NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander (Credit: Wikipedia)

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) asked directly, “I saw an interview in which Mr. Snowden claimed that due to his position at NSA he could tap into virtually any American’s phone call or e-mails. True or false?” Alexander responded unequivocally, “False, I know of no way to do that.”

Collins’ appeared to be referencing a statement made by Snowden in an interview where he claimed “I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal e-mail.”

According to earlier reports, Snowden was essentially a contracted IT guy for the NSA rather than an intelligence officer.

A recent poll found that 68 percent of Americans said the U.S. should not use military force to end the civil war in Syria should diplomatic efforts fail.

“Some people say, ‘Okay, see what a big mess it is? Stay out!’ I think that’s a big mistake. I agree with you about this,” Clinton told McCain. “Sometimes it’s just best to get caught trying, as long as you don’t overcommit — like, as long as you don’t make an improvident commitment.” Clinton didn’t get into specifics about what the U.S. should be doing outside of current policy, but added:

“I don’t mean that a leader should go out of his way or her way to do the unpopular thing, I simply mean when people are telling you ‘no’ in these situations, very often what they’re doing is flashing a giant yellow light and saying, ‘For God’s sakes, be careful, tell us what you’re doing, think this through, be careful.”

Clinton continued, “But still they hire their president to look around the corner and down the street, and you just think – if you refuse to act and you cause a calamity, the one thing you cannot say when all the eggs have been broken, is that, ‘Oh my God, two years ago there was a poll that said 80 percent of you were against it.’ Right? You’d look like a total fool. So you really have to in the end trust the American people, tell them what you’re doing, and hope to God you can sell it” and that it turns out okay in the end.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that a top Syrian rebel commander “has issued a desperate plea for weapons from Western governments to prevent the fall of his forces in Aleppo, pushing the Obama administration to decide quickly whether to agree to arm rebels for the first time or risk the loss of another rebel stronghold just days after the regime’s biggest victory.”

Obama’s top national security aids, including Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey reportedly met at the White House on Wednesday to discuss U.S. policy on Syria.

The New York Times reported that “Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said Thursday, with 92,901 killings documented there through the end of April, a number that may understate the magnitude of the violence in the 25-month civil war.”

In other news:

The Israeli website Ynet reports: Knesset Member Ofer Shelah (Yesh Atid ) slammed the Israeli policy in the [occupied] territories and asserted Israel is on its way to become South Africa. Shelah said the West Bank settlements pose an obstacle to a peace agreement. “The occupation corrupts Israeli society, the IDF , Israeli justice, Israeli media, Israeli psyche and Israeli mode of speech,” he claimed. “Thinking the world will get used to this situation is similar to what white people used to say in South Africa.”

The Washington Post reports: Once-secret surveillance programs were crucial in enabling the U.S. government to thwart dozens of terrorist attacks, says the director of the National Security Agency in a forceful defense of spy operations that have stirred fears of government snooping and violations of privacy rights.

The AP reports: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday that four members of Army special forces in Tripoli were never told to stand down after last year’s deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, disputing a former top diplomat’s claim that the unit might have helped Americans under siege.

The New York Times reports: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered on Wednesday to hold a referendum to decide the fate of the park in central Istanbul that has become the locus of protests against his government and presented him with the most serious challenge he has faced in his decade in power.

Phishing email targeting Iranian Gmail users (Source: Google Online Security Blog)

“For almost three weeks, we have detected and disrupted multiple email-based phishing campaigns aimed at compromising the accounts owned by tens of thousands of Iranian users. These campaigns, which originate from within Iran, represent a significant jump in the overall volume of phishing activity in the region. The timing and targeting of the campaigns suggest that the attacks are politically motivated in connection with the Iranian presidential election on Friday.”

Reuters notes that the company “posted a screenshot of a phishing email [seen above] purporting to be from Google administrators. The email, sent from the account ‘Email.Settings@gmail.com,’ contained a link to a fake sign-in page that asked for the user’s Gmail credentials.”

While Google did not go so far as identify the Iranian government as the source of the phishing, it does imply a connection: “Protecting our users’ accounts is one of our top priorities, so we notify targets of state-sponsored attacks and other suspicious activity, and we take other appropriate actions to limit the impact of these attacks on our users,” Google said.

The government and opposition groups alike have claimed to be the victims of cyberattacks in the lead up the election. Government forces reportedly previously engaged in cyberattacks against “enemies” of Iran and actively recruit hackers to boost its efforts.

Iran’s cyber-capabilities combined with its exclusion from global economy have led some to believe it could be one of the greater cybersecurity threats on the global stage because of its tendency for disruptive action, like the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack targeting global financial institutions last winter.

Iran blocked Google services in September 2012, relenting on Gmail access after a complaints from public officials. The government also reportedly cut off its eight million plus internet users from most virtual private networks (VPNs) in March as part of its attempt to divert internet traffic to a closed intranet system.

Graffiti in Istanbul

Turkey’s mainstream media outlets have been widely criticized for paying little attention to the mass demonstrations. CNN Turk — which has a franchising agreement with CNN but operates editorially independent from the U.S.-based news network — famously aired a documentary about penguins while other networks, including CNN International, carried live footage of the protests. (Penguins have since become the symbol of protest among many demonstrators against the media’s lack of coverage.) The day after tens of thousands flooded Istanbul’s Taksim Square to protest, Turkey’s top-selling newspaper, owned by Erdogan’s son-in-law, ran a front page story on the Prime Minister’s antismoking campaign.

While many Turks have turned to Twitter and Facebook instead (Erdogan recently called Twitter a “menace to society“), other TV news outlets have also helped fill the void. But according to the Turkish daily newspaper Hurriyet, the government’s Radio and Television Supreme Council fined them for doing so, claiming that they were “harming the physical, moral and mental development of children and young people” by broadcasting coverage of the protests in Istanbul’s Gezi Park.

One of the channels fined included Halk TV, which according to the New York Times, “has ties to an opposition political party known by its Turkish acronym, C.H.P.,” and “has been broadcasting nearly continuously with live footage of the protests.”

Erdogan’s government has been notorious for cracking down on dissent and limiting press freedom. In 2009, Turkish authorities fined the Doğan Group, then the largest media company in Turkey, $2.5 billion in unpaid taxes in what a recent CAP report notes “was widely viewed as a political move to punish Doğan for its media outlets’ negative coverage” of Erdogan and his political party, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP.

And because big media companies in Turkey are owned by conglomerates that have larger interests in other industries such as construction or energy, parent companies have been more likely to comply with pressure to lay off government criticism in order to avoid jeopardizing access to large government contracts.

The chief executive of Dogus Media, the parent company of one of Turkey’s largest TV news channels, NTV, apologized this week to viewers and employees for the channel’s lack of coverage of the protests. “Our audience feels like they were betrayed,” Cem Aydin said to employees according to the Times. “Our professional responsibility is to report everything in the way it happens. The pursuit of balance within the imbalanced environment affected us, as it did the other media outlets,” he said, adding, “We owe you and our audience an apology.”

In a seeming effort to tamp down perceptions that the government has responded too harshly against the protesters, Erdogan reportedly met with some of the movement’s leading figures this week and offered a compromise, according to the Times, “proposing a public referendum to decide the fate of the park, where the government plans to build a mall designed to look like an Ottoman-era army barracks.” But the Prime Minister isn’t waiting too long and on Thursday issued a “final” warning to the demonstrators to clear Gezi Park and Taksim Square.

Child soldiers in Myanmar (Credit: Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/AFP/Getty Images)

Every year, the Secretary-General of the United Nations is mandated to provide an update to the body’s General Assembly and Security Council on the countries and groups that still utilize child soldiers when waging war. The report also has to include information on how children are affected by armed conflict more broadly, and detail instances if and when their human rights are violated in conflicts around the world. Unfortunately, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s report for 2013 seems to indicate that this was a banner year in each category.

Fifty-five groups made the United Nations’ “List of Shame” this year, contained in an annex at the end of the report, naming those who either actively recruit child soldiers to their ranks or intentionally target children for harm. These range from rebel groups like the M23 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to terrorist groups such as Ansar Dine in Mali, to government security forces including the Afghan National Police. Twenty-nine of those groups have been listed in every report for the last five years, earning them the title of “persistent perpetrators.”

“The absence of clear front lines and identifiable opponents, the increasing use of terror tactics by some armed groups and certain methods used by security forces have made children more vulnerable,” the report laments, describing instances of schools under attack, children arrested and tortured, and sexual violence committed against youth. Details of abuses against children in twenty-four countries around the world are made harrowingly clear throughout. Secretary-General Ban in particular called attention to the situation in Syria, calling the toll on children “unacceptable and unbearable.”

The report also worries about the introduction of armed drones into warfare. Citing not only reports of children being killed in drone strikes, including reports of at least 50 children dying in strikes in Yemen, it also examines the psychological effect that their use has on youth. “Reports further indicate that the use of drones has a wider impact on children, especially their access to education,” the report warns, adding that “in some situations, both boys and girls have ceased attending school owing to the fear of drone strikes.”

Not everything contained in the report is negative, however, as several groups have been removed from the List of Shame this year. Myanmar, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo all signed action plans with the United Nations in 2012, pledging to remove children from within the ranks of their armies. This is outweighed though by the addition of 14 new groups and governments to the list this year.

Anti-Muslim organizer Pam Geller appears in NYC in 2010

Tennessee’s Muslim community was deeply concerned when a local county commissioner posted an anti-Muslim picture on his Facebook page, which had the viewer looking down the barrel of a shotgun and a caption reading “HOW TO WINK AT A MUSLIM.” Commissioner Barry West later apologized for sharing the picture, but by then his post had gone viral. In response, the American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) organized an outreach forum to educate the community about how to conduct “Public Discourse in a Diverse Society.”

Bill Killian, U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Tennessee, and Kenneth Moore, FBI special agent in charge of the Eastern Tennessee District, were two government officials on hand to present on the ways in which freedom of speech can be exercised without spreading fear or stereotypes. Unfortunately, not everyone was prepared to listen, especially protesters organized by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) — a group founded by leading Islamophobe Pamela Geller — and other right-wing groups. In what they called “rallying for free speech,” a crowd of hecklers inside the event attempted to drown out the numerous speakers.

“That’s not even a crime,” one woman could be heard shouting as Killian walked the crowd through a PowerPoint slide describing what constitutes a hate crime. Another woman called him a “traitor” for his comments. Arguably the worst moment in the proceedings was when Sabina Mohyuddin mentioned a mosque in Murfreesboro, TN, that was burned to the ground in 2007. The hecklers’ response? To break out into cheers. Watch the video here:

“Shame on you,” Mohyuddin can be heard scolding the hecklers over their applause. It wasn’t the first outburst against her during the forum. Earlier in her presentation, when she mentioned the high rate of citizenship among American Muslims, one of the hecklers shouted “Infiltration!”

Outside, Geller and and AFDI co-founder Robert Spencer led hundreds more protesters in rallying against the idea of civilized discourse, claiming to be protecting their right to free speech. “This is the line in the sand,” Geller told the crowd, which included former Saturday Night Live star and fellow Islamphobe Victoria Jackson. “The Constitution and Sharia cannot coexist,” Jackson said, adding, “Islam is evil.”

Spencer defended his group’s harassment of the speakers at the event, calling “the claim that someone in the crowd was ‘afraid’ of the other audience members, as if these patriots who came out to defend the freedom of speech were some gang of menacing thugs, bent on silencing their foes by force, was utterly preposterous.”

AFDI is the mastermind behind the anti-Muslim advertisements posted at public transit stations in major cities around the country, including New York City and Washington, DC. Geller and Spencer also each hold prominent places in CAP’s report “Fear, Inc,” on the network pushing Islamophobia across the country. That the two chose to lead protests supporting Muslim discrimination in a state where several Islamic centers have been subjected to arson and vandalism over the past five years says a lot about their aims.

Lt. Gen. David Morrison (Credit: WA Today)

The video comes in response to a scandal within the Australian Ministry of Defence in which multiple personnel are being investigated for a “series of explicit and offensive emails that degrade women.” These emails were sent among officers and non-commissioned officers alike, including several high-ranking personnel. So far, three service-members have been removed from duty, with another five facing suspension, 9 more being investigated, and around 90 personnel implicated in the emails.

In response, Chief of Army Lt. Gen. David Morrison released to the public a video he filmed for those under his command. The message was clear — harassment ends now:

MORRISON: Those who think that it is okay to behave in a way that demeans or exploits their colleagues have no place in this army. Our service has been engaged in continuous operation since 1999 and in its longest war ever in Afghanistan. On all operations, female soldiers and officers have proven themselves worthy of the best traditions of the Australian Army. They are vital to us maintaining our capability now and into the future.

If that does not suit you, then get out. You may find another employer where your attitude is acceptable, but I doubt it. The same goes for those who think toughness is built on humiliating others. Every one of us is responsible for the culture and reputation of our Army, and the environment in which we work. If you become aware of any individual degrading another, then show moral courage and take a stand against it. No one has ever explained to me how exploitation or degradation of others enhances capability or honors the traditions of the Australian Army.

Watch the rest of Morrison’s comments here:

Morrison has also been in contact with several of the women targeted in the emails to apologize personally. “There are victims of this group’s alleged behaviour who have been denigrated in different ways,” he said to the Australian Broadcasting Company. “Some through texts, some through distortion of imagery, some through the distribution of material without consent.”

At present, the U.S.’ armed forces are dealing with the fallout from several high profile assault scandals and distressingly high estimates of assault within the ranks.

(Credit: AP)

The United States on Thursday confirmed that the Syrian government used chemical weapons on its own people, ending weeks of uncertainty over precisely who had unleashed the deadly agents.

Evidence that chemical agents — likely sarin nerve gas — were used in Syria has existed for months, with France, the United Kingdom, Israel, and Turkey all certain that they had been utilized under the authority of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against the opposition. The United States remained the lone hold-out in fully embracing that theory, citing a lack of certainty over the chain of custody of the evidence.

That uncertainty apparently no longer exists within the U.S. intelligence community. According to a statement from the White House, the intelligence community now with a high-degree of confidence “estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks.” The White House also indicated that the United States is “going to make decisions about further action on our own timeline.”

According to the New York Times, a Central Intelligence Agency report says that the United States has obtained “blood, urine and hair samples from two Syrian rebels” who were engaged in skirmishes with the Syrian government in mid-March. These samples, according to the report, support the conclusion that the Assad government used the sarin and still maintains control of their weapons stockpile.

President Obama has long called the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime a “red-line,” one that would be met with unspecified consequences if it were to be crossed. The determination that the line has been crossed has led to the Obama administration finally deciding to provide more and greater types of support to the Syrian rebels in their attempts to overthrow Assad.

On a call with reporters, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said Obama has decided to give the rebels “military support,” but refused to directly say whether the U.S. had decided to arm Syria’s rebels, saying he was unable to detail every type of support the Syrian rebels will be receiving. Rhodes stressed, however, that this aid would be “responsive” to the requests of the Syrian Military Council and that it would be “substantively different” in “both scope and scale than what we have provided before.” The Obama administration has mulled arming the rebels for months now without pulling the trigger, instead insisting on only providing non-lethal aid.

The decision should be met with strong support from Congress, where the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently voted to approve the transfer of arms to the rebels. More contentious, however, is a military proposal that would enact a “partial No-Fly Zone” extending into Syria from the Jordanian border. This zone, according to the Wall Street Journal, could possibly extend as far as 25 miles into Syrian territory. Rhodes made clear, however, that no decision has been made yet to launch any military operation regarding Syria.

It’s less than clear how the public will respond to this news. Recent polls have showed that while a plurality of Americans support the use of force in the face of Assad using chemical weapons, they remain uncertain if not outright opposed towards military intervention in Syria more broadly.

(Credit: AP)

The White House said yesterday that it has confirmed the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons against opposition forces. “The President has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has,” said a White House statement released on Thursday.

According to the Times, “The officials held out the possibility that the assistance, coordinated by the Central Intelligence Agency, could include antitank weapons, but they said that for now supplying the antiaircraft weapons that rebel commanders have said they sorely need is not under consideration.”

While the Wall Street Journal reported that the military’s plan to arm the rebels includes the imposition of a no-fly zone in Syria 25 miles inward from the Jordanian border, but the the White House has reportedly ruled that out.

In other news:

The House passed an amendment to the FY14 National Defense Authorization Act supporting an accelerated U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and expressing the sense of Congress that any post-2014 U.S. military action there would require further Congressional authorization.

The Hill lists other amendments included in the bill, including a measure to restrict any taxpayer funds to upgrade the Guantanamo Bay prison.

The New York Times reports: After meeting for several hours with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his home in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, protest organizers whose fight to save an Istanbul park set off a political crisis emerged early Friday with what they called a tentative agreement that could end the civil unrest that has roiled the country for nearly two weeks.

Iranians go to the polls today to elect a new president. Addressing American skepticism about the election’s legitimacy, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lashed out. To hell with you if you do not believe in our election! If the Iranian nation had to wait for you to see what you believe in and what you do not, then the Iranian nation would have lagged behind.”

And finally, Global Zero, a group that aims to rid the world of nuclear weapons, launched a new campaign this week ahead of the G-8 meetings in Northern Ireland next week “urging President Obama to set the world’s course to zero nuclear weapons by negotiating further cuts in the massive U.S.-Russian Cold War stockpiles and bringing other leading nuclear powers into international nuclear arms negotiations for the first time in history.” The group enlisted a number of high-profile artists, actors and celebrities to its cause. Watch the group’s new video:

CRUZ: We have reports of servicemen and women being told that, ‘If you share your faith with others, you will face disciplinary action and perhaps court martial.’ The idea that we would say to men and women who are risking their lives … that they have to check their First Amendment rights at the door and give up the right to speak the truth and to speak and defend their faith, it’s wrong and it’s unconstitutional.

Congress is acting right now to make very clear in the law that our service men and women don’t give up their faith when they sign up to defend this country. The Obama administration has explicitly said it opposes such efforts and has threatened to veto.

Cruz was speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference, which according to Politico, he arrived an hour late for and proceeded to only speak for seven minutes.

There is a difference between the religious beliefs a person holds and the actions that person takes. Somehow, conservatives have co-opted the idea that “faith” is synonymous with condemning people for being gay or openly discriminating against them. In addition to justifying such oppression, this approach insults the many people of faith who do support LGBT equality — or are LGBT themselves.

Cruz, Fleming, and other proponents of this “license to discriminate” should provide evidence of the supposed disciplinary action they claim is taking place. If it is actually happening — which the evidence suggests it is not — they should have to stand by the specifics of the anti-LGBT harassment they are clearly trying to defend.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey addresses Congress (Credit: AP)

Sexual assault in the military has come under heavy scrutiny in recent months after a series of scandals and a Pentagon report that estimated 26,000 cases of unwanted sexual contact in 2012, up from 19,000 in the previous year. Of the many issues that have been reported, a narrative has emerged of high and increasing rates of assault, a fear of reporting, difficulty in accessing resources, a sometimes re-traumatizing reporting and judicial process, and a misuse of power by some commanders.

The Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on the crisis last week, and various pieces of legislation are being debated in both houses of Congress. As that’s occurring, the Department of Defense and the various branches of the military are also attempting to end the problem in their ranks. Here’s what each of them are — or in some cases aren’t — doing so far:

1. Re-training and re-screening of prevention and response personnel.

After officers in charge of sexual assault prevention for a Ft. Hood, TX base and the entire Air Force were accused of sexual assault, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel ordered the re-training, re-credentialing, and re-screening of all sexual assault prevention and response personnel. Currently, the qualifications for personnel varies across military branches, but the House recently approved a proposal that would codify and standardize selection criteria across the military. According to DoD spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith, the DoD is in the process of standardizing selection, training, and certification standards for special victim investigators.

2. Limiting commanders’ power to overturn jury rulings.

In response to another scandal, where an Air Force colonel overturned a sexual assault conviction by blaming the victim, Hagel asked Congress to limit military commanders’ power as “convening authorities” to overturn court-martial verdicts, after a review conducted by the Pentagon in April. Commanders would still be able to change sentences, but would have to explain their reasons in writing. The Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday accepted an amendment from Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) that would enact these changes.

3. Pushing back against restricting chain of command authority.

At the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on sexual assault in the military, commanders pushed back universally against the idea of stripping decision-making power from the chain of command structure. While many advocates support the change, and Pentagon data shows that more than 25 percent of victims were assaulted by someone in their chain of command, Hagel and top commanders argued that the chain of command must be preserved to maintain order and discipline. Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) sided with commanders on Wednesday by rejecting a proposal from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) that would have handed cases of felony sex crimes over to independent military prosecutors outside the chain of command. Gillibrand plans to re-introduce her bill on the Senate floor.

4. Revising policies and expanding resources through the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office

The Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office revised its Sexual Assault Program policy in March 2013, according to Smith, focusing on standardizing procedures and increasing training of commanders. The Office further established new standards for medical care providers and is in the process of expanding resources such as the 24-hour Safe Help Line and adding more sexual assault Resource Coordinators and Victim Advocates across branches. The Office will be charged with the DoD’s further attempts at reform in the coming months; its latest strategic plan lists prevention strategies, encouraging reporting, improved response, increased accountability, and stakeholder education as its main priorities.

5. Creating screenings and incentives for counselors and advocates.

After a two-day Sexual Harassment/Assault Prevention and Response conference, Army Secretary John McHugh issued a directive that will require behavioral health screenings for Sexual Assault Response Coordinators and Victim Advocates. The directive also triggers the creation a plan to incentive these positions through career rewards, and restricts the ability to hire these personnel to a small set of senior officers.

6. Training medical officers in evidence collection.

The Army has been developing a Sexual Assault Medical Forensics Examiners program in its South Korea base, with the goal of creating “an Army best practice model program.” Medical personnel are trained in the program to use standard evidence collection kits, and will become part of the sexual assault response process along with Response Coordinators and Victim Advocates.

7. Appointing a female general to head the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.

After the head of the Air Force’s Sexual Assault and Prevention (SAPR) program was arrested for sexual assault, a 2-star female general was appointed to the position. Maj. Gen. Margaret Woodward plans to reorganize the office to directly report to the Air Force’s chief of staff and is seeking ideas on resolving the sexual assault crisis from outside the military. The Department of Defense’s overarching SAPR office is run by two men.

8. Creating Special Victims’ Counsels to advocate for victims.

On Monday, the Air Force opened its first dedicated facility to sexual assault response, housing newly trained lawyers from the Special Victims’ Counsel (SVC) program created earlier this year. In an attempt to tackle a problem that 85 percent of victims do not report, SVCs will advocate solely on behalf of the victim through the entire reporting and prosecuting process. They are also charged with supporting victims in housing changes and other procedural support. Victim advocates have existed in the civilian world for many years and in the Army as Victim Advocates.

9. Issuing a fleet-wide sexual assault awareness stand-down.

Last Wednesday, in accordance with orders from Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey directed to all branches of the military, the Navy announced that it would be holding a three-week long Sexual Assault Awareness Stand-down in June. All personnel will be required to undergo training on basic sexual assault prevention and response principles and training from sexual assault Response Coordinators and Victim Advocates. The Navy intends for the stand-down to “refocus [its] attention” on sexual assault prevention, but it is unclear how the program will differ from previous training required of all officers. During the stand-down, the Navy will also conduct re-training of all personnel involved in sexual assault prevention. Other branches of the military are required to create plans for stand-downs by July 1.

10. Piloting “night patrol” and education programs.

The Navy is currently rolling out a pilot program in a San Diego base of 20,000 military personnel and 6,000 civilians, where a team of officers patrols the barracks charged with preventing assault. The program is based on an earlier pilot instituted in a Great Lakes base since 2011, which also included programs of targeted awareness and victim support. The program is described as using bystander intervention strategies, but the concept of nighttime patrols could also overemphasize stranger rape over acquaintance rape. A Navy spokesman told ThinkProgress that since the combined programs’ establishment in the Great Lakes base in 2011, there has been a 62 percent reduction in reports of sexual assault. The next locations planned for the program’s expansion are bases in Yokosuka, Japan and Naples, Italy.

Notably publicly absent in recent months are any specific programs from the Marine Corps, despite the Pentagon survey’s estimation that women in the Marine Corps, in 2012, faced a higher rate of sexual assault of 10.1 percent as opposed to the 6.1 percent average across the military.

(Credit: USA Today)

Two decades later, America found itself in a very different position. Seething with pain and desperate to construct a worldview in which terrorism was both comprehensible and preventable, the United States entered Afghanistan with a radically revised approach to Islam. America’s new “with us or against us” paradigm positioned Western (neo)-liberalism in stark opposition to a retrogressive Islam that was blamed for incubating Osama bin Laden and emboldening those who would race to their own deaths in order to realize his terrifying decrees. A new binary was crafted, pitting Western secularism against an Afghan Islam that was deeply, perhaps exclusively, associated with the Taliban’s efforts to restrict personal freedoms.

This perspective is ever-present in reporting on Afghan media, especially Tolo TV, a privately operated, American-supported, station that currently dominates Afghanistan’s TV market. The station, which currently airs a mixture of international format game shows such as Minute to Win It: Afghanistan, Turkish soap operas and local productions underwritten by American money, has been praised in outlets ranging from The New Yorker to Fox News for its willingness to eschew traditional Islamic values in favor of ratings-grabbing entertainment.

However, this aspect of Western media efforts in Afghanistan is only part of the story, and one that ignores an opposing trend that is every bit as important. Although television has been growing at impressive rates, in the more rural areas in which Talibanism is the most likely return, radio remains the medium of choice. In this market, Radio Azadi, a local affiliate of America’s Radio Free Europe outreach efforts, plays the central role.

And Radio Azadi’s programming tells a very different story about Islam. In news coverage, commentary and especially popular radio dramas, American-funded programming stresses the centrality of Islam to a proper and prosperous Afghan life. Instead of disparaging Islam as an inconvenient impediment to giving the people (consumers) what they want, Radio Azadi’s programming attempts to re-interpret Afghan history as a narrative in which a true Islam has been corrupted by uneducated Taliban leaders.

In soap operas such as One Village, One Thousand Voices, produced by the San Francisco-based NGO Equal Access, characters consistently find themselves facing injustice due to Koranic confusion on the part of older Afghans. For example, in one episode a woman is denied her inheritance due to a local interpretation of Islam that restricts property transmission to male heirs. However, in the course of the drama, the characters, and the audience, come to learn that a different, presumably more theologically valid, reading of the Koran ensures female birthrights.

In another instance, a character, Khudaidad, defies his father’s request to visit violence upon a family enemy. Before the actor playing Khudaidad appeared live on Radio Azadi to respond, in character, to listener questions, a group of Afghans and Americans coached the performer on proper Islamic responses to the charge that he had violated the Islamic law of honoring one’s parents. Armed with newly memorized Hadiths, “Khudaidad” was ready to teach a national audience about Muhammad’s declaration that if one’s parent asks him to defy Allah’s will, he should “not obey them,” but nonetheless “accompany them in this world with appropriate kindness.”

In providing these lessons American efforts return to a point of natural alliance between Afghanistan and America, the Western country that remains most strongly committed to the notion that religion can be an important part of ethical governance. The approach to the Koran and Hadiths found in One Village, A Thousand Voices is strongly reminiscent of liberal American politicians who selectively invoke the bible in order to stress that Western society has long been committed to fundamental principles of right and wrong.

At the same time, there is something disconcerting about what might be seen as an effort to not only define right and wrong versions of Islam, but also an attempt to fundamentally separate religion from lived historical experience. While religion might exist in heaven at a theoretical and theological level, in reality it is shaped by daily life. There is no such thing as a religion entirely divorced from the history or its practice. The lessons of One Village, A Thousand Voices, perhaps suggest otherwise.

America’s effort to accept and encourage the role of religion in Afghan life is important and encouraging, especially in contrast to the public celebration of secular, capitalist activity that may yet prove unsustainable. It suggests a realistic approach to the future that refuses the demonization of Islam that has been – at least in certain circles within the United States — central to the rhetoric of the so-called “War on Terror.” Nonetheless, any optimism must be abundantly cautious. The best hope for American interests, and perhaps also human rights, lies in the possibility that today’s better educated generation of young Afghans chooses to take the sorts of lessons put forth in One Village, A Thousand Voices and make them part of the lived experience of Afghan Islam. It will be a slow process and perhaps an unsuccessful one, but it is far better than pretending a country can go straight from theocratic rule to the deification of the free market without suffering the consequences.

Matt Sienkiewicz is an Assistant Professor at Boston College, where he teaches on global media cultures and media theory. He is writing from Afghanistan.

Soon after becoming the nation’s top diplomat, Kerry immediately began a renewed U.S. effort toward a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. A key element of this effort has been the revival of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, an offer by the Arab League for normalization with Israel in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967, a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem, and the creation of a Palestinian state.

Since it was first introduced in 2002, Israelis have voiced concerns with what they see as the non-negotiable nature of the initiative, particularly the demand that Israel withdraw from all lands occupied in 1967, on which hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers now live. Last month, in meeting hosted by Kerry in Washington, an Arab League delegation amended the proposal, saying that it would now consider “comparable,” mutually agreed and “minor” land swaps as part of any peace deal.

Israeli officials, including the government’s cabinet minister charged with negotiations with the Palestinians, Tzipi Livni, praised the Arab League’s decision. Fifty-two Members of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, signed a petition requiring Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu to address the issue formally and a majority of Israelis said in a recent poll that they support implementing the initiative in some fashion.

But today at an event at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon “was bluntly dismissive of Obama administration efforts to restart the Palestinian-Israeli peace process,” as JTA noted, calling the revised Arab League plan “spin”:

YAALON: Regarding the Arab Initiative. It’s a spin in my mind. It’s not a decision of Arab League or whatever. And generally speaking about the Arab Initiative, Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to it officially saying, “We’re willing to sit to the table without preconditions with any initiative. But without dictations.” And actually the Arab Initiative as it is, as we know it, is a dictation. First of all you have to give up territory, 67 lines, Jerusalem, [inaudible] and then we the Arabs will consider relations with you. It is a dictation. So to sit to the table without preconditions, we are ready with any initiative.

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Fatah, the political party currently in charge of the Palestinian Authority, also endorsed the updated Arab Peace Initiative last month, saying that it was dealing “seriously with US efforts in order to make them succeed. The success of these efforts first requires a clear Israeli recognition of the two-state solution on the basis of the 1967 borders, a freeze of settlement construction and the release of prisoners, especially those who were arrested before 1994.”

Israelis have publicly balked at halting construction of settlements — which Obama has said are an obstacle to peace and are illegal under international law — but they are apparently quietly instituting a partial freeze to acquiesce to Palestinian demands and move the peace process forward.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently praised the Arab League’s revised plan. “We can’t miss this opportunity to return to negotiations,” Olmert told an Israeli television news channel last month. “The taboo, that there isn’t anyone to talk to, has been broken.”

(Credit: Getty)

The House of Representatives on Friday afternoon approved the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a provision requiring stricter punishments for members of the armed forces who commit sex-related crimes. The bill requires a jail term minimum of two years for any member of the military convicted of rape or sexual assault.

The bill’s passage adds to growing demand on Capitol Hill that something needs to be done about what has become an epidemic of sexual assault in the military. Last month, Pentagon officials came out with a report estimating that there were 26,000 cases of “unwanted sexual contact” in 2012. The numbers aren’t definitive due to a lack of reporting, but indicate a widespread problem.

Members of Congress — most vocally among them Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) — have picked up on the report as a call to action. They believe that the lack of reporting, and the epidemic itself, can be attributed to the fact that servicemembers are required to report sexual assault up the chain of command. In many cases, this means informing a superior that someone they supervise has committed a crime, an intimidating prospect to some experiencing emotional trauma.

The military is taking steps to address the problem, but both military officials and some members of the Senate, notably Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), have rejected the idea of changing the chain-of-command reporting structure.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Cheney laughed off questions about why federal surveillance of phone records need be kept secret, suggesting that since the people who authorize the program are elected by voters, voters should simply trust their judgment.

CHRIS WALLACE: What does all of this have to be kept so secret? The terrorists clearly assume we’re trying to intercept their phone calls and intercept their e-mails. Why not let the American public know the outlines, the general program. Obviously, not sources and methods… so we as Americans can debate it?

CHENEY: [Laughing] I have problems with respect to that concern. I understand people’s concern about it, but an intelligence program that does reveal sources and methods, which in fact is what your’e talking about, is significantly less effective because you’re not just revealing it to the American people, you’re revealing it to your targets, to your adversaries, to the energy…

WALLACE: So what right do you think the American people have to know what government is doing?

CHENEY: Well, they get to vote for senior officials, like the President of the United States, or like the senior officials in Congress. And you have to have some trust in them.

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While Americans do elect the President and Vice President, only a small fraction of voters select who will be in Congressional leadership. Cheney’s suggestion that voters should trust them because they elected them sets up a substantial catch-22 — if voters can’t know what their elected officials are doing on matters of privacy and national security, they cannot know whether they are earning their trust.

And the Bush-Cheney administration is a perfect example of why voters should not always trust their elected leaders. According to the Center for Public Integrity, the administration made at least 935 demonstrably false statements in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq War. Cheney himself made 48 of those, including his infamous 2002 claim that: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”

On Saturday, U.S. intelligence officials released new information regarding two controversial National Security Agency surveillance programs. The intelligence officials claim that NSA surveillance halted potential terrorist plots in over 20 nations, including the United States. Additionally, they claim that the NSA’s database of millions of phone records is queried relatively rarely — only 300 phone numbers were checked against the database, according to the officials.

In total, intelligence officials claim the surveillance programs have disrupted “dozens” of terrorist plots. Last week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), who chair the Senate and House committees on intelligence, both claimed that the NSA phone records database was used to catch Najibullah Zazi, who was later convicted of a plot to bomb the New York subway.

Iranian President-Elect Hassan Rouhani (Credit: Xinhua /Landov/Barcroft Media)

Rouhani, described as the most moderate candidate allowed to run for the seat, won Iran’s election on Saturday in a surprising first round victory. Speaking at a gathering of foreign and domestic journalists, Rouhani made clear that his government would attempt to strike a different tone than that of his predecessor. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s eight years in office have been marked with outlandish statements from him and scorn from Iran’s Gulf neighbors and the international community alike. Rather than antagonizing the rest of the world, Rouhani told reporters his governments’s priority in foreign policy is to have “friendly, close relations with all nations in the vicinity — all fifteen of them — based on mutual respect.”

On the most contentious issue Iran faces, how and if to continue development of its nuclear program, Rouhani called for increased transparency on the Iranian government’s part. “We are ready to show greater transparency and make clear that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s actions are totally within international frameworks,” he told the press. Rouhani also expressed his hope that the current international sanctions imposed on Iran would be able to be alleviated and rolled back as part of an agreement, calling the measures “oppressive.”

Rouhani, however, denied that his government would halt the enrichment of uranium, saying “that time has passed.” The complete stopping of uranium enrichment has been a key demand from the international community to date, an ultimatum that Iran has ignored. “We have many ways of building confidence other than suspending enrichment,” Rouhani, a former nuclear negotiator for the Iranian government, said instead. In particular, Rouhani highlighted a 2005 proposal from then-President Jacques Chirac of France which would allow Iran to continue low-level uranium enrichment as the possible starting point for an agreement. That deal, Rouhani claims, was scuttled due to the United States and United Kingdom being unable to agree to its terms.

The United States for its part has offered cautious optimism in the face of Rouhani’s election. “I see it as a potentially hopeful sign,” White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough said on CBS’s Face the Nation this Sunday. “I think the question for us now is: If he is interested in, as he has said in his campaign events, mending his relations — Iran’s relations with the rest of the world — there’s an opportunity to do that,” he added.

Washington likewise offered its muted congratulations over the weekend, focusing on the Iranian people rather than the regime in its message. “We admire the courage of the Iranian people who went to the polls and made their voices heard in a rigidly controlled environment that sought to limit freedom of expression and assembly,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement released Saturday. Iranians took to the streets on Saturday in celebration once Rouhani’s victory was announced, expressing hope in the candidate’s ability to moderate Iran’s policy.

Rouhani in his press conference also indicated a willingness to meet with the United States in direct talks, noting that that certain conditions must be made before such talks could take place. It is unclear however what, if any, change in substance Rouhani will be able to bring to bear, given the system of government in place in Tehran. Under this hierarchy, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni wields decision-making power regarding foreign relations.

Brazilian protester holds sign reading, "Health And Education, Not The Cup" (Credit: BBC)

Brazil unveiled the slogan in 2012. It lasted just more than a year before the Brazilian people replaced it on the world stage, unofficially, with a new one: Nos não precisamos da Copa do Mundo. More than 2,000 protesters took that message — “We don’t need the World Cup” — to the streets Saturday outside Brasilia’s Mané Garrincha stadium, where the Confederations Cup, a pre-World Cup tournament, was set to begin. The protests were part of larger movement that began last week across the country, and others followed during Sunday matches in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. They are expected to continue Monday and throughout the Confederations Cup.

Not all of the protests are tied directly to the World Cup: Brazilians rallied throughout last week against fare hikes on public buses, and in Fortaleza, bus drivers called a strike in a fight for higher wages. Activists under the name “Change Brazil” are trying to bring the issues to light around World Cup festivities, producing videos outlining their causes, while other unnamed groups have circulated fliers asking foreign tourists to avoid attending the World Cup next year. The unifying message of the protests is clear: a country with faltering infrastructure, low wages, crowded hospitals, and a crippled education system should be spending money not on soccer stadiums but on efforts to improve the lives of ordinary Brazilians.

At each protest, police showered protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets in an attempt to disperse the crowd. Hundreds have been arrested and dozens injured. The police have, at times, acted “arbitrarily and violently,” according to the Brazilian defense minister.

Mané Garrincha is the symbol of Brazil’s World Cup excess. Opened in 1974, it was deemed inadequate, unsafe, and in need of major renovations for the World Cup. Brazil’s World Cup bid said the country would spend less than $1 billion, mostly from private financing, to renovate seven stadiums and build five more. But Mané Garrincha’s renovations cost $750 million alone, while the total cost of the 12 stadiums is expected to exceed $3 billion, almost all of which has come from the public. Mané Garrincha is the most expensive stadium construction project in Brazilian history.

Meanwhile, the public works projects that were supposed to accompany the World Cup have stalled, with many delayed or canceled, and protesters and activists say politicians and World Cup promoters are ignoring the country’s deeper problems. More than 80 percent of Brazil’s schools are inadequate, according to government watchdogs, and its students rank below average in all three areas of educational attainment monitored by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In some cities, 70 percent of the water supply goes untreated, and Brazil’s public hospitals are overcrowded. And while Brazil’s minimum wage raises annually, it stands now at roughly $315 a month (the average monthly rent in Brazilian cities tops $400 a month).

If the sparkling soccer and the magnificent stadiums tell the story of the Brazil soccer promoters want to showcase, the protesters are telling the story Brazil and the world are trying so desperately to ignore. Despite claims of a coming economic bonanza, the World Cup cannot and will not solve the problems facing millions of Brazilians: crumbling schools, low wages, poor health programs, and increasing inequality. And so the tournament will fail to live up to the ambitious motto it set for itself, because the Brazil that wants the World Cup and the Brazil that knows it doesn’t need it can’t possibly exist all in one rhythm.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden (Credit: The Guardian)

The revelations to the Guardian of the NSA’s secret court orders to siphon metadata from the majority of Americans’ cell phone conversations launched wide-ranging concern over the program. That only increased with the disclosure of further programs from the agency — with codenames like PRISM and BLARNEY — that allow access to the content of information sent across some of the Internet’s most popular platforms. The response from privacy advocates across the political spectrum has been condemnation of the programs’ secrecy and overarching intrusiveness on the part of the federal government.

However, that focus on the potential violations of civil liberties is being undercut the more former NSA contractor Edward Snowden reveals. The shift began with the news that President Obama had signed off on a directive to begin planning for how the United States could bring to bear offensive capabilities in cyberspace and against whom. A summary of the directive had been made public months earlier, but the directive itself had remained classified and secret until it was first reported in the Guardian. While the previous leaks had been related to the public’s right to know about what actions the government was taking against U.S. citizens, the cyberwar document could not be considered the same.

Likewise, the next scoop featured what was touted as an all-seeing system through which the NSA could easily sort through where the communications data it collects came from — including the United States. Its existence has caused no small amount of trouble for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who had previously indicated to Congress that the NSA did not collect this type of information from Americans without a warrant. “Not wittingly, there are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly,” Clapper told Congress at the time. What the program — known as Boundless Informant — revealed, however, went beyond the information collected on U.S. citizens, instead also detailing the NSA’s collection work from networks in Iran, India, and Pakistan.

Since then, two more stories have brought to light how the U.S. government collects information on other countries, each revealed ahead of a major summit with said countries. Two weeks ago, Snowden — revealed as the leaker of the documents — told the South China Morning Press that the United States was most certainly spying on China, leaving Obama in the awkward position of decrying Chinese cyber-espionage during an informal meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

On Sunday, the Guardian has brought to light cooperation between the NSA and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) — its British counterpart — to spy on its allies during summit meetings, intercepting large amounts of information from its allies in the Group of 20 meeting in 2009. The report also detailed how Dmitry Medvedev, then President and now Prime Minister of Russia, was targeted specifically during that meeting.

The problem with all of these revelations is not that they’re happening at all or that they’re being released at inopportune moments. Instead, the issue is that rather than exposing potential harm, they are now instead bringing to light clandestine activities the NSA is tasked under law to do. Spying on other countries may be morally questionable to some, including Snowden as he made clear in a question and answer session on Monday. But these actions are neither illegal nor counter to the Constitution. It’s entirely within the mission of the National Security Agency to do these things, and revealing them actually takes away from the focus on the agency’s more questionable practices.

(Credit: AP)

70 percent of Americans oppose the Administration’s recently-revealed plans to send light weaponry to the Syrian rebels, according to a new poll from the Pew Center.

The poll, conducted in roughly equal parts before and after the United States government revealed that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against the rebels, asked respondents to give their opinion on “the US and its allies giving arms to anti-government groups in Syria.” A scant 20 percent of Americans said they would favor this course of action, while nine percent had no opinion.

These results are in keeping with two previous Pew polls, in March and December of 2012, that asked the same question, suggesting American public opinion on the question of providing arms had not changed alongside the shifting contours of the Syrian conflict itself.

Other polling on intervention in Syria’s war has been more mixed. A Gallup poll conducted in late May asking whether should use military force if diplomacy fails to resolve the conflict found 68 percent opposed the idea. However, an April Pew poll found a plurality of Americans would support taking military action against the Assad regime if we could confirm it used chemical weapons.

The most recent Pew poll suggested American opposition to intervention in Syria was practical, not principled. By a significant 53-36 margin, Pew found Americans believed it was “important that the United States support people opposing authoritarian regimes.” Similarly, a plurality said that the US “had a moral obligation to do what it could to stop the violence” in Syria. However, huge majorities — 68-27 and 60-25, respectively — of those polled suggested the United States military was too burdened as is and that the rebels weren’t necessarily much better than the Assad regime itself.

Though Republicans, Democrats, and Independents opposed providing arms to the rebels at nearly-identical levels, Democrats were more likely to say the rebels were better than Assad and that the US had an obligation to stop the killing than Republicans and Independents were. Despite the public’s ambivalence, Congressional leaders from both parties and both chambers have expressed their desire for President Obama to move forward with arming Syria’s rebels.

The most recent United Nations estimate suggests 93,000 people have been killed in the brutal war, which began after the Assad regime repeatedly fired en masse on non-violent demonstrators. The bulk of those dead, according the UN, have been civilians.

The Obama administration on Monday for the first time released the names of the 48 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay military prison who may spend the rest of their lives there without trial.

Until today, the identities of the detainees that the Obama administration has determined to be too dangerous to release, yet unable to be prosecuted in a court of law, has remained secret. The Miami Herald on Monday reported that it had obtained the full list of the individuals from the government following a Freedom of Information Act request, resulting in a list of four dozen names.

After President Obama signed his 2009 Executive Order to close the base’s prison, an administration task force sifted through the evidence against all of the prisoners who remained in the base. In 2010, the panel concluded that the evidence against 48 of the detainees was either too flimsy or too tainted to be allowed to stand in a criminal court, but that each of them were also too dangerous to be released or transferred to another country’s captivity. With this admission, the only remaining authority remaining to hold these individuals is the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, under which these men are held as a form of war prisoner which the Bush administration claimed was outside the bounds of the Geneva Conventions’ rules.

While the identities of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners was previously known, this is the first time the administration has publicly acknowledged those listed as being ineligible for release, transfer, or prosecution. Each of the detainees are indexed with a serial number and their nationality, with two asterisks denoting prisoners who died during their captivity. As a result of the release, we now know that the prisoners hail from a multitude of Muslim-majority countries, including not just the declared war zone in Afghanistan, but also from undeclared conflict zones like Somalia and Yemen.

Several of the detainees on the indefinite detention list are currently participating in the prisoners’ on-going hunger strike, according to the Herald. This includes Yemeni prisoner Abdal Malik al Wahab, who, according to his lawyer, vowed in March to fast until he was out of Guantanamo “dead or alive.” As of Monday, 104 of the 166 detainees left in the prison were participating in the strike. Of those striking, 44 are being force-fed to keep them alive, a practice that has been condemned as “torture.”

President Obama last month announced that he would renew his efforts to close the base, one of his campaign promises when running for his first term. House Republicans rebuked those efforts once again last week, voting through a defense authorization bill that contained provisions to extend a ban on spending funds to close the facility. Democrats offered several amendments to reverse this decision, which were all voted down on the House floor.

(Credit: Charlie Rose)

President Barack Obama defended his administration’s national security policy from critiques on Monday night in an exclusive primetime interview with PBS’ Charlie Rose. Facing criticism of his handling of Syria’s ongoing civil war, Obama noted that the Syrian opposition needed time to mature and coalesce before the decision was made to provide military assistance.

“The fact of the matter is, the way these situations get resolved, is politically,” Obama told Rose, adding that the majority of the rebels don’t come from a military background.

Last week, the administration announced that in the face of evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people, a previously declared U.S. “red-line,” the administration would be upping its support of the Syrian rebels. While officials have refused to comment on record what that entails, multiple reports say the new aid includes small arms, ammunition, and possibly anti-aircraft weapons.

On the recent revelation that the National Security Agency is collecting metadata from Americans’ cell phone records and other digital information, Obama pushed back on the notion that his counterterrorism policies are an extension of the George W. Bush administration’s spying on American citizens:

OBAMA: Some people say, ‘Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he’s, you know, Dick Cheney.’ Dick Cheney sometimes says, ‘Yeah, you know? He took [the Bush-Cheney approach] all lock, stock and barrel.” My concern has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances.

“And you’ve got Congress overseeing the program, not just the intelligence committee and not just the judiciary committee — but all of Congress had available to it before the last reauthorization exactly how this program works,” Obama continued. Several members of Congress have previously denied that they were fully briefed on the topics, with at least one senator claiming to have been misled in the programs’ scope.

In other news:

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says that Iran is prepared to suspend enrichment of uranium at the twenty percent level, a move Lavrov believes would justify easing the international sanctions current imposed on Tehran.
• The Guardian reports: The British Ministry of Defence issued the BBC and other news outlets what’s known as a ‘D notice,’ a request for self-censorship, after reports leaked that the United Kingdom worked closely with the United States’ as it carried out its recently revealed surveillance programs.
• The United States and Russia on Monday agreed to a new framework to continue allowing the U.S. to aid Moscow in tracking and decommissioning nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction from the former Soviet Union. The framework will extend the work of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Umbrella Agreement which was due to expire that day.

(Credit: AP)

America’s winding down of the war in Afghanistan picked up steam on Tuesday with the announcement that it will participate in its first peace talks with the Taliban in more than a year in the coming days.

Senior administration officials revealed the talks on a call with reporters on Tuesday morning, stressing that they are only the beginning of what will “certainly promise to be complex, long and messy, but nonetheless, [..] an important first step.” Officials were also quick to downplay the idea that peace talks will impact ongoing military operations against the Taliban. “Our military and diplomatic efforts continue to be mutually reinforcing,” the same official said.

Meetings between the Taliban and the Afghan government will take place in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban has worked in fits and starts over the last several years to set up a diplomatic headquarters. That office finally opened on Tuesday as well when the Qatari government gave final approval to the post. A Taliban spokesman indicated in a statement that moving forward the former leaders of Afghanistan will oppose the use of Afghan soil to threaten other countries and that they support an Afghan peace process, two steps the U.S. had identified as preconditions. A senior administration official confirmed, however, that the Taliban will not have to drop immediately drop its ties to Al-Qaeda before conducting talks.

Afghan officials and the Taliban will be the key participants in the discussions, according to the officials who called it “an Afghan initiative and this is Afghan-led and Afghan-owned.” President Hamid Karzai welcomed the coming talks, announcing that the High Peace Council will travel to Qatar to conduct the talks. “We hope that our brothers the Taliban also understand that the process will move to our country soon,” Karzai said.

The United States’ announcement comes on the same day that Afghan security forces were handed control of military operations against the Taliban. Following today, NATO forces will only serve as support to the Afghans during combat missions, part of the transition that will culminate in the complete withdrawal of Western combat forces due to finish in 2014. The Obama administration has not yet revealed the number of U.S. troops it will seek to leave behind in the country after that date, though the number has been speculated to be as high as 20,000.

The handover will provide an opportunity to appraise how well the Afghan security forces will be able to handle full responsibility for the security of their country after 2014. A number of recent attacks have raised concerns over the preparedness of the Afghans, including suicide attacks on the Afghan Supreme Court and the International Committee of the Red Cross in recent weeks. Issues still remain as well over the use of children in the Afghan National Police and other possible human rights violations.

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander (Credit: AP)

The head of the National Security Agency (NSA) on Tuesday admitted that government surveillance programs contributed to but were not fully responsible for preventing terrorist plots.

Since their revelation, the programs — which involve the collection of metadata of every phone call in the United States and monitoring Internet content of foreign nationals outside of the U.S. — have sparked a massive debate over the scope of the programs, their initial secrecy, the manner in which they were revealed, and particularly whether they’re the most effective way to discover potential terrorist attacks before they occur.

To counter these critiques, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that more than 50 potential terrorist plots were foiled, of which “just over ten” were within the United States, through the use of the controversial data-gathering projects. While promising to bring forward documents detailing those plots to the committee in a later classified hearing, Alexander and his colleagues gave new details about four plots they say were halted through the surveillance. These include a previously disclosed plot to conduct an attack on the New York City subway system and a newly revealed plan to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.

The officials’ testimony gave the clearest picture yet how the NSA’s surveillence operates, but not all of the committee members were willing to accept vague guarantees that the metadata collection was vital in halting these plots. “I don’t think its adequate to say that 702 and 215 authorities ‘contributed to’ our preventing fifty episodes,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) told Alexander, referring to the sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and PATRIOT Act that greenlight the NSA programs under scrutiny. “I think it’s really essential that you grade the importance of that contribution,” he went on, before directly asking how many of the fifty plots would not have been stopped were it not for the NSA’s surveillance.

In response, Gen. Alexander clarified that only the slightly more than ten plots that had a “domestic nexus” would have been able to be targeted using the metadata program Hines asked about. Of the other plots, the ability to view Internet content under the FISA’s ‘contributed’ to 90 percent of the cases, according to Alexander, without providing the grade Himes requested. The general was also unable to pin down just how critical the NSA’s ability to gain access to business records under the PATRIOT Act, such as the metadata gathering from Verizon that set off the whole scandal, to preventing those attacks. “If we now look at those [domestic cases], the vast majority of those had a contribution by business records FISA,” Alexander said.

Himes tried to press further for a clear answer on which plots the data gather was essential to stopping, but was rebuffed by Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce. “I would just add to Gen. Alexander’s comments and I think you ask an almost impossible question, to say how important each dot was,” Joyce said, claiming that every tool covered during the hearing is essential and vital. “You ask ‘How can you put the value on American life?’ and I can tell you it’s priceless,” Joyce concluded.

Taranto tried, without much success, to tie his grievances to Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D-MO) attempt to stall the nomination of a Lt. Gen. Susan Helms to be vice commander of the Air Force Space Command. McCaskill is holding up the nomination because Helms once granted clemency to a man in the military accused of sexual assault.

But ultimately, Taranto’s greivances — which are simply against a changing culture that is starting to hold men accountable for treating women like objects — came through in his piece. And they had nothing to do with McCaskill’s, or Helms:

It’s fair to say that Capt. Herrera seems to have a tendency toward sexual recklessness. Perhaps that makes him unsuitable to serve as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. But his accusers acted recklessly too. The presumption that reckless men are criminals while reckless women are victims makes a mockery of any notion that the sexes are equal.

What’s worse, Taranto followed up his op-ed with an appearance on Wall Street Journal’s video channel, where he argued that “female sexual freedom” is responsible for a “war on men,” and that war is embodied in allegations of sexual assault. During that interview, he also said that a woman alleging assault and a man denying it “differed… on whether she consented.” Taranto also cast doubt on the report because someone present “didn’t even hear this going on.”

“What does female sexual freedom mean?” Taranto added, “It means, for this woman, that she had the freedom to get drunk and get in the back seat of a car with this guy.”