TEARLINE
Tony Cordesman, on the expeditionary diplomacy concept. Any shift to this construct would almost certainly necessitate increasing funding for diplomatic security and the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations.
AROUND THE WORLD
The planned west African intervention force in Mali is not expected to be there before the end of the year, despite the UN Security Council passing a French resolution calling for a plan to set it up. President François Hollande welcomed the decision and urged armed groups to join reconciliation talks.
The leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, said on Saturday that a film depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a buffoon, a womanizer and a child molester showed that Washington was waging a “crusader Zionist war” against Muslims and he called for more protests outside American embassies.
Some ruminations on Algerian political dynamics.
Developing Afghanistan’s potentially rich deposits of iron, oil, gold, copper, lithium and other natural resources is regarded as crucial to the country’s economic prospects, transforming it into a state that can begin to pay its own way and allowing the international community to cut back its financial and, ultimately, military support. But there are persistent concerns that any resource boom could be jeopardized by corruption, worsening security and political instability. “From now on every contract will be made public…no contract will be kept secret.”
BENGHAZI
Sources close to the Clintons are saying that Bill Clinton has assembled an informal legal team to discuss how the Secretary of State should deal with the issue of being blamed for not preventing the Benghazi terrorist attack last month. White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters during a press conference Friday that responsibility for the consulate in Libya fell on the State Department, not the White House."
ON THE FIGHT
Say "Africa" to most Americans and they think of "the Dark Continent" – a land beset by problems and disasters, far enough away that anything that happens there cannot possibly affect America. And they would be wrong, said Amanda J. Dory, deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs.
Introduce yourself to just some of the many duties of Naval Special Warfare Task Group TRANS SAHARA.
The Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency has stood up the 306th Intelligence Squadron. 306th IS will be operationally controlled by AFSOC, or Air Force Special Operations Command, and provide manned Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance platforms to deployed Joint Force Special Operations Component Commands. More than 150 Airmen will train as tactical systems operators each year at the 306th IS and transition to the Project Liberty program featuring the MC-12W platform.
In what DoD officials called the first major policy speech about cyber by a defense secretary, Secretary Panetta outlined an aggressive agenda to prevent cyber attacks and repeatedly mentioned deterrence as an important mission for the department to an audience of veterans and business executives. “Our mission is to defend the nation,” he said. “We defend. We deter. And if called upon, we take decisive action to defend our citizens.”
Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.
ON SECRECY – OR LACK THEREOF
Three journalists subpoenaed by the defense in the criminal case against former Central Intelligence Agency officer John Kiriakou will fight efforts to force them to testify in the case, according to court filings and spokespeople for the news outlets involved. The journalists being pressed for testimony are Scott Shane of the New York Times, Julie Tate of the Washington Post and freelancer Matthew Cole, sources told POLITICO. The subpoenas seek to force Shane, Tate and Cole to attend depositions and answer defense questions, apparently about classified information related to the CIA’s interrogation of alleged terrorists.
The Joint Reconnaissance Task Force is taking on a bigger role in its collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Robert Caruso is a veteran of the United States Navy, and has worked for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Business Transformation Agency and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
