Forces aligned with the provisional Libyan government fought their way Friday into two cities still held by fighters loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9917b9a8f9c7b562c33370a66acf0901
Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/music/top-stories/136031396?client_source=feed&format=rss
A WikiLeaks computer file, which allows anyone to read every word of 251,287 leaked U.S. diplomatic cables by typing a password made public six months ago, was posted online by mistake last year.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=22dfe0934fad6e85baa0bc853bb0d937
In a closed-door briefing to the U.N. Security Council earlier this month, Oscar Ferandez-Taranco, the U.N.’s assistant secretary general for political affairs, cited reports that Syrian security forces had opened fire on defectors within its own ranks and executed troops that refused orders to kill civilians, according to a confidential copy of the briefing notes obtained by Turtle Bay.
The reports, which are unverified, appear to highlight the brutality of President Bashar al-Assad‘s efforts to enforce loyalty within his own ranks, and raised questions about the veracity of Syrian government claims — echoed by Brazil, India, and Russia — that the violence in Syria is increasingly waged between two armed camps.
U.N. officials and experts on Syria concede it is impossible to obtain a clear picture of events unfolding on the ground in Syria, where the government has enforced a strict prohibition on access by foreign media and outside observers to the country’s wave of anti-government protests. But they maintain that the overall impression relayed by defectors, refugees, and human rights groups, suggests a one-sided bloody crackdown on peaceful protesters.
Last week, Syria’s U.N. ambassador Bashar Jafaari, told reporters at U.N. headquarters that armed "gangs" and "terrorists" have killed more than five hundred members of the Syrian security forces. India’s U.N. ambassador, Hardeep Singh Puri, has echoed those claims saying that this is "no longer an issue, and has not been for a while, of only a state against innocent, helpless civilians. There has been violence perpetrated against the security forces and against public infrastructure."
Jafaari said there are three categories of opposition figures in Syria: economically disadvantaged segments of the populations, intellectuals and academics, and armed terrorists groups that he said are responsible of killing at least 500 police officers and soldiers. He scolded his European counterparts for glossing over the violence against Syrian forces, saying they "were misleading you. This not honest." [[BREAK]]
Taranco said in the August 1 briefing that while "reports from a variety of sources assert that demonstrations have remained largely peaceful, there are also a few credible reports that military forces using excessive force against civilians have been confronted with armed opposition in some areas, in particular in Homs."
But he also cited one instance in which a defected military officer from the town of Deir al-Zour threatened to turn his troops on the security forces and government-backed militia, known as Shabihha, if they didn’t stop the crackdown on civilians.
"There are also indications that more than 300 security forces or army personnel have died, in circumstances that remain to be elucidated, but could include clashes with armed opposition as well as internal executions of defecting soldiers," Taranco said. "A number of former defected soldiers or policemen interviewed by human rights organizations have stated that they received clear orders to use live ammunition against protestors and that those who did not obey were shot from behind by other security officers and Shabihha units."
In contrast, Taranco said in the same August 1 briefing that the government attacks on civilians followed a clear and consistent pattern throughout the country. "The pattern of violent repression has remained the same, with military units, security forces and supporting militias (referred to as "Shabihha") using live ammunition, including from snipers, shelling from heavy machine guns and tanks as well as air power," Taranco said. ""Overall, human rights groups put the death toll at 1,500 killed." (That number has since surpassed 2,000, according to a subsequent August 10 briefing to the council by Taranco.)
Nadim Houry, a Beirut-based researcher for Human Rights Watch who has interviewed military defectors, said that it appears plausible that hundreds of security forces have been killed during months of political unrest, including some who were killed by protesters who took up arms against the government.
"There have been a few examples where protesters did attack security forces," he said. "But these have remained marginal to the larger narrative. The claim that the Syrian regime has been battling armed gangs and terrorist is frankly not true. Yes, in certain towns some individuals who lost a friend or a cousin have decided to fight back. But this has remained quite limited. They are fighting tanks with Molotov cocktails, sticks and hunting rifles."
Houry also noted that in the early stages of the protests, he said some plain clothes intelligence agents, known as the Mukhabarat, mingling among the protesters were inadvertently killed by Syrian forces as they fired on the demonstrators. Additionally, he claimed that defectors have reported that the security forces have also opened fire on army defectors.
In the town of Jisr al-Shughur, protesters attacked the local office of military security, but only after coming under sustained fire by government forces, Houry told Turtle Bay. And in the town of Daraa, Houry has documented "a few cases where protesters picked up guns and shot at security forces. What happened there is we had seen protesters had come under fire, and eventually a few said ?this is crazy’ and they went home and came back with pump action hunting rifles and shot back."
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Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta tours the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan, five days before its official opening.
Source: http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/defense-secretary-tours-911-memorial-in-manhattan/
Almost every marketing plan out there appeals to two of the 5 senses… sight and hearing. How come marketing companies focus on these two senses when we know that focusing on all five will strengthen the impression the brand leaves on the customer?
Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6553725
A pipeline explosion on Monday left many dead and a central slum ravaged by fire in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a630e4b8dbea5648604c85bc513099f4
The relative freedom Malaysians are allowed on the Internet is calling into question the strict government control of newspaper, radio and television reportage.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=e9d42c59d580c4139a6e2320735c1587
Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/sports/top-stories/135952031?client_source=feed&format=rss
One of the things that gets in the way of conducting good national security policy is a reluctance to call things by their right names and state plainly what is really happening. If you keep describing difficult situations in misleading or inaccurate ways, plenty of people will draw the wrong conclusions about them and will continue to support policies that don’t make a lot of sense.
Two cases in point: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are constantly told that that "the surge worked" in Iraq, and President Obama has to pretend the situation there is tolerable so that he can finally bring the rest of the troops there home. Yet it is increasingly clear that the surge failed to produce meaningful political reconciliation and did not even end the insurgency, and keeping U.S. troops there for the past three years may have accomplished relatively little.
Similarly, we keep getting told that we are going to achieve some sort of "peace with honor" in Afghanistan, even though sending more troops there has not made the Afghan government more effective, has not eliminated the Taliban’s ability to conduct violence, and has not increased our leverage in Pakistan. In the end, what happens in Central Asia is going to be determined by Central Asians — for good or ill — and not by us.
The truth is that the United States and its allies lost the war in Iraq and are going to lose the war in Afghanistan. There: I said it. By "lose," I mean we will eventually withdraw our military forces without having achieved our core political objectives, and with our overall strategic position weakened. We did get Osama bin Laden — finally — but that was the result of more energetic intelligence and counter-terrorism work in Pakistan itself and had nothing to do with the counterinsurgency we are fighting next door. U.S. troops have fought courageously and with dedication, and the American people have supported the effort for many years. But we will still have failed because our objectives were ill-chosen from the start, and because the national leadership (and especially the Bush administration) made some horrendous strategic judgments along the way.
Specifically: invading Iraq was never necessary, because Saddam Hussein had no genuine links to al Qaeda and no WMD, and because he could not have used any WMD that he might one day have produced without facing devastating retaliation. It was a blunder because destroying the Ba’athist state left us in charge of a deeply divided country that we had no idea how to govern. It also destroyed the balance of power in the Gulf and enhanced Iran’s regional position, which was not exactly a brilliant idea from the American point of view. Invading Iraq also diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, which helped the Taliban to regain lost ground and derailed our early efforts to aid the Karzai government.
President Obama inherited both of these costly wars, and his main error was not to recognize that they were not winnable at an acceptable cost. He’s wisely stuck (more-or-less) to the withdrawal plan for Iraq, but he foolishly decided to escalate in Afghanistan, in the hope of creating enough stability to allow us to leave. This move might have been politically adroit, but it just meant squandering more resources in ways that won’t affect the final outcome.[[BREAK]]
More broadly, these wars were lost because there is an enormous difference between defeating a third-rate conventional army (which is what Saddam had) and governing a restive, deeply-divided, and well-armed population with a long-standing aversion to all forms of foreign interference. There was no way to "win" either war without creating effective local institutions that could actually run the place (so that we could leave), but that was the one thing we did not know how to do. Not only did we not know who to put in charge, but once we backed anybody, their legitimacy automatically declined. And so did our leverage over them, as people like President Karzai understood that our prestige was now on the line and we could not afford to let him fail.
The good news, however, is the defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan — and make no mistake, that is what it is — tells us relatively little about America’s overall power position or its ability to shape events that matter elsewhere in the world. Remember that the United States lost the Vietnam War too, but getting out facilitated the 1970s rapprochement with China and ultimatley strengthened our overall position in Asia. Fourteen years later, the USSR had collapsed and the United States had won the Cold War. Nor should anyone draw dubious lessons about U.S. resolve; to the contrary, both of these wars show that the United States is actually willing to fight for a long time under difficult conditions. Thus, the mere fact that we failed in Iraq and Afghanistan does not by itself herald further U.S. decline, provided we make better decisions going forward.
The real lesson one should draw from these defeats is that the United States doesn’t know how to build democratic societies in large and distant Muslim countries that are divided by sectarian, ethnic, or tribal splits, and especially if these countries have a history of instability or internal violence. Nobody else does either. But that’s not a mission we should be seeking out in the future, because it will only generate greater hatred of the United States and further sap our strength.
The United States rose to world power by staying out of costly fights or by getting into them relatively late and then winning the peace. It won the Cold War by maintaining an economy that was far stronger than the Soviet Union’s, by assembling a coalition of allies that was more reliable, stable, and prosperous than the Communist bloc, and by remaining reasonably true to a set of political ideals that inspired others. Its major missteps occurred when it exaggerated the stakes in peripheral conflicts — such as Indochina. Fortunately, the Soviet Union made more blunders than we did, and from a weaker base.
Since 1992, the United States has squandered some of its margin of superiority by mismanaging its own economy, by allowing 9/11 to cloud its strategic judgment, and by indulging in precisely the sort of hubris that the ancient Greeks warned against. The main question is whether we will learn from these mistakes, and start basing national security policy on hard-headed realism rather than either neo-conservative fantasies or overly enthusiastic liberal interventionism. Unfortunately, the first shots in the 2012 presidential campaign do not exactly fill me with confidence.
