Iran may not be in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. North Korea withdrew from it in 2003. According to the Obama administration’s new Nuclear Posture Review, if those two countries or any other NPT violator/non-signatory attacks the U.S., “all bets are off,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham ClintonMore…
Previewing next week’s 47-nation Washington conference on nuclear security, senior National Security Council aides Gary Samore and Ben Rhodes told reporters that they expect the meeting to resolve with specific national commitments that “rally collective action behind the goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear material within four years,” (in Rhodes’ More…
As you’ve probably read this morning, the Pakistani Taliban executed a complex attack — using suicide car bombers and gunmen — on the American consulate in Peshawar. The Taliban didn’t get past a consulate checkpoint. Nor did their team manage to kill any Americans. But they did bring their More…
Last month, Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, gave an interview to The Washington Post bragging about the impact the CIA’s drone strikes have had on al-Qaeda and Taliban operations in Pakistan. Not having sufficient information to independently evaluate it, I sort of marked Panetta’s comments As Read. More…
All of the Special Operations Forces action may concern Afghanistan (and, uh, Pakistan) right now, but Adm. Eric Olson, leader of U.S. Special Operations Command, said today that approximately 4,500 SOF troops are going to stay in Iraq while conventional forces complete their drawdown by Aug. 31.
“The special
On March 16, Shane Harris reported that Harold Koh, the State Department’s legal adviser, asserted that the Obama administration’s drone strikes on al-Qaeda and affiliated targets are legal, and would at some point make a more fulsome public case for why that is. Last night, reports Mark More…
Kalsoom Lakhani over at Changing Up Pakistan takes a look at the conclusion of this week’s ministerial talks.
[A]s expected, a diplomatic “We’re Just Not That Into You” move on the civilian nuclear deal and drone strike technology, but a thumbs up on the substantial topics, i.e. development.
I’ve confirmed with Pakistan’s Washington embassy that Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the chief of staff of the Pakistani Army, will arrive in D.C. early next week. He’ll spend four days in town, probably joining Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi for Wednesday’s big bilateral talks at the State Department, and definitely More…
Attorney General Eric Holder had a testy exchange yesterday with House Republicans determined to paint him as weak for his faith in civilian courts that have convicted many orders of magnitude more terrorists than military commissions. It took a baroque turn when Holder fielded a hypothetical question about whether More…
The Washington Post sits down with the CIA director, who has lots of great things to say about how the CIA is disrupting al-Qaeda:
Panetta credited an increasingly aggressive campaign against al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies, including more frequent strikes and better coordination with Pakistan. He called it “the most
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