C U R R E N T NEWS
E A R L Y B I R D
October 11, 2012
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AFGHANISTAN
1. Obama Nominates New Commander For U.S., NATO Forces In Afghanistan
(Washington Post)...Rajiv Chandrasekaran
A Marine general with extensive combat experience in Iraq who sped up the ranks upon returning to the Pentagon has been nominated by President Obama to lead U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
2. Panetta: Mission On Track
(Philadelphia Inquirer)...Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Wednesday the NATO coalition has turned an important corner in Afghanistan, and has come too far and spilled too much blood to let insider attacks or anything else undermine the mission there.
3. Panetta Promises Action Against Afghan Insider Attacks
(Reuters.com)...David Alexander, Reuters
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sought to reassure NATO allies on Wednesday effective action was being taken to stop "insider" attacks on their soldiers that have undermined trust between coalition and Afghan forces.
4. U.S. Winds Down Afghanistan Aid Program
(Wall Street Journal)...Nathan Hodge
The U.S. military is ending a massive nation-building experiment in Afghanistan, shutting down teams that have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into roads, schools and administrative buildings in the country's hinterlands.
5. Afghan Officials Denounce Western Group’s Report On Country’s Future
(New York Times)...Alissa J. Rubin
The Afghan government and some politicians and local news outlets denounced Western research organizations and news media, blasting them as spies and political agents in the wake of a report that suggested it was possible the Afghan government would collapse after 2014.
6. NATO Must Have U.N. Mandate For Post-2014 Afghan Mission: Russia
(Reuters.com)...Adrian Croft, Reuters
Russia will stop cooperating with NATO over Afghanistan after 2014 unless the alliance gets U.N. Security Council authorization for its new training mission in Afghanistan, a senior Russian diplomat said on Wednesday.
7. US Soldier In Afghanistan Survives Grenade Direct Hit
(Agence France-Presse)...AFP
A US soldier has described how he survived a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade on his first patrol in Afghanistan, after the projectile bounced off his leg.
DEMPSEY SPEECH
8. Dempsey: Insider Attacks Won't Break Bond With Afghans
(Stars and Stripes)...Leo Shane III
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey called the insider attacks by Afghan forces against NATO trainers a “very serious threat” but said the problem will not derail the U.S. relationship with the Afghan military, nor will it slow plans to withdraw troops in the coming years.
9. Dempsey Says Partners Make U.S. Strategy Work
(Defense Daily)...Ann Roosevelt
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said yesterday relationships are critical to face current and future challenges in the global environment.
10. Dempsey Says Not Time For Military In Syria
(The E-Ring (e-ring.foreignpolicy.com))...Kevin Baron
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put the brakes on any momentum for U.S. military intervention in Syria, saying on Wednesday that the U.S. military should not be the leading instrument by which to influence Syria.
SYRIA
11. Panetta: US Sends Forces To Jordan
(Yahoo.com)...Lolita C. Baldor and Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press
The United States has sent military troops to the Jordan-Syria border to bolster that country's military capabilities in the event that violence escalates along its border with Syria, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday.
12. British And US Military Sent To Prevent Chemical Weapons Grab
(London Times)...James Hider; Deborah Haynes, Michael Evans and Hugh Tomlinson
Britain has sent military personnel to Jordan, where US army experts are helping to contain the fallout from the war in Syria, as well as being ready if the Syrian regime loses control of its large chemical weapons stockpile.
13. Syrian Conflict Grows On Two Fronts
(Wall Street Journal)...Julian E. Barnes, Stephen Fidler and Joe Parkinson
...
After a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers in Brussels, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the troops had been deployed to help Amman manage the impact from the Syria conflict. He said the U.S. is helping Jordan deal with refugees and working with Jordanian authorities to monitor chemical- and biological-weapons sites in Syria.
14. Turkey, Seeking Weapons, Forces Syrian Jet To Land
(New York Times)...Anne Barnard and Sebnem Arsu
Turkey sharply escalated its confrontation with Syria on Wednesday, forcing a Syrian passenger plane to land in Ankara on suspicion of carrying military cargo, ordering Turkish civilian airplanes to avoid Syria’s airspace and warning of increasingly forceful responses if Syrian artillery gunners keep lobbing shells across the border.
LIBYA
15. Official Tells Panel A Request For Libya Was Denied
(New York Times)...Michael R. Gordon
The former chief security officer for the American Embassy in Libya on Wednesday told a House committee investigating the fatal attack last month on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi that his request to extend the deployment of an American military team were thwarted by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
PAKISTAN
16. Pakistanis Outraged Over Girl's Shooting
(Washington Post)...Richard Leiby
In a country where militant attacks occur almost daily, the Taliban’s attempted assassination of a 14-year-old education rights activist in northwestern Pakistan united Pakistanis from across social divides Wednesday in a remarkable and rare display of collective outrage against extremism.
RUSSIA
17. Russia Won’t Renew Pact On Weapons With U.S.
(New York Times)...David M. Herszenhorn
The Russian government said Wednesday that it would not renew a hugely successful 20-year partnership with the United States to safeguard and dismantle nuclear and chemical weapons in the former Soviet Union when the program expires next spring, a potentially grave setback in the already fraying relationship between the former cold war enemies.
18. Putin Says Iraq Arms Deal Shows Trust In Russian Weaponry
(Bloomberg.com)...Ilya Arkhipov, Bloomberg News
President Vladimir Putin said a multi-billion-dollar arms contract with Iraq, making Russia the second-biggest weapons supplier to the Middle Eastern state after the U.S., showed trust in Russian military equipment.
MIDEAST
19. Dane Says He Led CIA To Awlaki
(Washington Post)...Joby Warrick
His story is the stuff of spy fiction: an undercover agent who used guile and technology to help the CIA find a top al-Qaeda leader. But if true, newly published claims by a self-professed Danish double agent could complicate efforts by U.S. and European spy agencies to penetrate terrorist groups in the future, intelligence experts say.
AMERICAS
20. Canadian Officer Pleads Guilty To Leaking Data
(Wall Street Journal)...Alistair MacDonald
A Canadian naval officer pleaded guilty to leaking military-communications intelligence, a surprise ending to a spy scandal that embarrassed Canada's military and briefly caused a rift between Canadian and U.S. security officials.
ASIA/PACIFIC
21. North Korea Says A Long-Range Missile Test Is Now More Likely
(New York Times)...Choe Sang-Hun
North Korea said on Wednesday that it felt freer to test a long-range missile now that Washington has agreed to let South Korea nearly triple the reach of its ballistic missiles, putting all of the North within its range.
ARMY
22. Fort Hood Suspect's Beard Case At Appeals Court
(Yahoo.com)...Angela K. Brown, Associated Press
An Army appeals court will hear arguments Thursday about an issue that has indefinitely postponed the murder trial for the suspect in the worst mass shooting on a U.S. military installation: his beard.
23. New General At JBLM Pledges Care For Soldiers
(Tacoma News Tribune)...Adam Ashton
Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s newest general took command Wednesday, pledging to care for soldiers as they return from Afghanistan while reorienting the Army’s focus in the South Sound to the nation’s challenges on the Pacific Rim.
24. Army Prepares For Workforce Cuts, But Not Sequestration Specifically
(GovExec.com)...Eric Katz
Army Undersecretary Joseph Westphal said Wednesday the service is not planning any contingencies for sequestration and warned the cuts would threaten the Army’s stability.
NAVY
25. U.S. Navy Secretary Says Biofuel Technology Has Arrived
(Aerospace Daily & Defense Report)...Michael Fabey
Despite continued opposition from lawmakers like U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the U.S. Navy will continue its efforts to leverage biofuels technology for its ships and aircraft, service Secretary Ray Mabus says.
AIR FORCE
26. Woman Just Named First Female Leader Of 5,000-Strong Fighter Wing
(ABC)...Martha Raddatz
...
It is one of the most fearsome fighter jets in the skies -- the F-15 Strike Eagle. And I could not be in more capable hands. Colonel Jeannie Flynn Leavitt is not only a decorated fighter pilot, she has broken through gender barriers few thought possible.
LEGAL AFFAIRS
27. Oregon Guardsmen Say Were Knowingly Exposed To Toxic Chemicals In Iraq
(Reuters.com)...Teresa Carson, Reuters
Lawyers for 12 Oregon National Guardsmen suing contractor KBR Inc for negligence and fraud told a jury in Portland, Oregon on Wednesday that the soldiers were knowingly exposed to toxic chemicals in Iraq that made them ill.
28. Court Poses Hurdle To WikiLeaks Case File Access
(Yahoo.com)...David Dishneau, Associated Press
The U.S. military's highest court is asking WikiLeaks to explain why the military justice system, rather than civilian courts, is the proper venue for seeking routine judicial documents in the court-martial of an Army private charged with giving classified information to the secret-spilling website.
BUSINESS
29. Government Discord Derails Massive European Merger
(Wall Street Journal)...Daniel Michaels, David Gauthier-Villars, Dana Cimilluca and Marcus Walker
A deal to create the world's biggest aerospace company, three months in the making, died in a three-minute phone call.
30. Boeing Gets $2 Billion Contract For Plane Maintenance
(Yahoo.com)...Associated Press
The Boeing Co. said Wednesday that it has been awarded a $2 billion contract from the Defense Department to help the Air Force maintain its fleet of 246 C-17 cargo planes.
COMMENTARY
31. Soldiers' Mental Health: An Emergency
(New York Daily News)...Arnold Fisher And Bill White
Anyone who believes that our country’s methods are adequate for helping veterans re-adapt to society as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down need look no further than at the following data: In the year 2012, 211 members of the United States Armed Forces took their own lives.
32. Romney's Syria Plan: Easier Said Than Done
(Washington Post)...Walter Pincus
Does Mitt Romney understand the implications of his campaign pledge to “ensure” that Syrian opposition members “who share our values” will “obtain the arms they need” to defeat President Bashir al-Assad’s “tanks, helicopters and fighter jets”?
33. Never Mind About Those Jobs Cuts
(ForeignPolicy.com)...Gordon Adams
...
Although industry has said that the WARN Act requires it to issue layoff notices 60 days before sequestration takes effect -- i.e., on November 2, just days before the election -- in reality, no such notification is necessary. As the Department of Labor explained in a July 30, 2012 advisory guidance, such notices are not required because it is not certain that sequestration will actually happen and because there is no certainty that existing contracts will be affected if it does.
34. State Department Misses On Libya
(USA Today)...Editorial
Cut through the highly charged politics of Wednesday's congressional hearing into the attack that killed four Americans in Libya a month ago, and one conclusion seems inescapable: The State Department underestimated the danger.
35. Botched In Benghazi
(Wall Street Journal)...Editorial
At Wednesday's House oversight hearings into the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, Democrats protested loudly about a GOP political witch hunt. If only such alleged partisanship were always so educational. The Congressional investigation has in a few hours brought greater clarity about what happened before, during and after the events of 9/11/12 than the Obama Administration has provided in a month.Among the revelations:
36. Malala Yousafzai’s Courage
(New York Times)...Editorial
If Pakistan has a future, it is embodied in Malala Yousafzai. Yet the Taliban so feared this 14-year-old girl that they tried to assassinate her. Her supposed offense? Her want of an education and her public advocation for it.
37. The Taliban's Terror
(Washington Post)...Editorial
On Tuesday, Pakistani Taliban thugs tried to assassinate a 14-year-old girl. You read that correctly: Masked gunmen from the ultra-purist Islamist group stormed a van full of schoolchildren in an effort to kill Malala Yousafzai, who has won international acclaim for going to school in defiance of Taliban edicts against educating girls in her home region of Swat.
38. The Taliban's Dark Vision
(Los Angeles Times)...Editorial
It's appalling enough that 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who publicly championed the cause of education for girls in Pakistan, was shot in the head and neck and critically injured by gunmen who boarded her school bus in the Swat Valley. Even more horrendous is that a Taliban spokesman declared that she had been singled out for attack because of her support of girls' education in defiance of Taliban edict. "Let this be a lesson," the spokesman told the New York Times.