via Lobe Log
by Mitchell Plitnick
All was not as it seemed during President Barack Obama’s appearances in Jerusalem and Ramallah, where he addressed audiences of Israelis and Palestinians. On the surface, it looked like Obama was swearing fealty to Israel, and pledging unconditional US support for any and all Israeli actions. But a [...]
via Lobe Log
by Henry Precht
Two US service members were killed and at least eight others injured Monday in an insider attack at a Special Forces site in Afghanistan. The Taliban asserted responsibility. This incident would seem to nullify President Hamid Karzai’s earlier charge that US and Taliban forces were colluding [...]
via Lobe Log
Lobe Log contributor Emile Nakhleh, an expert on political Islam and Middle Eastern society, recently provided a fascinating primer on Bahrain to the Bahrain Mirror (Arabic version), an e-newspaper run by Bahraini dissidents. As discussed in the Mirror’s introduction, prior to becoming the CIA’s former chief regional analyst, Dr. [...]
via Lobe Log
The grandfather of the 16-year-old American-Yemeni boy who was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen last year is suing 4 US officials, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Former CIA Director David Petraeus, over his son and grandson’s deaths.
The father of the Colorado-born Abdulrahman al Awlaki’s was an al [...]
via Lobe Log
Gregory D. Johnsen, a Princeton scholar who has emerged as a key Yemen analyst, explains why promoting John O. Brennan to CIA director following David Petraeus’ resignation is counterproductive:
Mr. Brennan is the president’s chief counterterrorism adviser and the architect of this model. In a recent speech, he claimed that [...]
via Lobe Log
The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill injects some badly needed context into the media frenzy over David Petraeus’s CIA resignation by examining the four-star General’s legacy against the backdrop of an increasingly militarized intelligence agency:
As head of US Central Command in 2009, Petraeus issued execute orders that significantly broadened the ability [...]
via Lobe Log
Election Day in the United States was — as it has been since 1845 — a Tuesday, which meant that it also coincided with “Terror Tuesday,” the label attached to the meetings held by President Obama and his inner national security circle to discuss and authorize drone strikes based on the Administration’s [...]
via Lobe Log
The Washington Post‘s Greg Miller has begun a three-part series on the future of the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism drone strike program, which will include a “next-generation targeting list” (aka “kill list”) in the form of a “dipposition matrix”.
Though the White House, CIA, JSOC and ODNI declined comment requests, the article cites [...]
via Lobe Log
The US’s Acting Ambassador to Pakistan Richard Hoagland disclosed the information in an exchange with a number of American activists and journalists against the US’s undeclared drone war waged primarily in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of the country.
The US Government has not published casualty lists for Pakistanis reported killed and [...]
via Lobe Log
President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi of Yemen told the Washington Post this week that his office and the Yemeni military fully cooperate with US counterterrorism efforts in his country, a frank admission that his predecessor was not willing to provide:
Hadi’s comments mark the first time he has publicly acknowledged his [...]
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