Sounds credible to me. Bureaucratic infighting has long undermined U.S. intelligence efforts.
Offering new revelations about the CIA's role in shutting down military intelligence penetration of al-Qaeda, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer joins a growing list of government officials accusing former CIA director George Tenet of misleading federal investigators and sharing some degree of blame for the 9/11 attacks.
Britain, France and the US have agreed that none of their countries would have “boots on the ground” to help the rebels. The training camps can be set up in Turkey. However, the use of air and maritime force would, in itself, be highly controversial and likely to lead to charges that, as in Libya, the West is carrying out regime change by force.
The Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau, all former components of the US Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, are “freely associated states” of the United States, with US zip/postal codes and “Compacts of Free Association” which require them to be guided by the United States in their foreign relations. They more closely resemble territories of the United States than genuine sovereign states – rather like the Cook Islands and Niue, “freely associated states” of New Zealand which make no claim to sovereign statehood and are not UN member states.
The Arabist blog links to a very interesting survey, focusing on American attitudes toward interventionism -- as broken down by age group. A decent overall sample of nearly 2,000, for a margin of error under 3 per cent.
The good news is that young people are fed up with war and believe in dialogue, negotiation and treaties. Of course, so did my generation, and they're now the most bloodthirsty group in the sample. Issandr al Amrani excerpts a good chunk of the survey, but the entire 60-page pdf is worth a look.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi stunned the country today by firing the military leaders who were his chief rivals for power, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and chief of staff Sami Anan:
OTTAWA (Canadian Press) — Opposition politicians will be throwing hundreds of amendments at the Conservatives’ omnibus budget bill on Monday and are looking to see which ones are going to stick.
What could be a marathon week in the House of Commons begins Monday with the Speaker expected to decide how over 1000 changes proposed to Bill C-38, the government’s budget implementation bill, will be dealt with in the House.
(Reuters) - In the run-up to Facebook's $16 billion IPO, Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter on the deal, unexpectedly delivered some negative news to major clients: The bank's consumer Internet analyst, Scott Devitt, was reducing his revenue forecasts for the company.
The sudden caution very close to the huge initial public offering, and while an investor roadshow was underway, was a big shock to some, said two investors who were advised of the revised forecast.
(Acanuck) Trust me, this is not how serious foreign policy is conducted. If the White House wants to harden its tone toward Iran, it has Panetta or Hillary or the president himself available to deliver a carefully worded message -- not the ambassador to a third country that is not even party to the negotiations. I suspect Shapiro is freelancing a bit here, but I also don't expect much if any walk-back from the U.S. side. Election year.
The campaign for the presidency of Egypt starts in less than a month, and the twists and turns get ever weirder. First came the withdrawal of Mohamed ElBaradei, ex-head of the UN's nuclear-arms inspection agency, over the army's slowness in turning power over to civilians.
How can the Washington Post run a headline that begins: "Panetta says Iran enriching uranium ..."? How about one stating, "Obama claims sky is blue"? Are Post readers bleeping 3-year-olds? I shake my head in dismay. This is the level of foreign-policy discourse in the United States.
In 2006, I witnessed close-up one of the most shameful events in Canadian journalism. The conservative National Post had received a column by Iranian-born writer Amir Taheri stating that Iran’s parliament had passed a law requiring distinctive clothing (possibly colored badges or stripes) for each of the country’s religious minorities. The Post ran the story, along with its own incendiary commentary, atop Page 1. And illustrated it with photos of Jews wearing stars of David in Nazi death camps.
The story went viral; other right-wing rags and blogs elaborated on it. The next day, the Post retracted and apologized, after receiving a point-by-point rebuttal from Iran’s lone Jewish legislator (the community has been guaranteed one constitutionally for more than a century). No such law had been proposed, much less passed. And it turned out one of the sources Taheri cited didn’t exist. He claimed his words had been taken out of context. They hadn’t. Taheri’s credibility was ruined, or so I assumed.
The city could be ready as early as today to start stripping job security from its biggest union of outside workers, in what appears to be a Canadian test case on American-style restrictions on public sector unions.
CAIRO — As Egypt’s first freely elected Parliament in six decades held its opening session on Monday, the Muslim Brotherhood received a lesson in the unwieldiness of democracy when a dispute over choosing a speaker degenerated into a shouting match that overshadowed the day.
I’m sure you are all as relieved as I am that Thursday’s meeting of the International Telecommunications Union postponed its scheduled vote on whether to drop the leap second:
The next planned one-second adjustment to Universal Time, at the end of June, will go ahead. And delegates will return home for consultations before the issue arises again at the World Radio Conference in 2015.
