. We know a lot of detail, a shocking amount actually.

■We know what systems are most vulnerable.
■We know what software is being used by the enemy.
■We know what hardware is being used by the enemy.
■We may even have a good idea of the skill level of the cyber insurgent.
■We have a good degree of knowledge on the devices receiving and potentially disseminating the data.
■We have complete control over the devices expected to send the information.

In cyber warfare terms, that is a gold mine of information.

There is a phrase in cyber warfare: The distance between information dominance and disinformation dominance is measured in millimeters. The use of “disinformation” in that phrase is often confused to mean playing charades with data (or changing data), but it should be seen in the context of social engineering for information (sometimes described as lie to learn). The DoD treats information as a weapon, always has. That isn’t always a good thing for our strategic communications, but in this case, treating information as a weapon is appropriate. Unless the Wall Street Journal article is one of the best conceived disinformation campaigns in cyber military history, it is very unlikely the WSJ’s source is a cyber security expert – rather a traditional military thinker who is forgetting to channel his inner Clausewitz.

In the old days of full disclosure for computer security vulnerabilities it was common for cyber experts wearing either a white or black hat to utilize a honeypot set to detect, deflect, sometimes counteract, but always to make record of attempts at unauthorized use of information systems. The purpose of most honeypots was to learn new techniques and identify common patterns used in the internet wild. Honeypots were intentionally left undefended in many cases, because the hope was to lure the hacker in.

From a cyber warfare perspective, the short term solution to the UAV video issue is not to encrypt the data (which is the long term solution), rather to use the unencrypted video stream to go after the cyber insurgents – with the specific intention of getting inside their network. It is not complicated to have a normal UAV camera send a video signal exactly as intended for the military function, but include packet data that exploits vulnerabilities in software like skygrabber, or to include code that exploits known vulnerabilities in popular video players. I’m sticking to very common examples that are easily understood by the masses, but at many layers of the UAVs video signal the potential to exploit the unencrypted broadcasted video feed as a weapon is significant.

In cyber warfare on today’s military battlefield, the UAV would became the signaling device intended to turn every unauthorized listening laptop into a potential breached system of the insurgent network, and there are many ways to add data to the UAV video system without compromising the military use of the video system. It is entirely probable the DoD is leveraging the known vulnerabilities of the video feed to turn the insurgent satellite snooper network into a new gateway into the insurgent information network.

While this UAV data breach does represent a horribly designed, taxpayer funded military information network, there is no reason the DoD isn’t already using this “problem” to our advantage, and leveraging the detailed knowledge of the insurgent eavesdropping techniques to get the cyber insurgents unwittingly working for our side. Most of the social engineering work has already been done; we know what the target network entry point, hardware, software, and user skill level… all that is left is to develop and deliver payloads.

Our Clausewitz trained military knows the best defense is a good offense. On today’s cyber military battlefield, going offensive with cyber “smart bombs” is a legitimate response to unauthorized network intruders in a war zone, indeed it should be standard operating procedure for all unencrypted military networks moving potentially sensitive data.
USNI

Radical Yemeni cleric believed unhurt in airstrike

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - A U.S.-born radical cleric is alive and well following reports he may have been killed in a Yemeni airstrike against suspected al-Qaida hideouts, friends and relatives said Friday.

The government said it targeted a meeting of high-level al-Qaida operatives in Thursday's airstrike in the remote Shabwa region. It claimed at least 30 militants were killed, possibly including Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric who has been linked to the shooter in last month's attack at the Fort Hood military base in the U.S.

On Friday, a friend of the cleric, Abu Bakr al-Awlaki, told The Associated Press he was not among those killed. He refused to say if the cleric was attending the meeting.

Abu Bakr al-Awlaki was in Shabwa and in contact with the gunmen in control of the area following the strike. He is not related to the cleric, but the two are from the same tribe and carry the same last name.

Thursday's airstrikes were the second in a week against al-Qaida and were carried out with U.S. and Saudi intelligence help. The newly aggressive Yemeni campaign, backed by American aid, reflects Washington's fears that the terror network could turn this fragmented, unstable nation into an Afghanistan-like refuge in a highly strategic location on the border with oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

The Yemeni government said it struck a gathering of senior al-Qaida figures in Rafd, a remote mountain valley in eastern Shabwa province, where they were plotting new terror attacks.

In addition to al-Awlaki, the top leader of al-Qaida's branch in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Naser Abdel-Karim al-Wahishi, and his deputy Saeed al-Shihri were also believed to be at the meeting, Yemen's Supreme Security Committee said.

But Yemeni officials still have no access to the area, which is controlled by armed gunmen and supporters of al-Qaida, and could not confirm for certain who was killed in the attack.

Saudi officials were not immediately available for comment on Friday.

In Washington, a U.S. government official who was briefed on the strike told The Associated Press that there has been no confirmation yet of who was killed in the strike. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the attack.

Al-Awlaki was born in the United States and moved back to Yemen in 2002. Al-Awlaki reportedly corresponded by e-mail with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov.5.

People close to al-Alwaki said it is unlikely the cleric would be sitting through a field meeting convened by fighters, considering he saw his role as a scholar and one that gives religious advises and rulings.

The cleric's brother, who only agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, said he also received assurances that his older sibling is still alive.

A tribal chief in Shabwa, who only used his alias Abu Mohammed, said he was informed that Anwar al-Alwaki was alive and is unharmed. He refused to elaborate.

So far, residents of the area and relatives of those killed say six bodies have been retrieved from the area of the strike and buried. The relatives spoke on condition of anonymity because they were still at the area controlled by the gunmen.
MyWay

Damn, I hope O learns not o rely on foreign eyes

Houthis repel Saudi incursion into northern Yemen

Iran TV Press latest]Houthi fighters have managed to repulse Saudi Arabian forces trying to infiltrate into the province of Sa'ada in northern Yemen, killing an unspecified number of Saudi soldiers in a battle in the border region.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Yemen's Shia Houthis said they pushed back Saudi troops from Al-Muannaq village in northern Yemen on the border with Saudi Arabia and also destroyed eight Saudi tanks.

The Houthi fighters say Saudi forces had fired 256 missiles and carried out air strikes against the Sa'ada region.

The statement also said that Saudi Apache helicopter gunships launched two air strikes on the city of Dahyan on Tuesday as Riyadh continues its air raids against the mountainous regions of northern Yemen. It added that Saudi ground forces used heavy machine guns during the operation.

The Saudi army also shelled Al-Malaheet and the villages adjacent to it, which caused many civilian deaths.

Seventy-three Saudis have been killed and 26 have gone missing since fighting broke out between Saudi forces and the Houthi fighters on November 3.

The number of wounded Saudi troops has reached 470, with 60 still hospitalized.

The conflict between the central government in Sana'a and the Houthis of northern Yemen began in 2004. The conflict intensified in August 2009 when the Yemeni army launched Operation Scorched Earth in an attempt to crush the Houthi movement.
The Houthis say their civil rights have been violated and they are suffering political, economic, and religious marginalization due to the policy of the Yemeni government, which they have also accused of widespread corruption.

The Saudi air force has further complicated the conflict by launching its own operations against Shia resistance fighters.

Houthi fighters say that Riyadh pounds their positions, and Saudi forces strike Yemeni villages and indiscriminately target civilians. According to the fighters, the Saudis are using prohibited weapons, including white phosphorous bombs, against civilians in northern Yemen.

The US military is also continuing its air raids on Yemen's regions of Amran, Hajjah, and Sa'ada, which have suffered much due to the joint Saudi-Yemeni government offensive against the Houthi fighters.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that since 2004, up to 175,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in Sa'ada and take refuge in overcrowded camps set up by the United Nations.
PressTV

Yemen Says It Attacked Qaeda Gathering

Yemeni fighter jets, acting on intelligence provided in part by the United States, struck what the Yemeni government said was a meeting of Al Qaeda operatives early Thursday morning, and officials suggested that a radical cleric tied to the suspect in the Fort Hood shootings may have been among the 30 people killed.

A statement by the Yemeni Embassy in Washington said the air strike targeted a gathering of “scores” of Qaeda members from Yemen and other countries, including the network’s two top leaders in Yemen, in a remote corner of southern Yemen. The statement said the cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, was “presumed to be at the site.”

It could take days for investigators to sift through the rubble to identify the dead, and intelligence officials in the United States could not immediately confirm whether Mr. Awlaki or any Qaeda members were among those killed.

The government of Yemen, which has long been a haven for terrorists, has been carrying out strikes that appear to be directed against Al Qaeda’s growing presence in the country.

The group, whose regional affiliate is known as Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, has mounted frequent attacks against foreign embassies and Yemeni officials in the last two years, adding to the security threats in Yemen that include an armed rebellion in the north and a secessionist movement in the south. There is no indication that the various insurgents targeting Yemen’s government are cooperating, but the concurrent crises have weakened the state’s ability to react.

Yemeni security forces carried out airstrikes and ground raids against suspected Qaeda hideouts last week with what American officials described as “intelligence and firepower” supplied by the United States. The assaults marked Yemen’s widest offensive against jihadists in years. Government forces hit bases in Abyan, a lawless, mountainous area in the south, as well as in the cities of Arhab and Sana, the capital.

The airstrikes on Thursday were aimed at a large group of Qaeda operatives who had gathered in the southern province of Shabwa to plan attacks against the Yemeni government in retaliation for the offensive last week, the Yemeni Embassy statement said.

Yemeni officials said they had made targets of the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, and his deputy, Said Ali al-Shihri, who were believed to be at the meeting with Mr. Awlaki. Mr. Shihri was held for five years in the American detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and after his release in 2007 went through a Saudi rehabilitation program. But he joined Al Qaeda after his return to Yemen, marking a notable failure for the Saudi program, which American officials generally admire.

Although Mr. Awlaki, 38, has not been accused of planting bombs or carrying out terrorist attacks himself, his online sermons champion a radicalized vision of Islam, and he has been linked to numerous terrorism suspects, including Nidal Malik Hasan, the American Army major who faces murder charges in the shooting deaths of 13 people at the Fort Hood army base in November.

Major Hasan and the American-born cleric exchanged about 20 e-mail messages, and shortly after the shootings, Mr. Awlaki praised Major Hasan as a hero.

In an interview posted on Wednesday on the Web site of Al Jazeera, Mr. Awlaki said Major Hasan had asked in his first e-mail message about what Islamic law dictated about “Muslim soldiers who serve in the American military and kill their colleagues.” Mr. Awlaki also praised the killings at Fort Hood, saying, “working in the American military to fight Muslims is a betrayal of Islam.”
NYT

WHAT TO DO WITH THE MOSLEMS

"Hi everybody:


First of all I wish to convey greetings and best wishes to all my old friends and readers of this blog.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everybody.

Actually, I intended to discuss the Iraqi situation and my forebodings regarding the future in the light of the planned American withdrawal. However, the irksome discussions in the comments section about Islam and the Muslims force me to this digression.

Actually, I could have dismissed the ideas of OutlawMike (an old visitor to this blog) as being too extreme and outlandish and of no particular importance. However, unfortunately, I think this kind of prejudice is spreading alarmingly, especially in French speaking European countries, and even some non-French ones too. Although I am sure that it is still a minority that would go as far as our friend OutlawMike. So I would like to make few remarks apropos."
The Mesopotamian

Sadr City Perspective

"Some day labourers from Sadr City were eager to share their political opinion. The men said they had no respect for "the thieves" in parliament, as they called them. All of them? All of them, they said. What about the Al Hakim group, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council?

"Especially them!" One burly man said. "Haven't you heard?" he asked. "They call Ammar Al Hakim Uday Al Hakim!" After Saddam's eldest son. "He bought up most of Karrada!" Said a thin, weary man. The men, who were on hire to do odd jobs, barely make enough to get by. But somehow they've managed to have multiple wives."
IraqiPundit

The Trucker's Perspective

Useless Parliament

The Gardener's Perspective

The Businessman's Perspective

Iraqi politics becoming more democratic

"'The costs of the Iraq war have been great and perhaps indefensible. But Iraq could still turn out to be an extraordinary model for the Arab world. Its people are negotiating their differences for the most part peacefully; its politics is becoming more pluralistic and democratic; its press is free; its provinces have autonomy; its focus has shifted to business and wealth creation, not religion and jihad. At a conference in Baghdad last October, the Iraq government focused on its current obsession -- investment. It released a well-produced document, "Open for Business," that details the business opportunities that await capitalists in Iraq. Politics in Iraq feels different from other Arab countries. Friday sermons in Baghdad are mostly about the corruption and competence of Iraq politicians, not the evil designs of America of the perfidy of the Jews. It could be the weakening of the victim complex in which the Arab world has been stuck -- forever seeing itself as acted upon by foreign forces and never in charge of its own destiny.


In 2010, the Obama administration has a window of opportunity to push these positive trends forward. If they stay engaged, are successful, and get lucky, perhaps this is what America will ultimately be remembered for in Iraq.'

Thanks to Iraq Pundit for posting about Zakaria's article."
IraqMojo

The Cost of Risk Aversion

"Just in time to put a damper on your holiday spending comes this helpful article from the White House I mean McClatchy news service designed to prepare Americans for the impending raid on our hard earned money. Questions arise over how to pay for Afghanistan war is the name of the article and as one would suspects it helpfully points out that many of our previous Presidents raised taxes to pay for sending our Armed Forces onto the field of battle. My first thought upon reading this garbage was it reminded me of the main stream media’s attempt to provide us “depth and context” to former President Clinton’ life long history of predatory sexual abuse by dragging Thomas Jefferson and JFK through the mud. The second thing I thought was that our current efforts in Afghanistan are not remotely on the scale of our Civil War or World War II. The third thing I thought was that LBJ was an abject failure as was his short lived 10% surtax for Vietnam.

Coincidentally this article compliments the ongoing discussion in the comments section of my last post. As I stated there I have consistently raised the point that the level of money being expended on our current Afghan campaign cannot and should not be sustained. Not because our great nation cannot afford to keep 60,000 or so troops in the field but because a majority of it is being wasted."
FRI

The Inquest

"Whoever tells you that humans all have te same value and are all equal are lying through their innocent teeth. As much as i wish for it to be true, the reality is, it will never be.

Whats brought my mini tirade of politics- well The Iraq War Inquest has begun, and suprise suprise, the results are disappointing.
Wait, no they're not disappointing-they were expected. I expected it, but wished for it deeply to be not to be true. I wished deeply to have my faith in equality restored.

Alas, it was not."
Fog el Nakhal

"On his own terms, President Obama is a failure"

Everybody was Kung Fu fighting... Cr: Freedoms Wing

Obama's failed his words

The president's actions and tactics haven't matched his lofty language, breeding a cynicism that has doomed his cause.

By Jonah Goldberg
Los Angeles Times

December 22, 2009

On his own terms, President Obama is a failure.

During the presidential campaign, he fought hammer and tongs with Hillary Rodham Clinton on the best way to govern. Clinton, casting herself as a battle-scarred political veteran, argued that diligence, dedicated detail work and working the system were essential for success.

Obama, donning the mantle of a redeemer descending from divine heights, argued that his soaring rhetoric was more than "just words" but a way out of the poisonous, partisan gridlock of yesteryear. Early on in New Hampshire, he proclaimed that his "rival in this race is not other candidates. It's cynicism."

Occasionally the Obama-Clinton argument was explicit -- such as when they sparred over who was more important to the Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King Jr. or Lyndon Johnson -- but it was always there, implicit in everything from their body language and stagecraft to position papers and platforms.

The great irony of it all is that it seems they were both wrong.

Obama's rhetoric in fact looks to be the best way to achieve a Clintonian agenda. But a Clintonian agenda is the worst possible way to live up to Obama's rhetoric.

From his 2004 keynote speech onward, Obama rejected the partisan divide. He earned points by insisting that invidious descriptions of political opponents were deleterious to civic health and distracted us from the fact that "we are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

In a June primary victory speech, Obama said he was "absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children . . . this was the moment -- this was the time -- when we came together to remake this great nation."

So, does anyone feel like Americans are coming together?

Obama the outsider hasn't changed the way Washington works; he's worked Washington in a way that only an outsider with no respect for the place would dare.

Consider his signature domestic priority: healthcare reform. After a year of working on it, his progressive base is either profoundly disappointed with him or seethingly angry. His Republican and conservative opponents are not only furious, they are emboldened. And independents -- who've been deserting the Democrats in polls and off-year elections -- are simply disgusted with the whole spectacle. Most important, an administration that once preened over its people-power roots, can't even claim that Americans like what he's doing.

The bill does have its supporters: inside-the-Beltway pundits and Capitol Hill deal-makers, the pharmaceutical industry and the supposedly rapacious insurance companies (don't take my word for it, just ask Howard Dean -- or your stockbroker).

Under the Clintonian paradigm of governance, Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson's parlaying of his pro-life objections to the Senate bill into a windfall for his state and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' leveraging of his socialist principles for billions in special deals would be dramatic twists in a conventional story of LBJ-style arm-twisting.

But Clintonian means cannot further Obamaian ends. For the last year Obama's party has made a mockery of everything Obama was supposed to represent. The tone has gotten worse as his communications staff spent the year demonizing Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Fox News. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called opponents of their health proposals "un-American." Just over the weekend, Rhode Island's Sheldon Whitehouse insisted that Senate opposition is being driven, in part, by "Aryan support groups." Cont...

Rough times in the Arghandab

"The Americans fighting in the Arghandab valley this summer had a rough go. Sean "Not a Good Day to Die" Naylor takes the first hit at explaining why. There appears to be a lot of masked discontent with the first bite of the Kandahar apple by the 5 BCT (and the lead unit, 1/17 Infantry). Naylor relates how first the US battalion commander apparently fires the lead company commander, and then the whole brigade got reassigned."
Flit

The War Of Misplaced Priorities...

"That's very well how Afghanistan might be remembered. The jury is still out on that one.

I actually heard a little snippet on the news the other day saying that somebody estimated that there are only about 100 Taliban/al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

Then I read this article on MSNBC.com

Hard Line Pakistani Schools Lure Foreigners

Okay, so I'm sure all of you remember me telling you over and over again about the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It sucked. "
Embrace the Suck

So the White House Christmas Tree features ...

"Mao?!?!?!

Strange fruit, indeed.

Who in God's name are these people staffing the White House?

Splash, out"
CounterColumn

Stupid fucking communist, well not so stupid.

Christmas Bird Count - JBB, Iraq

"I've been here in Iraq since the beginning of October. I am currently at Joint Base Balad, formerly LSA Anaconda along the Tigris River north of Baghdad. I usually have been able to go birding for a few hours most Sundays early in the morning with a Sergeant from another unit. Together we are the only current members of the JB3 or Joint Base Balad Birders.Much has changed since I was here 5 years ago. One good change is there are more ponds and lakes to look for birds in. Another benefit is that the mortar and rocket attacks are much more infrequent."
Birding Babylon

The Guns Fall Silent

"After a long hiatus I was set to post something today, but I caught wind of Blackfive leading a blackout of all milblog posting for today and in some cases, the rest of the week or more. The blackout is a show of solidarity for CJ Grisham, the founder of A Soldier's Perspective who has come under fire from his command after having the audacity to challenge PTA rulings at his children's school. Take a moment to read his story, and after you are sickened, donate to his legal fund:

Grisham Legal Fund
c/o Redstone Federal Credit Union
220 Wynn Drive
Huntsville, AL 35893

This is a terrible thing that couldn't happen to a nicer and more talented guy. I had the pleasure of meeting CJ earlier this year and found him to be very cordial and sharp. I ask all of you to spread the word, kick some money in his fund and keep this story alive. It's the least you can do for a career soldier that has fought the toughest battles not only overseas but here at home."
Army of Dude

Military Responds to Milblogger "Silence"; a Message from the Army

December 23rd, 2009

Military Responds to Milblogger "Silence"; a Message from the Army
Lindy Kyzer, a Public Affairs Specialist, with the Online and Social Media Division of the U.S. Army, posted a message to Milbloggers yesterday on Army Live (the Official Blog of the U.S. Army) . The message was in response to Milblogs going “Silent” in support of C.J. Grisham - and in the bigger scheme of things: censorship.
More here.

Military Blog Written by Mother, Helps Her Learn about the Military while her Son does the same
The Boston Globe has a wonderful story about Laurie Tishler Mindline who writes a blog about her son’s Military experience. By writing about her son, Corey - who is currently in Basic Training and learning about the military himself - she is also learning about the military from Class A’s to FTX.
More here.


2010 Milblog Conference and Party, Sponsorship Packages
There are many ways you, or your organization can sponsor the 2010 Milblog Conference and Party.
More here.

Verified: Adm. Mike Mullen is THE REAL DEAL on Twitter
If you’ve ever wondered if the person you’re following on Twitter is authentic or just an impersonator, Twitter’s Verified feature helps you know. Admiral Mike Mullen, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is one of the latest public figures to have their account verified on Twitter – a feature that works to establish authenticity.
More here

Video: The DoD Explains All Their Social Media Tools
Watch here.

Follow Milblogging.com on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/milblogging)

Follow Military.com on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/militarydotcom)

German children held in Yemen appear in video: sources

BERLIN — After months without a trace, three German children kidnapped in June in Yemen have resurfaced in a new video, but the tape featured no sign of their parents, security sources said.

Officials who asked not to be named confirmed a report in the daily Bild saying the images, apparently recorded recently by the abductors, indicated at least that the three children aged one, three and five were still alive.

The German government now has a copy of the video, Bild added.

"The children seemed exhausted," a high-ranking German official was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

The German government declined to comment.

The family of five was abducted in northern Yemen in June along with two German Bible students and a South Korean who were shot and killed soon after.

The kidnappers are believed to have links to the Islamist militant network Al-Qaeda.

Since then, there had been no sign of technician Johannes H., his wife Sabine, both 36 at the time they were seized, or their three children.

There has been no word either of a Briton also seized at the time in the Saada region, the stronghold of Shiite rebels at war with the Yemeni government.

The German government has dispatched former ambassador Juergen Chrobog, who was himself kidnapped in Yemen while on holiday in 2005, as a mediator.

More than 200 foreigners have been abducted in Yemen in the past 15 years, with most being freed unharmed.

A Japanese engineer was released in November after nine days as a hostage held by tribesmen near the Yemeni capital Sanaa.
Google

Fear and Loathing in Pakistan

The US Embassy in Islamabad is a tense and embattled place. The embassy complex is fortress-like, sequestered in a secure area to the east of the city known as the "diplomatic enclave," whose approaches are guarded by multiple security checkpoints. The compound's outer perimeter is festooned with barbed wire and towering walls. Arriving vehicles are stopped for bomb-checks, sealed into a quarantined area with high walls on either side and heavy iron doors at front and back. Embassy visitors are required to wear visible badges at all times--and they are checked frequently.

This is understandable in a city where anti-Americanism is on the rise, despite Congress's recent pledge of $7.5 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan. (Indeed, that aid package, bizarrely enough, is part of the problem.) I heard one American (who does not work at the embassy) say that if he ever had a car accident in Islamabad, he would flee the scene if possible; the risks of being an American at in a place where a racuous crowd would inevitably gather are just too great. And when the entourage of staff and reporters traveling with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen arrived at a Pakistani Air Force base on Wednesday evening, we were subjected to a nearly hourlong delay, as every one of our bags was passed through an x-ray bomb detector for reasons that seemed more about harassment than security. (Who ever heard of screening the bags of people getting off the plane?)

At the heart of this problem is the anti-Americanism and conspiracy-mongering of Pakistan's media, which I saw first-hand when I read through a large stack of local papers at the embassy. So I was glad to find on my return to Washington this week that the latest print issue of TNR features a really top-notch article by Nicholas Schmindle about Shireen Mazari, a Pakistani journalist who's been dubbed "the Anne Coulter of Pakistan," and who has been responsible for countless stories like the one that recently speculated about whether a Wall Street Journal reporter in the country is actually a CIA spy, potentially endangering his life. When I was Islamabad, one newspaper (I believe it was Mazari's The Nation, which is generally the worst offender) ran a story which included the wacko claim, attributed to Seymour Hersh, that a "death squad" backed by Dick Cheney was behind the 2007 assassination of Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto as well as the 2005 murder of Lebanese prime minister Raffik Hariri. (It seems this nutty rumor has been floating around since at least May, even though Hersh himself has publicly denied saying such a thing) In Islamabad, American officials told us about another story that identified--complete with photograph--a building in the city purportedly housing workers for the security contractor Xe (nee Blackwater). In fact, the building was home to Western aid workers--at least until they fled to safer environs that same day.

Stories like this fan the rising flames of anti-Americanism in Islamabad. A reporter traveling with me had hoped to meet a colleague at a coffee shop in central Islamabad, until embassy workers warned him that the shop was known to be under surveillance by people who might like to kidnap a Westerner. One embassy official told me that he enjoys dining out at Islamabad's restaurants--but when pressed admitted that he never lingers for coffee and dessert. "You try to be out within an hour," he said. (The same goes for activities like grocery shopping.) The Pakistani media surely also contributes to the growing harassment of U.S. embassy officials, who are finding their visas inexplicably denied and their vehicles pointlessly searched at security checkpoints around the city. So it's understandable that the vibe within the embassy compound--a deceptively bucolic place of walking paths and tennis courts that seems more college campus than embattled diplomatic outpost--feels so tense. After all, even behind the barricades and razor wire safety is not guaranteed. We all remember the 1979 storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. But less remembered is the way an angry mob overran and torched our embassy in Islamabad that same year. One U.S. Marine was killed, and it was a miracle that dozens more American lives weren't lost. (As Steve Coll recounts in his masterful book Ghost Wars, the Pakistani government barely lifted a finger to help.)

The cause of that deadly riot? False Pakistani media reports that the U.S. had orchestrated an attack on Mecca. Lies have consequences--sometimes deadly ones.
TNR

Diaz-Balarts withdraw support for Crist in Florida Senate race

Two prominent Florida Republicans have withdrawn their endorsements of Gov. Charlie Crist's (R) Senate campaign.

Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart had backed Crist in his Republican primary contest against Marco Rubio, at one point heralding the governor as an "effective senator for Florida."

But the two brothers unexpectedly pulled their endorsement weeks ago for reasons still unclear to voters. The Crist campaign removed their names from the endorsement list only Tuesday, reporters discovered.

In an interview with the Miami Herald, which first noticed the rescinded support, Lincoln Diaz-Balart merely said that Crist "left us no alternative and he knows why."


He added that the governor's sagging poll numbers had nothing to do with his decision.

Mario Diaz-Balart's office was unavailable for comment on Tuesday.

The loss of the Diaz-Balarts' support spells bad news for Crist, who has struggled recently to shore up support among his state's Republican base.

The brothers, who endorsed Crist early in the primary contest, could have helped deliver to the governor important votes among the Latin American community and in the Miami area, where Rubio has posted strong gains.
The Hill

That's why I hate the Diaz-Balarts are worst than Crist, we were doing just fine without the brothers support...

USMC 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Afghanistan

RaW Royal Marines in Afghanistan

should be called rescued by the Calvary

Gunmen fire at Mexican eatery with US mayor inside

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico (AP) - Gunmen sprayed bullets at a restaurant Tuesday where the mayor of a Texas border town was eating with a Mexican state attorney general and other officials, police said. A woman leaving the building was killed.

Coahuila state Attorney General Jesus Torres and Chad Foster, mayor of Eagle Pass across the border from Piedras Negras, were unharmed, according to police officers at the scene.

Foster was dining with Mexican officials after a ceremony for Jose Manuel Maldonado, the newly elected Piedras Negras mayor who takes office in January.

Torres was rushed out of Piedras Negras and authorities stepped up security at his family's home in the city of Saltillo. Foster left on his own, said police officers, who agreed to discuss the shooting only if granted anonymity out of concern for their safety.

Police scoured the city for the attackers but did not release the names of any suspects or speculate on the motive.

Piedras Negras has seen increasing drug gang violence. In April, gunmen killed the town's police chief, an army colonel who had taken over the local force just three weeks earlier with the aim of purging corruption. Three months later, four other city police officers, including the deputy chief, were kidnapped and remain missing.

Foster, who has close relations with authorities in Piedras Negras and Coahuila state, is a critic of the fence being built by the U.S. government along the border. Coahuila Gov. Humberto Moreira often affectionately refers to Foster as Coahuila's 39th mayor, a reference to the 38 municipalities in the state.

Mexico's drug cartels have staged increasingly bold attacks on Mexican officials and security forces since President Felipe Calderon deployed soldiers across the country to step up the fight against drug trafficking.

In the early hours of Tuesday, assailants gunned down the mother, aunt and siblings of a marine who died during a raid that that killed Arturo Beltran Leyva, the leader of one of Mexico's most powerful cartels.

Also Tuesday, gunmen killed the tourism secretary of Sinaloa, the northern Pacific coast state where Beltran Leyva was buried Sunday.

Sinaloa assistant state prosecutor Rolando Bon Lopez said police were trying to determine if drug gangs were behind the killing of Antonio Ibarra, a father of seven.

Sinaloa is home to some of Mexico's most powerful cartels, including the gang run by Beltran Leyva, who died Dec. 16 during the shootout with marines in the central city of Cuernavaca.
MyWay

Official: Governor slain shortly after abduction

BOGOTA (AP) - Colombian authorities say it appears a southern governor kidnapped by presumed leftist rebels on his birthday and found with his throat cut was killed within a few hours of the abduction.

Manuel Hernandez is chief judicial investigator for Caqueta state, where Gov. Luis Francisco Cuellar was killed Monday night.

Hernandez said Wednesday that Cuellar's body was nine miles (15 kilometers) from his house, which was attacked by a rebel commando unit of eight to 10 men who dragged him outside in his pajamas.

Hernandez said Cuellar's body was found face down Tuesday on a rural hillside with an 8-inch (20-centimeter) gash across the neck and no sign of a struggle.

Cuellar's kidnapping was Colombia's first major political abduction since 2002.

It happened on the governor's 69th birthday.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

BOGOTA (AP) - At the end of a day of anguish and frustration, President Alvaro Uribe soberly told Colombians that kidnappers had slit the throat of a southern governor during the country's first major political abduction since he took office in 2002.

The slaying of Caqueta state Gov. Luis Francisco Cuellar underlined the threat still posed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia despite years of being battered by the Andean nation's U.S.-backed military. The FARC didn't immediately take responsibility for the kidnapping, but it has a history of staging publicity-grabbing attacks during the Christmas holidays.

"In the midst of pain, we reiterate today all our determination to defeat these terrorists," Uribe said in a televised speech to the nation late Tuesday, less than 24 hours after Cuellar was dragged in his pajamas from his home in Florencia, capital of Caqueta state.

Uribe said senior military officials told him that "because security forces were in pursuit, the terrorists, so as to avoid gunfire, proceeded to cut the throat of the governor." He spoke in a grim monotone, a contrast to his anger earlier in the day.

Cuellar was grabbed by eight to 10 men in military uniforms who killed a police guard and used explosives to blow open the front door to the governor's home about 10 p.m. Monday, Gen. Orlando Paez, operations chief for the national police, told The Associated Press. Two other police guards suffered shrapnel wounds that were not life-threatening.

Uribe said the rebels first ditched and set fire to the pickup truck they had used to carry away the 69-year-old Cuellar.

His body, still clad in pajamas, was found lying at the top of a steep hill on Florencia's outskirts between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Tuesday, said a police official who agreed to discuss the case only if granted anonymity because he wasn't authorized to make public statements. The discovery wasn't revealed by officials for more than six hours.

Earlier Tuesday, an angry Uribe, whose rancher father was slain by leftist rebels in a 1983 botched kidnapping, said he had ordered soldiers and police to rescue Cuellar, also a cattle rancher. Officials said 2,000 police and soldiers had fanned out into the hills around Florencia looking for the kidnappers who took the governor.

Officials also offered a $500,000 reward for information leading to Cuellar's abductors - and Uribe said in his TV speech that the reward still stood. Colombia has effectively used millions in reward money to secure rebel defections and betrayals.

Cuellar had previously been kidnapped four times since 1987 - not to create a political spectacle as was clearly the intent this time, but rather for ransom. His wife, Himeldo Galindo, told the AP before his death was announced that he had been held from two to seven months in those abductions.

Caqueta has long been a stronghold of the FARC, which finances its insurgency chiefly from the cocaine trade, and is among the Colombian states with the highest military presence, including an army division headquarters in Florencia.

It was in Caqueta that the FARC abducted presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian, in 2002 as she raced to a town where peace talks between the government and rebels were falling apart.

FARC rebels also seized some state governors and a congressmen in 2002, but until Monday night that had been the last year in which the movement abducted a leading politician.

It also was the year that the conservative Uribe was elected to his first term as president and launched a campaign to crush the insurgents.

Kidnappings that had been common in the countryside sharply diminished as Uribe pursued his "Democratic Security" offensive, nearly doubling the size of Colombia's military and benefiting from $700 million in annual U.S. military aid.

The July 2008 rescue of Betancourt was a triumph of that policy, though the military was badly demoralized last year by a scandal in which soldiers were accused of killing hundreds of innocent civilians and claiming they were rebels killed in combat.

Uribe's government says the 45-year-old FARC has been reduced by desertions and killings to about 8,000 fighters, half its size in 2002, but the rebels still engage in lethal hit-and-run raids that claim several hundred lives annually. Rebels killed nine soldiers in a night raid on an army post in Cauca state just last month.

Defense Minister Gabriel Silva cautioned in a weekend newspaper interview that Latin America's largest rebel army was "neither vanquished nor in its death throes."
MyWay

Bin Laden daughter hides in Saudi embassy in Iran

CAIRO (AP) - A daughter of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has taken refuge in the Saudi Embassy in Tehran after eluding guards who have held her and five brothers under house arrest for eight years, a Saudi-owned newspaper reported Wednesday.

It has long been believed that Iran has held in custody a number of bin Laden's children since they fled Afghanistan following the U.S.-led invasion of that country in 2001 - most notably Saad and Hamza bin Laden, who are thought to have held positions in al-Qaida.

This year, U.S. officials said Saad bin Laden may have been killed by a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan, where they said he may have fled after being freed from Iran, but they could not confirm the information.

But Omar bin Laden, another son who lives abroad, told the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that Eman told relatives in a call from the embassy that 29-year-old Saad and four other brothers were still being held in Iran.

Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Omar were not immediately returned, and there was no comment from Iranian or Saudi officials.

Asharq Al-Awsat said the 17-year-old daughter, Eman, slipped away from guards and fled to the Saudi Embassy nearly a month ago. The embassy's charge d'affaires, Fouad al-Qassas, confirmed to the paper that she has been at the mission for 25 days and that there were diplomatic efforts with the Iranians to get her out of the country.

Another bin Laden son, Abdullah, who lives in Saudi Arabia, told the Arab TV news network Al-Jazeera in an interview aired this week that Eman telephoned him after she eluded guards who were taking her on a shopping trip in Tehran.

Osama bin Laden reportedly has 19 children by several wives. He took at least one of his wives and their children with him to Afghanistan in the late 1990s after he was thrown out of his previous refuge, Sudan. They fled when the U.S-led war erupted, including the group that tried to escape through Iran.

His son Omar told Asharq Al-Awsat that the family had not known for certain the fate of the siblings that fled through Iran until Eman's escape. "Until four weeks ago, we did not know where they were," said the 28-year-old Omar, who is married to a British woman and has lived in Egypt and the Gulf. He said eight other bin Laden children live in Saudi Arabia and Syria.

Most of the al-Qaida leader's children, like Omar, live as legitimate businessmen. The extended bin Laden family, one of the wealthiest in Saudi Arabia, disowned Osama in 1994 when Saudi Arabia stripped him of his citizenship because of his militant activities. Osama bin Laden's billionaire father Mohammed, who died in 1967, had more than 50 children and founded the Binladen Group, a construction conglomerate that gets many major building contracts in the kingdom.

Omar bin Laden said he spoke by telephone in recent weeks with his 25-year-old brother Othman, who is among the six siblings being held in Iran. Othman told them that Iranian authorities detained the group after they crossed the border from Afghanistan in 2001, and since have been holding them under guard in a housing complex in Tehran, Omar told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Omar said the bin Laden children in Iran were sons Saad, Hamza, Othman and Bakr and daughters Iman and Fatima.

In January, the Treasury slapped financial sanctions on Saad bin Laden and three other al-Qaida figures for suspected terror activities. At the time, Michael McConnell, then-director of national intelligence, said it was believed Saad had left Iran and was likely in Pakistan.

In July, U.S. counterterror officials said Saad may have been killed in a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan, but there has been no confirmation since.
MyWay

Diana West Debunks The Surge

The surge didn't work, but I got these neat prayer beads...

The great Diana West debunks the surge:

The main reason the "surge" in Afghanistan is on is because the conventional wisdom tells us the "surge" in Iraq "worked."

The problem is, the Iraq surge did not work. Yes, the U.S. military perfectly executed its share of the strategy -- the restoration of some semblance of calm to blood-gushing Mesopotamian society -- but that was only Step One. The end-goal of the surge strategy, Step Two was always out of U.S. control -- a fundamental flaw. Step Two was up to the Iraqis: namely, to take the opportunity afforded by U.S.-provided security (Step One) to bring about both "national reconciliation" and, as the powers-that-were further promised, the emergence of a U.S. ally in the so-called war on terror.

Step One worked. Step Two didn't. The surge, like an uncaught touchdown pass, was incomplete. The United States is now walking off the battlefield with virtually nothing to show for its blood, treasure, time and effort. In fact, another "success" like that could kill us. Cont...

SEAL pleads not guilty in Iraq detainee case

NORFOLK, Va. — The third SEAL accused in the assault of an alleged al-Qaida terrorist pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges of dereliction of duty and making a false official statement in a military court on Norfolk Naval Base.

Special Warfare Operator 2nd Class (SEAL) Jonathan Elliot Keefe entered his pleas through his lawyer, Virginia Beach-based Greg McCormack, who has already requested — and been granted — the first continuance in this case.

As a result, Keefe’s trial, originally scheduled to start Jan. 26, will be postponed until April 6. Keefe also requested that he be tried by a jury with one-third enlisted members. He also had the option to have an all-officer panel or to have his cased ruled on by a judge alone.

But before the case goes to trial, McCormack says the government has a lot to prove.

“Very clearly we have very significant outstanding discovery,” McCormack said. At issue are alleged videos and photos of the alleged victim, Ahmed Hashim Abed, both during and after the attack.

The U.S. thinks Abed masterminded the 2004 ambush in Fallujah, Iraq, in which four Blackwater security contractors were hanged and burned.

“I have not seen any of this evidence, but I understand it exists,” McCormack said to reporters after the hearing. “That’s an issue, as there are serious questions as to whether or not he was injured.”

Much of the evidence, he said, was still undergoing classification review, and what he’s seen is not enough to adequately defend Keefe.

McCormack also said the government has told lawyers that they do not plan to bring Abed to the United States as a witness in the trial. As a result, McCormack said he may have to travel to Iraq to get a deposition from him.

“Obviously a deposition is not an adequate substitute for confrontation,” he said. “He’s claiming he was assaulted by American forces, and I think we’re entitled to confront him on that.”

McCormack says that Keefe “adamantly denies” he’s guilty of the charges, and chose a court-martial, with the possibility of a federal conviction, as best to clear his name.

“Had he elected [non-judicial punishment], he would have lost his [SEAL qualification],” McCormack said. He said that he’d like to resolve the case without going to court, but said that he’s not willing to accept any plea deals, either.

“There is no compromise,” he said. And the only acceptable pre-trial outcome would be to have “all charges dropped and he goes back to where he was before as a SEAL.”

The two other SEALs, SO1 (SEAL) Julio Antonio Huertas and SO2 (SEAL) Matthew Vernon McCabe, have already entered their pleas — Huertas during his Dec. 7 arraignment, and McCabe through his lawyer, Neil Puckett, last week after deferring entering a plea at the arraignment.

McCabe, also accused of making a false statement and dereliction of duty, is the only one of the three accused of assaulting Abed. His court-martial is scheduled to begin Jan. 19 on Norfolk Naval Base.

In addition to dereliction of duty and making false official statement charges, Huertas is charged with impeding an official investigation. His court-martial will begin Jan. 11 on Norfolk Naval Base.
NavyTimes

Osama bin Laden’s missing family found in secret compound in Iran

Osama bin Laden’s closest relatives are living in a secret compound in Iran, members of the family said last night. They include a wife and children who disappeared from his Afghan camp at the time of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

There has been uncertainty about the family’s whereabouts for the past eight years, with reports that some of the children had been killed in bombings, while others had joined their father in planning terrorist attacks. However, relatives said that they found out last month that the group, including one of Osama’s wives, six of his children and 11 of his grandchildren, had been kept in a high-security compound outside Tehran.

They have been prevented from contacting the outside world while Iran has repeatedly denied that any of the relatives were living in the country.

Members of the bin Laden family are now appealing for the group to be allowed to leave Iran and described them as the “forgotten victims of 9/11”.

Omar Ossama bin Laden, 29, the al-Qaeda leader’s fourth-eldest son, said he had no idea that his brothers and sisters were still alive until they called him in November. They told him how they had fled Afghanistan just before the 9/11 attacks and walked to the Iranian border. They were taken to a walled compound outside Tehran where guards said they were not allowed to leave “for their own safety”. The eldest of the children, Saad, was 20 at the time, Ossman 17, Muhammad 15, Fatma 14, Hamza 12, Iman 9, and Bakr, 7.

There had been speculation that Muhammad was second in command of al-Qaeda and that Saad also instigated and plotted terrorist attacks until he was killed about 18 months ago by an American drone. The relatives, however, said that Muhammad is still living in the compound and that Saad ran away less than a year ago in an attempt to find his mother.

A week after making contact with her brother, Iman escaped during a rare trip outside the compound and made her way to the Saudi Arabian Embassy. She is now living there while seeking permission to leave Iran.

Mr bin Laden said that his relatives live as normal a life as possible, cooking meals, watching television and reading. They are allowed out only rarely for shopping trips. As a number of families are being held in the compound some of the older siblings have been able to marry and have their own children. “The Iranian Government did not know what to do with this large group of people that nobody else wanted, so they just kept them safe. For that we owe them much gratitude, and thank Iran from the depth of our heart,” he said.

Mr bin Laden, who had lived with his father in exile in Sudan and Afghanistan but left before the 9/11 attacks, now hopes that the family will be given permission to leave Iran and join his mother, brother and two sisters in Syria, or himself and his wife in Qatar.

He said: “They are all just innocent victims, just the same as anyone else hurt by the dreadful events of 9/11 and 7/7. These babies and children have never had any education, never hurt a single soul, never trained with any weapons or ever been part of al-Qaeda. We just want to be together as a family. I have now got 11 nieces and nephews, born either in Afghanistan or Iran that I have never seen.

“Some may find this story unnerving, but the child can’t be judged by the sins of their father.”
Timesonline

Yemen War Among Worst Global Humanitarian Crises

The Yemeni government continues to block international aid to the 700,000 affected persons in the northern Sa'ada War. The regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh refuses to consider a humanitarian cease-fire and the lack of food, water and medicine in the war zone has become broadly lethal according to a new report by Doctors without Borders (MSF).

More at Armies of Liberation.
Jawa Report

Yemen al-Qaeda: War is against US

Men claiming to be leaders of al-Qaeda have made a rare public appearance in Yemen, telling an anti-government rally the fight is against the US, not the country's army.

The statement was made at an al-Qaeda training camp in southern Yemen - the same one that was attacked by the Americans leaving more than 30 dead.

Al Jazeera's Tarek Bazley has this exclusive report.
Al Jazeera

Rubio Rising

'Wow." That was the response of a cynical Florida Republican politico recently reacting to poll numbers showing former state speaker of the house Marco Rubio tied with Gov. Charlie Crist. The two are expected to face one another in an August Republican primary for the Senate seat abandoned by Republican Mel Martinez. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, is wowing even the professionals; his performance is especially impressive because the weight of the Republican establishment is behind Crist, as it has been for most of the year -- the National Republican Senatorial Committee endorsed him back in the spring.

The politico, who told me months ago that Rubio didn't have a chance, now says: "The Rasmussen poll really surprised me. Not sure how that gap closed, as the (in-state) coverage of the race hasn't been extremely significant." This Florida political insider previously dismissed Rubio as having no shot at taking on the governor of the state. "I think he has a chance now, but it is still an uphill battle. His fundraising last quarter helped his momentum big time, in addition to some unforced errors on Crist's part." Marco Rubio is no longer a long shot. In fact, another recent Rasmussen poll had Rubio slightly more likely than Crist to beat the probable Democratic nominee for the seat, Rep. Kendrick Meek.

If you spend time with Rubio, it's no surprise that he's impressing people. He comes off as "the real deal." That, of course, is an industry term for someone who actually believes in something and believes what he says. He's well-versed on issues local and national, and projects a solid presence in public, even when tired by the rigors of his upstart campaign.
NR

Reid Bill Says Future Congresses Cannot Repeal Parts of Reid Bill

Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) pointed out some rather astounding language in the Senate health care bill during floor remarks tonight. First, he noted that there are a number of changes to Senate rules in the bill--and it's supposed to take a 2/3 vote to change the rules. And then he pointed out that the Reid bill declares on page 1020 that the Independent Medicare Advisory Board cannot be repealed by future Congresses:

there's one provision that i found particularly troubling and it's under section c, titled "limitations on changes to this subsection."

and i quote -- "it shall not be in order in the senate or the house of representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection."

this is not legislation. it's not law. this is a rule change. it's a pretty big deal. we will be passing a new law and at the same time creating a senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law.

i'm not even sure that it's constitutional, but if it is, it most certainly is a senate rule. i don't see why the majority party wouldn't put this in every bill. if you like your law, you most certainly would want it to have force for future senates.

i mean, we want to bind future congresses. this goes to the fundamental purpose of senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future co congresses.

Watch DeMint's full remarks here:
Weekly Standard

Impermissible Ratemaking in Health-Insurance Reform: Why the Reid Bill is Unconstitutional

Right now, the Senate is anxiously considering HR-SA 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—a.k.a. the Reid Bill—which builds on earlier efforts in the Senate and House to reach a new consensus on health-care reform.[1] Many legislative uncertainties remain, but its key characteristics seem fixed in stone, and they highlight the radical nature of this legislation.

Senator Orrin Hatch has long urged that the legislation is unconstitutional for its overreaching on individual choice. This paper focuses on the constitutional question in the ratemaking context, by comparison to analogous regulations in the context of public-utility regulation.
One telling sign of the relevance of this analysis comes from the Congressional Budget Office ("CBO"). In a recent release, it has treated the proposal as if it nationalizes much of the private health insurance industry, most specifically because it may well require that rebates to customers kick in whenever, in its words, "medical loss ratios are less than 90 percent."[2] In plain English, the Reid Bill assumes that health-care administration, which is always costly, can be done cheaply even in the new legal environment, so cheaply in fact that these health-insurance rebates kick in whenever insurers' administrative expenses exceed 10 percent of their premium dollar. As the CBO has concluded, "this further expansion of the federal government's role in the health insurance market would make such insurance an essentially governmental program ..."
Point of Law

Impermissible Ratemaking in Health-Insurance Reform: Why the Reid Bill is Unconstitutional

Right now, the Senate is anxiously considering HR-SA 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—a.k.a. the Reid Bill—which builds on earlier efforts in the Senate and House to reach a new consensus on health-care reform.[1] Many legislative uncertainties remain, but its key characteristics seem fixed in stone, and they highlight the radical nature of this legislation.

Senator Orrin Hatch has long urged that the legislation is unconstitutional for its overreaching on individual choice. This paper focuses on the constitutional question in the ratemaking context, by comparison to analogous regulations in the context of public-utility regulation.
One telling sign of the relevance of this analysis comes from the Congressional Budget Office ("CBO"). In a recent release, it has treated the proposal as if it nationalizes much of the private health insurance industry, most specifically because it may well require that rebates to customers kick in whenever, in its words, "medical loss ratios are less than 90 percent."[2] In plain English, the Reid Bill assumes that health-care administration, which is always costly, can be done cheaply even in the new legal environment, so cheaply in fact that these health-insurance rebates kick in whenever insurers' administrative expenses exceed 10 percent of their premium dollar. As the CBO has concluded, "this further expansion of the federal government's role in the health insurance market would make such insurance an essentially governmental program ..."
Point of Law

Saudi Military Destroys Infiltrators Katyusha Rockets — Military Sources

[Asharq al-Aswat] Saudi military sources informed Asharq Al-Awsat that Katyusha rockets, mortar shells, rocket propelled grenades, and 7.62mm caliber heavy machine guns, are some of the more prominent weapons being used by the [Huthi] armed infiltrators. It was also revealed that the infiltrators are using specially converted anti-tank rounds, as well as modified pick-up trucks equipped with a fixed machine-gun.

The source added that the Saudi Arabian armed forces present on the frontlines in the border region were able to destroy three Katyusha missiles yesterday, and were subject to five attacks by armed infiltrators. The source described the first attack as being a heavy attack.

As for the theatre of operations, the sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that Saudi forces are in complete control of Jabal Dokhan, Jabal Rameeh, and Jabal al-Dood and the surrounding villages, and are continuing to bombard the remaining infiltrators located in the border region. The source also revealed that Saudi forces were targeted by the infiltrators artillery and that more than 20 artillery shells fired upon them overshot their targets and missed, resulting in zero casualties.

A military source in the Saudi paratroopers confirmed that the Saudi forces are more than a match for the infiltrators, and in fact surpass them at all levels in terms of capabilities and training and martial arts, whether in defending against their attacks, or attacking them and destroying their bases, weapons caches, and personnel. This source said that the Saudi forces were attacking the [Huthi] infiltrators to stop the violation of Saudi territory.

He also said that the military forces would continue to bombard the [Huthi] positions within the Saudi territory, which the infiltrators are continuing to use as a means to infiltrate the [Saudi] military sector. The source added that the [Saudi] army, navy, and air force, are fighting a constant battle using careful plans and tactics. He also revealed the active role being played by artillery in this battle, and that the air force continued its bombardment of several sites being used as sniper posts and weapons caches by the infiltrators yesterday.
al-Aswat

General Backs Off on Court Martials for Pregnant Soldiers

An Army general in Iraq backed away from his threat today to court martial female soldiers who get pregnant.

"I regret that the term 'court martial' is bandied about or mentioned," Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo III said from Iraq today. "I do not ever see myself putting a soldier in jail for this."

Cucolo triggered debate, some of it angry, when his Nov. 4 policy forbidding pregnancy among his soldiers became public recently. His policy statement said violation of the rule could be punishable by court martial, and that it would also apply to the men who get female soldiers pregnant, even if the couple is married.

Pregnant soldiers are immediately redeployed out of combat zones to bases where they can get comprehensive medical care.

"The true purpose behind this is to cause them to pause and think about, 'Okay wait a minute. It was written in the order and I'm going to leave my team. I'm going to leave an outfit shorthanded,'" Cucolo said.

Watch "World News with Diane Sawyer" at 6:30 p.m. ET today for more on Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo's restriction on pregnancy in Iraq.

While legal and military experts said the order was proper, a spokeswoman for the National Organization for Women called it "ridiculous."

"How dare any government say we're going to impose any kind of punishment on women for getting pregnant," NOW President Terry O'Neill said. "This is not the 1800s."

She said NOW would seek to have Cucolo's order rescinded, and would turn to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and even President Obama for help. "Applying this criteria is intended to promote thoughtful and responsible behavior," Cucolo told ABC News today. "I wanted all my soldiers to think before they act, before they make a personal choice that has consequences."

Cucolo said that he was not surprised by the reaction and intense interest in his general order, but that those outside the military may not be able to fully understand his motivation.

"I will listen to critics. They provide thought, but they don't actually have to do anything," he said. ""I have a very complex mission."

Cucolo said that in the eight weeks his policy has been in force, four women soldiers were redeployed because they had become pregnant in violation of Cucolo's order. The four women and two male soldiers received letters of reprimand that will not remain in their permanent military files.

A third male soldier, he said, was also punished for getting a female soldier pregnant. He was a noncommissioned officer who was committing adultery. He was also charged with fraternization and given a permanent letter of reprimand. In that case, the man was a sergeant and the female a junior soldier.

One of the pregnant women declined to identify the person who got her pregnant, Cucolo said.

In addition to the four women who got pregnant while on duty in Iraq, Cucolo said four other female soldiers were sent home because they found out they were pregnant, but had become pregnant before being sent to Iraq.

"Will some soldiers hear this, read this and say 'Well that's nothing?' Sure, they might," Cuculo said. "But I've got 22,000 incredible soldiers who are incredible Americans and I'm counting on them to do the right thing." Of the soldiers in his command, 1,682 are women.



Court Martial Threat for Pregnant Soldiers Draws Fire
Cucolo said the Army does not provide emergency contraception or abortive services and does not intend to start.

There's "only discussion about appropriate behavior and consideration of the impact of getting pregnant, of getting someone pregnant," he said. "That's the only discussion that's taken place. Nothing about pills."

"Anyone who leaves this fight early because they made a personal choice that changed their medical status -- or contributes to doing that to another -- is not in keeping with a key element of our ethos, 'I will always place the mission first,' or three of our seven core values: loyalty, duty and selfless service," he continued. "And I believe there should be negative consequences for making that personal choice. "

The pregnancy policy is just one provision in a larger general order that also prohibits soldiers from sexual contact with Iraqis or third-party nationals who are not members of coalition forces.

Provisions in the Nov. 4 order are also applicable to civilians under Cucolo's command.

Georgetown University law professor Gary Solis, a former Marine prosecutor and judge advocate, questioned Cucolo's rule in the first place, but says the general has diluted the effectiveness of his order by announcing he won't court martial anyone who violates the policy.

"Of course when you put out an order, you don't intend to court martial anybody," Solis said. "But that's a logical end."

Solis called the pregnancy policy "unwise" and said that Cucolo's assertion that won't resort to court martial, "does not reflect the purpose of what the orders are."

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nathan Banks told ABCNews.com Monday that Cucolo, like any other commander, has the right to institute and enforce policies as he sees fit.

"Under his command, that's his take," Banks said.

That means, Banks said, that troops in different parts of Iraq and Afghanistan are subject to varying regulations. Some commanders, he noted, have made DUI a potentially court martial offense, while some haven't.

John Hutson, a former longtime military judge advocate and currently the president and dean of Franklin Pierce Law School in New Hampshire, said it's well within Cucolo's rights to hand down such an order, especially if pregnancy has become a serious issue within his ranks.

When a woman becomes pregnant, "you've taken somebody and you've made her less effective," he said. "And I think its only fair that if you do that with the woman then the man be held equally culpable."



Will New Policy Cut Back on Pregnancies Planned to Flee Iraq?
"It's not saying you can't have sex," Hutson said. "You have to take precautions."

Still, he added, "in some respects, it flies in the face of family values."

Civilian military lawyer Wayne Kastl, lead counsel with the Military Defender law firm, said he understands the Army may have its reasons for such an order. Sex among its ranks can cause trouble in many regards, including favoritism of the partner.

Also, soldiers found to be pregnant are sent back to the U.S. in short order and Kastl said he has heard anecdotal evidence of female soldiers intentionally getting pregnant to be sent home.

Because of that, he said, "I can see why they're doing it."

Hutson agreed, saying pregnancies planned to relieve the female soldier of duty is a form of malingering, an Army term for a soldier who injures him- or herself to prevent dangerous assignments.

Kastl noted that the Army already encourages its female soldiers to take medication to stop their menstrual cycle. And in some cases, Cucolo's order may be redundant, since the Army already prohibits fraternization between superiors and subordinates, though it seemingly has no current take on sexual contact between members of the same rank.

Cucolo himself said in the statement to ABC News that his order "made an existing policy stricter."

Hutson worried that Cucolo's policy could cause an increase in abortions overseas. And since military hospitals do not perform such procedures, female officers may find abortions are available not "in the way you want them," Hutson said, forcing women to potentially dangerous providers of such services.
ABC

Ladybird: Barzani’s unachievable dream of a Kurdish army

New Years Mandala by blue sea_art.

Ace Mideast Correspondent Ladybird delves into the issues, others fear to tread:

Dur­ing his meet­ing with US Army Lt. Gen. Michael Bar­bero, Barzani said: “one of my dreams to see a uni­fied army of Kur­dis­tan”, a direct reac­tion came from Maliki’s spokesman Al-Dabagh say­ing: “This will remain a dream”.

In his last arti­cle on Asia Times “Maliki makes his move on Kirkuk issue”, Sami Moubayed argued that Maliki will Barzani’s dream come true.

But for these rea­sons, Barzani’s dream is not achievable:

Last infor­ma­tion from Kur­dis­tan showed the rise of Barzani’s KDP influ­ence sta­tioned in the Arbil, on the other hand the decline Talabani’s PUK influ­ence, in the Sulaymaniyah.

Despite the increase of Brazani’s influ­ence, both par­ties agreed to share the power in the Kur­dish region based on the following:

- Brazani to lead the Kur­dish gov­ern­ment, and Tal­a­bani to take the Iraqi pres­i­dency post.

- Shar­ing the secu­rity and mil­i­tary ser­vices. Pesh­merga unites led by Barzani to con­trol Arbil (west Kur­dis­tan), while the Pesh­merga unites led by Tal­a­bani to con­trol Sulay­maniyah (East Kurdistan).

Since Barzani will be the commander-in-chief of the new formed Kur­dish army, many Talabani’s Pesh­merga mem­bers will shift their loy­alty to the pow­er­ful Barzani side. Barzani’s terms and con­di­tions to cre­ate the uni­fied Kur­dish army, will weaken Talibani’s posi­tion and his party.

There are many ques­tions, which will remain with­out answers:

What is the def­i­n­i­tion of the “enemy” accord­ing to the Kur­dish army? Is it the Turk­ish army, the Iran­ian or the Syr­ian army, or is it the Iraqi army? Cont...

Leafless Eve on Arabs, Hair and the Hijab

Model Hana Jirickova, now she has good hair...

Leafless Eve is a Thirty-Something Lebanese Blogger:

The issue with Hair

It seems us Arabs have an "issue" with hair... Controversy over covering it up or not, shaving the beard or not, waxing or not... what's the deal?

I understand that "grooming" habits change from culture to culture... but this is really silly...

The obsession with Hair is also apparent with our neighbors, the Jews. Hasidic Jewish men grow out of control beards too, and the women actually wear wigs, so that they don't show their hair! Smart... why didn't we think of that? Tricking God! Those Jews... always innovative...lol

Surprisingly, I never addressed the hijab controversy on this blog... but i guess it was bound to happen, so here it is:

Covering a woman's hair is not about obligation or morals or obedience, it's just another example of how MAN managed to take away a huge part of the female "power".

I once had extensions put in my hair, and i gotta tell you, the feeling was AMAZING... when i went out, and the wind was blowing my hair (and my fake hair) i felt like Samson! so STRONG... like i'm gonna fly! i can never imagine cutting my hair short... let alone covering it.
Why do you think we have phrases like "bad-hair day"? cause hair is THAT important... You don't feel "pretty" unless your hair is clean & neat... When you feel "pretty" you feel confident, and men don't really want that. They want you helpless & weak.

Yes, Hair is POWER... men understand this, and they resent us for it... they can't stand the fact that we have "sexual" power... so they somehow managed to trick us into believing that covering up is about conservativeness or being discreet... which is B.S. A covered woman can be as sexual and as deviant as any other.

Besides, if the point is to drive attention away from yourself, so that you don't commit any "sins", you can just go out looking like crap... don't shower, and dress like a bum, that'll do it...

If you're one of those extremely beautiful women, then you just have to ask all the men in your town to do what "God" suggested: Cover up. Yes, let THEM cover their faces so they can't see YOU. Or just cover their eyes, and buy a blind dog. They will find it hard at first, but the reward will come in the afterlife :P Now where have you heard that phrase before? lol ...Cont...

Iranian Speaker Blames S. Arabia for Yemen Crisis

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani criticized Saudi Arabia for its role in Yemen's internal disputes which led to the death of many innocent Muslims in the country.

"In Yemen issue, we criticized our Saudi brothers not the Yemenis," Larijani told reporters in Cairo where he is attending a meeting of the Islamic Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)'s constitution review committee as well as a series of talks with Egyptian officials.

Larijani also reiterated that Iran will do its best to resolve the crisis in Yemen.

"We are friends with the Yemeni government and highly respect them and we have had very close consultations in this regard," he added.

The Iranian speaker made the remarks after his meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak which he described positive and constructive.

Larijani also reiterated that during his meeting with Mubarak, he discussed regional and international issues.

Noting that the trip was an opportunity to confer with Egyptian officials on Tehran-Cairo relations, he termed Egypt an influential country in the region.

"There is a good ground that aids perusing Iran-Egypt ties and attempts to support the ties," Larijani said.
Fars

Obama, Nobel peace prize in hand, bombs Yemen with cruise missiles

Just one day after a very public denial that American forces were attacking sites in Northern Yemen, President Barack Obama ordered multiple cruise missile attacks on sites across the tiny, coastal nation, just days after picking up his Nobel Peace Prize.

The air strikes were coordinated with the government of President Ali Abdallah Saleh and the attacks left 120 killed, many of them civilians according to witnesses. President Obama called Saleh after the attack to “congratulate” him on the killings.

Al-Jazeera and other regional news outlets reported last week that U.S. military jets launched cruise missile strikes in Yemen, near the border with Saudi Arabia. Al-Houthi reports said Tuesday marked the third day of U.S. military strikes in the region, blaming American forces for striking two mosques in their air raids. Additional statements from al-Houthi groups point to U.S. involvement in the deaths of more than 120 people in recent attacks.

Last Wednesday, P.J. Crowley, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, rejected the allegations outright. "We do not have a military role in this conflict," he told UPI. The following day, administration sources admitted that American cruise missiles, on Obama’s orders, hit a “suspected Al Qaeda training camp” north of Sanaa, the capital, and another site, where terrorists were thought to be plotting an attack on the U.S., ABC News reported, citing unnamed administration officials.

The politically sensitive strikes Thursday supplement efforts already under way by the government of Yemen to go after Al Qaeda in the country, military officials told Fox News, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the operation. Such an operation is particularly sensitive in Yemen. “It’s very difficult for Yemen to ask the U.S. for help given the nature of their population and its views about the West,” one official said. “And the U.S. doesn’t want to compromise their ability to ask for help.”
Examiner

The O man isn't pulling his punches, thank god.

Afghanistan: World's Lengthiest War Has Just Begun

The higher number of Defense Department contractors, 160,000, added to over 100,000 troops - with the likely prospect of both numbers climbing yet more - will result in over a quarter of a million U.S. personnel serving under the Pentagon and NATO. The latter has 42,000 non-U.S. troops fighting under its command currently and pledges of 8,000 more to date, with thousands in addition to be conscripted after the London conference on Afghanistan next month. Approximately 35,000 U.S. soldiers are also assigned to NATO's ISAF and if the 33,000 new American troops are similarly deployed the North Atlantic bloc will have over 120,000 forces fighting a land war in Asia. Along with a Pakistani army of 700,000 active duty troops fighting on the other side of the border and an Afghan army of 100,000 soldiers, there will soon be well over a million military personnel engaged in a war with a few hundred al-Qaeda and a few thousand Taliban forces.
----------

Despite U.S. President Barack Obama's pledge in his December 1 address at the West Point Military Academy that deploying 30,000 more of his nation's troops to Afghanistan would be coupled with "a goal of starting to withdraw forces from the country in July 2011," everything else he has said and all the facts on the ground suggest that the war will continue into the indefinite future.

At a press conference a week before the West Point troop surge announcement he said "it is my intention to finish the job," and in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on December 10 he affirmed: "We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes."

History establishes that it is easier to deploy to than to withdraw from an active war zone.

The White House has already increased U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan from 32,000 at the beginning of the year to over twice that amount - 68,000 - currently, with the first contingent of even more reinforcements arriving this week. The 30,000 additional troops headed to the war front and the 3,000 more support forces pledged by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will push American military personnel in Afghanistan to over 100,000.

That number, likely to be increased yet further and accompanied by a veritable invasion of private military contractors and State Department operatives, will be augmented by over 10,000 more non-U.S. troops serving under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), bringing combined American and NATO regular military forces to well over 150,000 and total Western personnel to over 300,000 with an estimated surge of as many as 56,000 new U.S. contractors. With the addition of assorted security, intelligence, private contracting and other military camp followers from NATO nations, the figure could top a third of a million.

An occupation and warfighting force of those dimensions is not designed for a limited mission or a short stay.

In fact on December 6 U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones (former top NATO military commander in Europe) gave the lie to the 2011 withdrawal anodyne in an interview with CNN when he brashly asserted "We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured in terms of finite times. We're going to be in the region for a long time."

Jones also emphasized the extension of the war in space as well as time by stating American reinforcements and redeployments would concentrate on eastern and southern Afghanistan to "eliminate the safe havens" inside Pakistan, a nation with a population of 175 million and nuclear weapons.

His claims, more authoritative than those of the president he serves, were echoed by Pentagon chief Robert Gates. Earlier this week it was reported that "In a visit to the war zone last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Afghanistan's senior military officials that while the U.S. looks forward to the day when the Afghans can take control of their country, the United States would have a large number of forces in Afghanistan for some time beyond July 2011."

Gates in his own words: "This is a relationship forged in blood. We will see it [through] to the end." [1]

To demonstrate the scale of the U.S. and NATO intensification of the war in Afghanistan - so urgent, evidently, that it is being qualitatively escalated during the Christmas season - in addition to Gates's visit to the Afghan war front, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, new German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor Zu Guttenberg and other top Western military and political leaders have recently traveled to Afghanistan to inspect their respective nations' military forces stationed there.

On December 16 the first of the latest 30,000 U.S. troops committed to the war and the 16,000 that have received deployment orders since Obama's December 1 speech, 1,500 Marines, arrived in the nation, prompting Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell to crow "The surge has begun in earnest." [2]

The Washington Post ran a feature on December 16 based on a report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) - "which provides background information to members of Congress on a bipartisan basis" - in which the CRS stated "it expects an additional 26,000 to 56,000 contractors to be sent to Afghanistan. That would bring the number of contractors in the country to anywhere from 130,000 to 160,000."

In addition, that already astronomical figure "could increase further if the new [administration] strategy includes a more robust construction and nation building effort." The report also remarked that as of a year ago contractors accounted for 69 percent of Defense Department personnel in Afghanistan and as such "represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by the Defense Department in any conflict in the history of the United States." [3]

The higher number of Defense Department contractors, 160,000, added to over 100,000 troops - with the likely prospect of both numbers climbing yet more - will result in over a quarter of a million U.S. personnel serving under the Pentagon and NATO. The latter has 42,000 non-U.S. troops fighting under its command currently and pledges of 8,000 more to date, with thousands in addition to be conscripted after the London conference on Afghanistan next month. Approximately 35,000 U.S. soldiers are also assigned to NATO's ISAF and if the 33,000 new American troops are similarly deployed the North Atlantic bloc will have over 120,000 forces fighting a land war in Asia. Along with a Pakistani army of 700,000 active duty troops fighting on the other side of the border and an Afghan army of 100,000 soldiers, there will soon be well over a million military personnel engaged in a war with a few hundred al-Qaeda and a few thousand Taliban forces.

Washington's Afghan surge is not limited to uniformed personnel. The Wall Street Journal reported that "The White House hopes to have 1,000 State Department, Treasury and Department of Agriculture personnel in Afghanistan by next month, up from 300 a year ago."

The newspaper revealed that a former psychiatric hospital in the state of Indiana is currently "the staging ground for one of the biggest deployments of U.S. civilians since the Vietnam War." Non-Pentagon government officials en route to Afghanistan "are often paired with members of the Indiana National Guard, who are preparing for their own deployment in Afghanistan.

"Trainees spend a week on a make-believe forward operating base in the forest, where they go through military operations with the National Guard as if they were already deployed in Afghanistan. The civilian recruits learn to perform their own security functions." [4]

The dramatic escalation of the war is also not limited to increases in personnel. The U.S. Defense Department recently announced that it was expanding the deployment of Stealth warplanes and high-altitude, long-endurance Reaper "hunter-killer" drones which are equipped with fifteen times more deadly missiles than its Predator predecessor. "[T]he Air Force is looking toward developing unmanned, long-range surveillance aircraft that also can carry warheads so they can be used during combat." [5]

The U.S. Air Force's latest stealth reconnaissance drone, dubbed "the Beast of Kandahar," resembles "the much larger, swept-wing B-2 Stealth bomber, and officials confirmed this month that the military has begun using the classified, unarmed drone in Afghanistan." [6]

The skies over Afghanistan are crisscrossed by U.S. and NATO surveillance aircraft, bombers and helicopter gunships to such a degree that for Afghans to even leave their homes means to risk their lives. Three Afghans were killed and one wounded on December 17 in Kandahar province when NATO attack helicopters obliterated their minibus.

Matters are no less deadly on the Pakistani side of the border. The day before the Afghan attack, the U.S. launched ten missiles from five drones in the second of two assaults, "an unusually intense bombardment," [7] into North Waziristan, killing at least twenty people, identified as always as Taliban and al-Qaeda targets.

A Los Angeles Times feature on December 13 revealed that "Senior US officials are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan's tribal region.

"After confirmation that the CIA has been operating drone strikes in Pakistani territory, a new report says the US is seeking to expand the attacks into the country's cities."

The report added that "CIA spokesman George Little quoted spy agency Director Leon Panetta as saying that US has been launching the attacks from secret airfields in Pakistan and Afghanistan." [8]

The U.S. is not alone in ratcheting up the longest and largest war in the world.

On December 13 U.S. Central Command chief General David Petraeus said "The number of European NATO troops in Afghanistan should swell beyond the 8,000 troops already promised...." [9]

The Pentagon is dispatching 4,000 101st Airborne paratroopers to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in addition to a parachute battalion from the 82nd Airborne to join an American Stryker brigade and NATO ally Canada's forces there. The deployments are part of a plan to "flood areas close to Afghanistan's second largest city with Canadian and U.S. troops" and to "assist Canadian Forces to create a security noose around Kandahar City." [10]

Reuters recently reported that "Germany plans to send up to 2,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan in response to requests from the United States and other NATO partners," citing the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung which wrote "the United States and NATO members had already received signals to this effect." [11] Germany currently has 4,500 troops stationed in Afghanistan, the third largest contingent after the U.S. and Britain. The 4,500 figure is the maximum number permitted by the nation's parliament, but will soon be exceeded in another reversal of the nation's post-World War II limits on waging wars abroad.

Agence France-Presse reported that "NATO hopes to send two tactical groups, up to 3,000 troops, to north Afghanistan under German command," according to German General Karl-Heinz Lather, the chief of staff of NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, who said "From a military point of view, the allied headquarters in Europe thinks it necessary to send two tactical groups into this zone." [12]

Herve Morin, the defense minister of France, which has 3,300 troops under NATO command in Afghanistan, announced that he may deploy "medium-sized supplementary troops" after the January 28 conference on Afghanistan in London. [13] 800 French Legionnaires are at the moment engaged in a fierce combat operation along with American counterparts east of the Afghan capital.

The top NATO military commander in Europe, Admiral James Stavridis, was in Poland earlier this week to "to discuss the Alliance's ISAF mission in Afghanistan" [14] and to recruit more Polish troops for the war. Warsaw has already pledged to raise its force level to nearly 3,000 troops as it recently signed a status of forces agreement to base U.S. missiles and troops, the first foreign soldiers on its soil since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact eighteen years ago.

The Czech Republic "is for the first time in history sending its own helicopter unit to Afghanistan."

"Czech soldiers and three upgraded Mi-171S transport helicopters will be...sent to the Sarana base in the southeast of the country to serve the needs of the NATO forces in the ISAF mission....The unit underwent comprehensive training for one and half a years, for instance in the Alps mountains and in desert areas in Israel and Texas....Czech soldiers will be first trained by their U.S. colleagues." [15]

Spain has announced its will send more than 500 additional soldiers to Afghanistan, joining NATO and NATO partner states like Italy (1,000), Georgia (1,000), Britain, Hungary, Slovakia, Colombia, South Korea, Mongolia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Armenia in committing new forces. Troops from five continents with Australia included.

Not only full NATO member states but Partnership for Peace nations are being strong-armed to provide more troops. Finland and Sweden, both of which have increased their troop strength in northern Afghanistan in recent months, have been involved in their first combat operations since World War II in the first case and in almost 200 years in the second. Troops from both nations were engaged in the latest of a series of firefights on December 13.

The Bundeswehr will soon train the first contingent of troops from former Soviet republic and current Collective Security Treaty Organization member Armenia in Germany for action in Afghanistan.

The defense minister of nominally neutral Austria, Norbert Darabos, said that the U.S. and Britain were bullying his nation to send more troops to Afghanistan, bemoaning the fact that "America's pressure on Austria is relatively intense, sometimes it is a little bit improper" and asserting that "Austria is a sovereign country [which] will not give in to the pressure." [16]

What Darabos may be concerned about in part is the rising rate of NATO casualties in Afghanistan. During the past few days two Dutch troops were injured, one critically, in a roadside bomb attack in Uruzgan province.

An Estonian soldier was killed in a similar incident in Helmand province, bringing the country's casualties to four killed and 23 wounded this year.

Two more British soldiers were killed this week, raising United Kingdom deaths to 239, 102 this year.

Nearly 500 Western soldiers have been killed so far this year, 305 of them American, compared to 155 U.S. military personnel lost during all of last year.

Undaunted, on December 16 the U.S. House of Representatives - by a vote of 395 to 34 - "passed a massive military spending bill to defray annual expenses, fund operations in Afghanistan, and pay for the troop withdrawal from Iraq."

The $636.3 billion package, "which does not include monies for President Barack Obama's recently announced decision to send 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan," allots "80 million to acquire more unmanned Predator drones, a key tool in the US air war in Afghanistan and Pakistan....With little public debate in the United States, the pace of the drone bombing raids has steadily increased, starting last year during ex-president George W. Bush's final months in office and now under Obama's tenure." [17]

In approving the Pentagon's request, the American Congress endorsed "$130 billion to cover the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq" excluding an "estimated $30 billion that will be needed to fund President Barack Obama's recent decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan."

The bill also authorized the funding of "new Air Force global strike programs - including work on new manned and unmanned systems - Army brigade combat team modernization, a Navy attack submarine, and the Navy's new Carrier Long-Range Strike system....Analysts called the decision a victory for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has lobbied the White House for more funding.

"The Obama administration will add $100 billion to the Pentagon's 2011-15 base budget plan to cover the rising cost of personnel and pressing modernization needs...." [18]

Militarism is a psychopathology and war can be an addiction.

Analyst Andrei Grozin of the Central Asia Department of the Institute of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] Countries in Russia averred an opinion of his own on why the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan and acquired military bases in Central Asia and why they will be loath to leave.

"[I]t's important for Americans to coordinate the efforts of various structures, which are interested in, on the one hand, reducing traditional Russian influence on the authorities and society and preventing China from strengthening its influence, on the other hand...."

The same source's comments were paraphrased: "One of the apparent geopolitical interests of the US in the region is to establish control over energy resources and pipelines that transport oil and gas to Central and Western Europe through Russia and also to China and Iran." [19]

The prolongation and unprecedented expansion of the world's lengthiest war, now in its ninth and on January 1 to enter its tenth calendar year, are by no means limited to alleged concerns over al-Qaeda, evil and opium poppies.
OpEdNews

Maverick U.S. officer builds 'security bubbles' in Afghanistan

ALTIMUR, Afghanistan – You may wonder how Thomas Gukeisen made it to lieutenant colonel, and by age 39 at that. He operates by his own version of counterinsurgency warfare, with an arsenal that includes Afghan poetry, chaos theory and the thoughts of a 17th-century English philosopher.

A towering, rough-and-ready 205-pounder, the officer from Carthage, N.Y., peppers his sentences with unprintables and reads Karl von Clausewitz's classic on war in the original German.

But the higher-ups seem to like what they see. Gen. David Petraeus, who commands U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, has visited Gukeisen's sector, as have Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry.

Substantial resources have flowed into Gukeisen's hands, including $850,000 in small bills for such jobs as building schools and putting carpets in the mosques of Afghans who turn against the Taliban.

Col. David Haight, Gukeisen's superior, calls him one of the brightest officers he has met.

Gukeisen wages his war across 620 restive, rugged square miles of Logar, a strategically important province bordering Kabul where he has implemented what he calls an "extreme makeover."

Rather than rigidly applying the current mantra – Clear, Hold, Build – he has held back from trying to clear large, Taliban-influenced swaths of territory, focusing instead on areas he believes are ripe for change, and then injecting aid where it counts most.

The goal was to create "security bubbles" where life could improve, so that "the rest of the districts would want to join the club," Gukeisen said.

Six months later, he says, nearly half the 400,000 people of Baraki-Barak, Charkh and Kherwar districts, along with half of Puli-a-Alam, are within the bubble. He says roadside bombs, attacks and other violent incidents have dropped by 60 percent, while intelligence from locals about the insurgents has soared by 80 percent.

Gukeisen believes rules sometimes have to be broken to get past the bureaucrats. He says he had to browbeat the purse-holders for the $850,000 and the authority to distribute it through his junior officers. But he sees a much-changed Army that is, in his sardonic wording, "beginning to gain a semblance of intelligence."

"I think the Army is coming back to the soldier as scholar and statesman," he said.

Gukeisen says his fascination with nonconventional warfare began when he was growing up in Europe with his German mother and U.S. Air Force father and hearing the stories of Dutch, Belgian and French resisters in World War II. "I realized the military does not operate in a singular world, so I started reading outside that world," he said.

His personal list of effective counterinsurgency tools includes a collection of Afghan poetry, a study of chaos theory, and Hollywood films such as Red Dawn, about American guerrillas fighting a Soviet invasion of the U.S. His approach was also influenced by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who explored man's quest for security in a violent world.

Winding up his second tour, Gukeisen is reluctant to leave things uncompleted.

"I'd like to be here another year," he said.
Dallas News

New U.S. Spy Plane to Be in Afghanistan by Christmas

U.S. troops in Afghanistan are getting a new tool in their fight against terrorism in the form of a spy plane that will provide ground troops with still images, video and eavesdropping, Bloomberg reported.

The first of the 24 new Hawker Beechcraft four-man twin-propeller plane is expected to arrive by Christmas -- one month ahead of schedule, Lt. General David Deptula said in an e-mail, Bloomberg reported.

In April 2008, the planes were ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to up the number of manned and unmanned aircraft collecting intelligence data, and will now be used to help support the 30,000 troops Obama ordered to Afghanistan.

The plans have the capability to send images and video directly to ground troops, who will have portable computers that will let them see the images, Bloomberg reported.

They will also help provide 24-hour video that is now provided by unmanned drones.
FoxNews

Qaeda makes rare public appearance at Yemen rally

SANAA (Reuters) - Al Qaeda militants made a rare public appearance in restive south Yemen on Monday, telling an anti-government rally that the group's war was with the United States and not the Yemeni army, residents said.

The West and Saudi Arabia fear al Qaeda will take advantage of the Yemeni government's focus on a Shi'ite rebellion in the north and rising secessionist sentiment in the south to spread its operations to the kingdom, the world's top oil exporter.

"Soldiers, you should know that there is no problem between us and you. The problem is between us and America and its lackeys," residents quoted one militant as telling hundreds of people gathered to protest against the killing of dozens of civilians in government raids aimed at al Qaeda last week.

Al Jazeera television showed footage of the militant addressing the crowd while an armed comrade stood by as a bodyguard. Both were unmasked.

An explosion killed three people during the protest, held at a suspected al Qaeda training camp bombed during Thursday's raids in southern Abyan province. A security official blamed al Qaeda for the blast, which some reports said may have been caused by unexploded munitions.

Yemen said on Thursday its security forces and warplanes had foiled a planned series of suicide bombings by attacking targets including the al Qaeda training center.

About 30 al Qaeda militants were killed and 17 arrested in Abyan and in Arhab, northeast of the capital Sanaa, it said.

Protesters, including supporters of the Southern Movement which says south Yemen has been marginalized and wants it to secede, say about 50 people were killed, most of them civilians.

The New York Times said on Saturday that the United States gave military hardware, intelligence and other support to Yemeni forces to carry out the raids.

Saudi and Yemeni militants said earlier this year they were uniting under the name Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, using Yemen as their base.

Besides fighting al Qaeda militants and separatist unrest Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country, is fighting a war against Shi'ite rebels in the north.

Political analysts say such conflicts, together with falling oil income, water shortages and a humanitarian crisis, add to instability in a region that includes oil superpower Saudi Arabia and one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.
Reuters

Israel's new UAV can reach Iran

Israel's new long-range unmanned aerial vehicle, unveiled by Elbit Industries this week, adds a new dimension to the military's capabilities against Iran -- not just boosting its surveillance reach but perhaps even attacking air defenses with remote-controlled Hellfire missiles.

Elbit announced on Tuesday that its Hermes 900 had successfully completed its maiden flight and would enter production following additional flight tests.

The UAV is based on Elbit's highly successful Hermes 450 model, which has accumulated 170,000 flight hours.

The 450 is the primary UAV deployed by the Israeli military, and at least 20 of them were in action daily during the 34-day war with Lebanon's Hezbollah in July-August 2006.

The 900 model is essentially a stretched and bulked-up 450, a 992-pound craft that was designed to carry two AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, the weapons systems used by U.S. UAVs targeting al-Qaida and Taliban chieftains in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The 900 is similar in appearance to the U.S. MQ-1 Predator, which carries out most of the attacks in the AFPAK theater of operation. Both weigh around 1 ton.

The Hermes 900 is designed primarily for endurance and for the first time gives the Israeli armed forces a long-range drone that can conduct surveillance flights over hostile territory as distant as Iran, some 950 miles.

However, to do that would mean overflying Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and possibly Turkey, and risk political problems with those states.

If such flights were undertaken, the new 900's primary mission would undoubtedly be spying out air-defense systems around Iran's nuclear facilities, the primary target for threatened Israeli airstrikes, supplementing intelligence from Israeli spy satellites.

The UAV's attack potential could also prove useful in the event Israel does launch pre-emptive strikes to knock out Iranian nuclear sites and other strategic targets.

It could hit air-defense systems ahead of attacks by the Israeli air force's F-16I and F-15I strike jets, reducing the risk of Israeli pilots being shot down over hostile territory. The last time that happened was when an F-4 Phantom went down over south Lebanon on Oct. 16, 1986.

The new Hermes can stay in the air for 36 hours -- 16 more than the 450 -- with a payload of 650 pounds, enough to give it considerable loiter time over Iran.

It has a cruising speed of around 80 miles an hour, can fly as high as 30,000 feet and has satellite communications capability.

It also uses innovative avionics, operates silently, which allows for missions over urban areas, and carried high-tech systems such as electro-optic imaging, a laser designator that can be used to "paint" ground targets for aircraft, and electronic intelligence sensors.

The Israeli air force, which operates the 450, has not yet acquired any of the new 900s, although it recently bought the Heron UAV manufactured by state-run Israel Aerospace Industries. That can remain airborne for more than 30 hours with a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet.

Meantime, there were reports that Israel's first unmanned stealth naval craft, designated Protector SV but known as the Death Shark, has been deployed in the Gulf region, able to cruise underwater off Iran for long periods.

Operated from a surface ship or a shore base, the 27-foot craft reportedly carries a Close-In Weapons System for detecting and engaging anti-ship missiles and aircraft, as well as torpedoes and electronic jamming gear.

It also carries four cameras with the resolution of satellite imaging systems as well as sonar and radar systems that can transmit three-dimensional images to its control base.
Space War

AP IMPACT: Tijuana's drug war focuses on police

EDITOR'S NOTE: AP reporter Elliot Spagat follows Tijuana's new public safety chief, Julian Leyzaola, for eight months as he launches the city's most aggressive police reform to date, in the middle of a raging drug war.

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TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) - Behind every crime is a corrupt cop.

That's Public Safety Chief Julian Leyzaola's mantra as he storms Tijuana with its most aggressive police reform to date, a mix of counterterrorism and community policing. If it works, it could be a model for other hotspots and a huge breakthrough in a drug war in Mexico that has taken more than 14,000 lives in the last three years.

But the job is as monumental as turning around Al Capone's Chicago. Cops in this border city and many others nationwide now serve as the eyes and ears of drug lords. And those who fight the cartels often end up dead.

The Associated Press followed Leyzaola for eight months as he rallied troops, consoled officers' widows and appealed to jaded residents for support. The AP joined commanders and officers on patrol, at target practice and in training classes, tracking firsthand Leyzaola's intended reforms.

Leyzaola, 49, joined Tijuana police in 2007, after 25 years in the army and stints running Baja California's state prisons and police. A year ago, he became head of the largest police force in Baja, where 90 percent of officers surveyed last year failed federal security checks.

"Listen well," the retired military officer says with his trademark certitude. "No delinquent can survive without help from the authorities. If you do not clean up the police, you will never get rid of drug trafficking."

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The march to recapture the city starts in early 2009 and expands to a new district every three months. The plan is to end in 2011 in the east, the city's most violent section, where Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental wages a vicious campaign to take over Tijuana's drug trade.

Leyzaola draws his strategy from many sources, including French counterterrorism operations in Algeria in the 1950s and Colombia's war against its cartels in the '90s. He has $7 million in federal funding this year.

The plan for each district: Make a slew of arrests. Then replace beat cops with officers who pass intensive background checks and put in former military officers as commanders. They patrol small areas in new pickup trucks and are responsible for whatever happens in their area.

First up is downtown Tijuana.

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Felipe Gandara, 37, is one of 400 Tijuana officers who passed the new training and background checks for downtown. In March, he begins by introducing himself at every bank, foreign-exchange business and restaurant.

"It's important to lose your anonymity," Leyzaola says. "I believe police abused their positions because no one knew who they were."

Gandara likes Leyzaola's approach.

"It was a complete change, a lot more responsibility," Gandara says. "Every crime is your responsibility."

Victor de la Cruz, the former Air Force officer appointed to oversee the launch, estimates a 40 percent increase in people reporting crimes in little more than a month.

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The same month, Leyzaola's bodyguard of 18 months, Ricardo Omar Medina, is among 130 officers caught in an anti-corruption spree.

Medina receives a call late one March night to report to Leyzaola at 8 a.m. for a new radio. When he arrives, his boss demands his vest, badge and other equipment.

"I've lost trust in you," Leyzaola tells him.

About 250 were fired or pressured to resign. When Leyzaola suspects cops are dirty, he puts them on patrol in the palm trees outside police headquarters - a job that humiliates most into quitting.

According to court documents, one of the officers arrested in March said he got $500 a month from El Teo's gang to keep streets clear of cops during murders and kidnappings. If he refused, his family would be killed. Another officer said he was paid $300 to $500 each time he released criminals at El Teo's command.

Leyzaola likes confronting them personally - in his office, at their stations, even on patrol. He sometimes drives them himself to the army barracks, where they are held.

Families of the officers come forward immediately with allegations of torture - electrocuted genitals, near-suffocation, severe beatings Leyzaola says he is not responsible for what happened to officers in army custody.

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The threats start on April 24, broadcast over Tijuana's old police radios that drug traffickers routinely commandeer: If Leyzaola doesn't resign, cops will die.

Three days later, Officer Luis Izquierdo, Gandara's former partner and mentor, is on the night shift, patrolling the San Diego border with three other cops. He walks into a convenience store just as a caravan of black SUVs drives by. Men get out of the vehicles and pump Izquierdo and three others with more than 200 bullets.

The police scanners hum with a "narcocorrido," or a drug ballad. Three more officers go down in synchronized attacks across the city.

Gandara picks up the radio traffic and calls his wife.

"Luis is dead," he says.

She calls Izquierdo's wife to break the news: Seven officers killed in 45 minutes.

It is the department's deadliest day.

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The next day, Leyzaola stops the community policing, less than two months into the program. His officers are too exposed. They turn to patrolling large areas in convoys of as many as six trucks.

The department's 2,000 officers get two-week courses on securing crime scenes, surveilling suspects and other basic policing techniques.

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The tip comes in early June: Drug trafficker Filiberto Parra Ramos - wanted for killing two federal agents and for his role in one of Tijuana's deadliest shootouts - is spotted in Playas de Tijuana. The army already is out looking.

Leyzaola joins the massive search for him.

After a false alarm, Parra is cornered at a shopping center near the airport. Leyzaola personally makes the arrest - nabbing one of El Teo's top assassins without firing a single shot.

The hits ramp up in July.

The body of Officer Geronimo Calderon, pumped with bullets, is left with a note: "If you don't resign, Leisaola (sic), I'm going to kill 5 x week."

That night, a Tijuana cop survives an assassination attempt as he stands unarmed outside a grocery store. An officer dies in drive-by shooting the next day while guarding a Mexican Red Cross center, and a third is killed five days later in an ambush.

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By September, funerals are part of Leyzaola's routine.

Leyzaola is also quietly campaigning to keep his job after his boss, Mayor Jorge Ramos, is forced out by term limits in December 2010.

"We're really only in our first year," he says. "In two years, Tijuana will see a real difference."

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After the September killings, Leyzaola moves his campaign to Playas de Tijuana three months earlier than scheduled.

The district gets new radios and 58 new Ford F250s. They had 14 patrol vehicles before.

All over the city, cops are scared. They routinely patrol with their rifles drawn.

Officer Mario Pena, who worked the district where Izquierdo died, stops wearing his uniform to work and alternates his routes home. He quits meeting officers for coffee on the job, stops socializing with them on weekends for fear they will be recognized and gunned down.

But he says the killings are a sign that Leyzaola is succeeding.

"We are finishing off the mafia," he says.

El Teo has other plans.

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By the end of September, the Mexican army gets another tip: U.S. authorities say a weapons purchase north of the border indicates a plot is afoot to kill Leyzaola.

The intelligence leads soldiers in October to a Tijuana shoe shop, where they arrest Edgar Zuniga, one of El Teo's men. Zuniga leads them to a ranch on the eastern outskirts, where the assassins' vehicles are being painted in camouflage to trick Leyzaola as they approach.

The plan calls for 12 men to approach Leyzaola in a fake military convoy as one takes him out with a .50-caliber rifle. The execution would be videotaped, set to a narcocorrido and posted on the Internet.

Soldiers surprise the planners Oct. 31 in a shootout at the ranch, arresting 13 suspects. They seize more than 3,400 bullets, plus the camouflaged vehicles.

The foiled hit had been personally ordered by El Teo for Nov. 1.

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In Leyzaola's first year as public safety director, 32 officers died, more than in the previous five years total. Dozens went to jail and the department shrunk from about 2,200 to 2,000 - forcing him to extend patrol shifts from eight to 12 hours.

His community policing plan is still on hold.

But Leyzaola already is looking to next year, planning to hire 150 new officers, send 50 at a time to train with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and issue new bulletproof vests, each backed by a manufacturer's $50 million guarantee. He hopes to restart community policing early in 2010.

He avoids speculating on what would have happened if the plot had gone through. Leyzaola is a man who only moves forward.

"God protects me," he says.
MyWay

Troops, Taliban race to build up local governments

KHAN NESHIN, Afghanistan (AP) - The governor of this remote district in southern Afghanistan has employees he can't afford to pay, a school he struggles to staff with teachers, a clinic where doctors are scarce and a police force of mostly illiterate farmers.

That's actually progress in an impoverished area that had no school, doctor, police or even a governor before U.S. Marines arrived about six months ago.

Building up local government is key to improving people's lives and winning their support against the Taliban. The experience in Rig district in Helmand province, a crossroads for Taliban fighters entering from nearby Pakistan, highlights just how difficult that challenge can be.

"Right now it is a race between us and the Taliban," said Lt. Col. Richard Crevier, whose battalion is posted in a 200-year-old mud fort in Khan Neshin.

The dusty district town is typical of many areas of Afghanistan that have little history of strong government presence. Where the state's influence is felt, it's often not for the better. Many officials use their positions to enrich themselves rather than deliver basic services.

The Taliban have capitalized on people's grievances by setting up shadow governments in many parts of Afghanistan's volatile south that in some ways function more efficiently than the real thing, although they are based on the group's strict interpretation of Islam.

The Marines and civilian development officials in Khan Neshin are trying to bypass the corruption and inefficiency at higher levels of government by working directly through the district governor, Massoud Balouch, a 27-year-old former pharmacist who sacrificed a comfortable life in the provincial capital to run one of Afghanistan's impoverished areas.

"If there were more people like me, Afghanistan would build itself faster," said Balouch.

But coalition officials have discovered that even a capable and well-intentioned local leader can get hamstrung by corruption at higher levels of government, a shortage of educated Afghans and the threat that the Taliban will target those who cooperate with the development effort.

In a country where the literacy rate is only about 30 percent, Balouch has had trouble recruiting competent staff willing to work in a remote district of only about 20,000 people for practically nothing.

It's a problem the U.N. says also plagues provincial governments.

"We train 1,700 people, then ask them to go back to their provinces to work," said the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, Kai Eide. "And they say, 'For $60, $70, $80 dollars a month? Why should we?'"

Helmand's provincial government appointed senior staff for Balouch, but he said they were corrupt. Instead, he recruited people he knew earlier this month to serve in a handful of administrative positions. He also brought a new doctor with him.

But he receives so little money from the provincial government that he relies on international aid to pay most of their salaries and the district's budget, which is unsustainable in the long-run.

"It is a common problem in Afghanistan to fail to get money from the government because of corruption," said Balouch.

Without foreign aid to pay salaries, the governor said, his staff "would leave, and I wouldn't want them to stay because they would fall into corruption."

Convincing educated and well-trained people to come work in Khan Neshin is only half the battle. Getting them to stay has proven just as difficult.

The first two doctors the governor brought with him in August and September left after 24 hours because they were scared of the lingering Taliban threat, said Lt. Cmdr. Todd Dwayne Bell, a U.S. Navy medic working with the Marines in Khan Neshin.

Locals had been relying on a veterinarian with close links to the Taliban as the only medical professional before the Marines arrived in July.

There had also been no school for several years until the coalition came. But there are only two teachers, and one failed to return from vacation recently, leaving the second - a former maintenance worker - to teach more than 100 kids.

Despite the setbacks, many residents say they appreciate the coalition's efforts - at least when asked in the presence of several heavily armed Marines from the 4th Marine Division, 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion.

"Since the Marines came here it's good because they cleaned out our irrigation canals and we have a school and a clinic," said Fathi Mohamed, a 60 year-old farmer.

But serious challenges remain.

Recently, the district received a new batch of police after more than half of the previous officers failed a drug test. The new recruits are mostly young farmers who have no formal training and can't read or write.

The district also lacks a formal court system and must send suspects to the provincial capital by military helicopter within 72 hours of arresting them, a logistical nightmare in a place where flights are regularly canceled because of weather or maintenance.

The lack of effective justice in Afghanistan's rural areas is one of the key grievances the Taliban have seized upon to increase their support. The Taliban often hand out verdicts in hours, compared to months or years in the country's often corrupt and inefficient court system.

Coalition officials said they are relying on trust in the district governor to help maintain local backing.

"If trust doesn't exist, plus you have the problems with getting a doctor, a teacher, that would just snowball into the belief that you can't deliver these things," said Maj. Jeremy Hoffman, the chief information officer for the Marine battalion in Khan Neshin.

But there are even questions about how long the governor will remain in his post.

Balouch currently spends only about half of each month in Khan Neshin and said he hoped to wrap up his work in about 30 days and leave the task of governing to his staff.

The coalition is counting on him to stay.

"He wants to see the job done ... and I can state that it won't be done in a month," said Hoffman.
MyWay

Christmas Shopping in Tehran

Credit: Ankawa.com

What does it say, that Iran's Christians are treated better than Iraq's?

Tehran’s Christians residents have embarked on their shopping for the holiday season. While Iran is officially designated the “Islamic Republic,” among its more than 66 million people is a small but important Christian minority. Most of Iran’s Christians are Armenians and Assyrians, who remain relatively free to follow their faith. The numbers of Protestants and evangelical Christians are said to be growing. For these people, life is often much more difficult. A number of Christian denominations still live in Iran today and include Assyrians, Armenians, Catholics, Protestants and Evangelical Christians. Although a minority religious group in Iran, Christians of Iran are free to practice their religion and perform their religious rituals. More photos here at Ankawa.com...