Author: Spencer Ackerman

I didn’t get a substantive response from the National Counterterrorism Center or its director, Michael Leiter, to yesterday’s Senate report singling it out for failure in the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab case. Instead, I got pointed to Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair’s Wheatena-flavored reply. That might reflect the comfort Leiter has felt since the chairwoman of the committee that authored the report, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and the White House counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, embraced Leiter back in January, when the near-miss attack was at its most politically potent.

Jeff Stein of The Washington Post wants to dislodge Leiter from that comfort — and, for that matter, his job.

If U.S. intelligence hasn’t completely eluded accountability — and there’s widespread doubt about that — then somebody’s got to take the fall.

Why not start with Leiter?

Yesterday, the Taliban successfully killed at least 18 U.S. servicemembers and Afghan civilians a suicide car-bomb attack. Today, less successfully, Taliban forces attacked the nearby Bagram Air Field, an extremely secure and massive base. They didn’t make it beyond the outer perimeter — where, it’s worth noting, civilian trucks and taxis packed with Afghan civilians seeking to supply the base are often backed up the length of a football field — but an ISAF press release says “nearly a dozen” insurgents were killed, giving an indication of how big the attack was.

That attack used “rockets, small arms and grenades” and sought to use four operatives as suicide bombers. They were killed before they could detonate.

One U.S. contractor is dead. Nine U.S. servicemembers are wounded. Two of those nine are said to have returned to duty, and the rest ”are currently in stable condition,” according to an ISAF press release. But it’s been a long time since there was an attack this large on Bagram. Coming a day after the Kabul attack, the message the Taliban seek to deliver is that there aren’t any safe areas for the allies of the Afghan government.

It’s really the last sentence of the two-paragraph joint statement emerging from national security adviser Jim Jones and CIA Director Leon Panetta’s visit to Pakistan that’s important. “President Zardari noted that Pakistan desires a long-term, multifaceted, and durable relationship with the United States which no incident should be able to adversely impact,” the statement reads. That’s a response to a still-reverberating comment from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who said soon after the failed Times Square car bomb attempt that there would be “severe consequences” should a successful attack ever be traced back to Pakistan. (Her spokesman, P.J. Crowley, has tried to walk the comments back, saying, “I think she was responding to a hypothetical question.”)

But what did the Panetta-Jones trip reap from the Pakistanis? “Both parties acknowledged the extreme challenge of thwarting each and every plot and terrorist action, both sides pledged to intensify efforts, increase cooperation, and do everything possible to protect our citizens,” the statement reads. Here it is in full:

The productive discussions covered U.S.-Pakistan relations, the security situation in the region, the shared terrorist threat and fight against extremists, and the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue. General Jones reiterated the United States’ long-term commitment to the strategic partnership with Pakistan, including support for creating economic opportunity for the Pakistani people. The talks provided an opportunity to review progress on the many areas addressed in the recent strategic dialogue held in Washington. Both sides expressed their commitment to strengthening ties across the broad spectrum of issues between our countries, including trade, economic growth, and development. The parties agreed to continue frequent government-to-government contacts and further senior-level engagement in order to advance our common interests and provide a better, more secure future for our people.

President Asif Ali Zardari said that militancy and terrorism was the common enemy and that the existing robust cooperation between the two countries must continue to fight the menace. General Jones and Director Panetta provided an update on the ongoing investigation into the Times Square terrorist incident. General Jones expressed appreciation for the excellent cooperation the United States is receiving from Pakistan as well as the tremendous sacrifice of the Pakistani military, law enforcement and people in their efforts to combat extremists. The talks covered measures that both countries are, and will be, taking to confront the common threat we face from extremists and prevent such potential attacks from occurring again and both parties acknowledged the extreme challenge of thwarting each and every plot and terrorist action, both sides pledged to intensify efforts, increase cooperation, and do everything possible to protect our citizens. President Zardari noted that Pakistan desires a long-term, multifaceted, and durable relationship with the United States which no incident should be able to adversely impact.

Watch if U.S. intelligence officials still tell reporters that Pakistan is withholding crucial terrorism intelligence after Jones and Panetta fly home.

It’s so dry it borders on passive-aggressive. “Immediately following the attempted attack, Director Blair initiated reviews to identify [intelligence community]-wide shortcomings and potential solutions,” reads a statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, responding to this afternoon’s declassified Senate report on systemic intelligence failures that allowed would-be-bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board a passenger aircraft on Christmas. “The findings of these reviews identified many of the same systemic problems noted in today’s [Senate intelligence committee] report.” If only a press release could yawn performatively.

The full statement is after the jump.

The Intelligence Community (IC) fully supported the Senate Intelligence Committee’s review of IC information and procedures prior to the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Immediately following the attempted attack, Director Blair initiated reviews to identify IC-wide shortcomings and potential solutions. The findings of these reviews identified many of the same systemic problems noted in today’s SSCI report.

As a result of the ODNI’s internal review and the President’s January 7 directive, the IC has undertaken certain corrective actions to address these shortcomings. Specifically:

The DNI clarified roles and responsibilities among the IC’s counterterrorism functions, ensuring that any stream of threat reporting receives follow-through to its conclusion;
The establishment of a dedicated analytic element at NCTC to thoroughly and exhaustively pursue terrorist threat threads, including identifying appropriate follow-up actions by other intelligence and law enforcement organizations, and increasing the number of personnel resources dedicated to enhancing the records of information on individuals contained in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment or TIDE;
Renewed efforts to integrate disparate data and information systems to make data more discoverable/accessible by analysts IC-wide; and
Investments in education and training, which will provide counterterrorism analysts with a career-long curriculum to facilitate integration, collaboration, and tradecraft improvements.

In light of the recent Times Square bombing attempt, Director Blair noted that, “The Intelligence Community is aggressively focused on potential threats, especially new tactics by radicalized individuals. At the same time, institutional and technological barriers remain that prevent seamless sharing of information. We can and must outthink, outwork, and defeat our enemies. The Intelligence Community is absolutely committed to that goal.”

A long-awaited report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into the failed bombing attempt aboard Northwest Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab essentially finds that the nation’s premier center for terrorism intelligence didn’t do its job ahead of the Christmastime danger.

“Prior to 12/25,” reads the report, spearheaded by committee leaders Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.) and declassified for release this afternoon, the National Counterterrorism Center, a 600-employee center inspired by the 9/11 Commission to tie together all streams of terrorism intelligence to prevent another surprise attack, “was not adequately organized and did not have the resources appropriately allocated to fulfill its missions.” That echoes a critique that NCTC veterans and whistleblowers made to The Washington Independent in January.

The committee’s report casts blame around the intelligence community for its inability to prevent Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian citizen educated in the U.K. and trained by al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate for the attack, from boarding Flight 253. But it finds the key bottlenecks occurred at NCTC. As we’ve reported for months, analysts within an NCTC-led process did not find that the threat information on Abdulmutallab did not meet the standard of specificity for moving him onto the FBI’s terrorist watchlist or the no-fly list. (The standard is “Specific derogatory information leading to reasonable suspicion.”)

But NCTC’s analysts, despite possessing a statutory mandate to “serve as the central and shared knowledge bank on known and suspected” terrorists, did not even “conduct additional research” to meet the “specific derogatory information” standard necessary to keep Abdulmutallab out of the U.S. — even after possessing enough information to place him on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database. And while the committee’s report doesn’t get specific in its unclassified summary, it hints repeatedly that there existed throughout the intelligence community enough piecemeal intelligence to meet the standard. “Analysts responsible for making the watchlisting determination did not believe they had the ability to give additional weight to significant pieces of information from the field, such as the report that resulted from the meeting with Abdulmutallab’s father,” the report states.

Its recommendations call into question the basic analytic and organizational competence of NCTC — something that its own analysts have done in interviews with TWI last January. The committee finds that for all of NCTC’s supposed analytic focus on al-Qaeda and the Middle East — though fewer than ten analysts work full-time on the Middle East and fewer than half of its 300 analysts work full-time on al-Qaeda — NCTC missed signals that al-Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate sought to attack the U.S. domestically. NCTC’s director “should ensure that all NCTC analysts understand their responsibility to connect related all-source information and disseminate all possible threat reporting, particularly reports that might help identify homeland threats,” the committee’s report states. And the director — for the time being, Michael Leiter — should “ensure that NCTC is organized and resourced to fulfill its responsibility to track, analyze, and report on all terrorist threats to the United States emanating from terrorist groups overseas.” You could be forgiven, after reading that, for wondering what NCTC has been doing for the first five years of its existence.

I’m awaiting comment from spokesmen for Leiter and for Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, whom the committee recommends should conduct his own review of the systemic failures here, “mindful of the intent of Congress to give NCTC the primary role and responsibility” for assembling all-source terrorism intelligence.

Title XIV of H.R. 5136, the House bill authorizing next year’s Defense Department money, doesn’t look like it carries a major legacy item for President Obama. It’s the banal-appearing 15-part section of the bill that authorizes “ADDITIONAL APPROPRIATIONS FOR OVERSEAS CONTINGENCY OPERATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2011,” a bureaucratic euphemism for “War Money.” Inside it is the difference between closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and leaving the international symbol of U.S. lawlessness and abuse open.

Tomorrow, the House Armed Services Committee marks up H.R. 5136, its final committee step in the House before heading to the House floor. And within Title XIV of the bill is something called the “Overseas Contingency Operations Transfer Fund.” The version reported on April 26 — the final markup version is now in congressmen’s hands — authorizes $1,551,781,000 for that fund. But if it sounds like you don’t know what that “transfer” fund means, it’s because the opacity is to protect the fund from legislators.

Robert Hale, the Pentagon comptroller, explained in a press conference when the budget was released this winter that part of that money is for closing the detention facility at Guantanamo. “In fiscal year ‘11, there is a transfer fund that could be used for all aspects of detainee operations, $350 million,” Hale told reporters. “It would permit us to transfer funds to places where we need to close or transition Guantanamo. It would permit us to transfer funds to accounts that would let us open the Thomson, Illinois site.”

If that fund makes it through the markup, then it’s just passed a major hurdle. The House will approve the entire defense budget, probably as early as next week, and it’s highly unlikely to hold up a huge bill that contains next year’s Afghanistan and Iraq war money for the controversy of closing Guantanamo. (The Senate Armed Services Committee’s markup comes at the end of the month.) If the fund money gets stripped out of the bill during markup, however, then it gets much harder to shut the detention facility down. Given the likelihood of increased Republican ranks in Congress after November, it may become effectively impossible.

The New Jersey Democratic legislator and intelligence oversight maven has finally won on a fight he’s waged to record military interrogations. As The Wall Street Journal reports, a May 10 memo from Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn instructs interrogators gathering high-value intelligence off the battlefield — that is, Bagram and Guantanamo Bay in particular — to get their videocameras out when talking with detainees.

That’s been a concern of Holt’s for a while. He’s argued that not only will videotaping interrogations function as a measure to prevent detainee abuse, but it’ll create a useful lessons-learned library for training interrogators or honing their skills. Last October, he got a measure requiring the videotaping into the conference report for the defense appropriations bill.

“The Pentagon’s long awaited regulation of the provision I secured in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act continues the process of putting our detainee policies back on sound legal footing while improving our ability to get actionable intelligence,” Holt said in response to a request for comment from TWI (and subsequently emailed out in a press release). “As President Obama and local law enforcement officials across the country already know, we get better intelligence and protect both the interrogator and the person being interrogated by requiring recordings.”

Laura Rozen reports that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn’t think the new Iran-Turkey uranium enrichment deal will derail the U.S.’s efforts at securing consensus in the United Nations Security Council for Iran sanctions:

“We have reached agreement on a strong draft with the cooperation of both Russia and China,” Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today.

“We plan to circulate that draft resolution to the entire Security Council today,” Clinton said. “I think this announcement is as convincing an answer to the efforts undertaken in Tehran over the last few days as any we could provide.

Could be bluster, or it could be that Clinton has a whip count.

Yesterday, I cited a blind quote in a McClatchy story from a Defense Department official. It raised doubts that the force levels anticipated for Kandahar’s “rising tide” — 20,350 NATO and Afghan troops by September — are sufficient to protect the population from insurgents. “None of this makes any sense,” read the quote. “If it took you 10,000 (U.S. troops) to do Marjah, there aren’t enough troops (for Kandahar).” McChrystal’s chief spokesman, Air Force Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, disagrees.

“What the anonymous US official quoted has not accounted for are the differences between Central Helmand and Kandahar,” Sholtis wrote to me in an email. “Simply stated, there was nothing but Taliban in places like Marjah; security forces had to be created from scratch, and security imposed from the outside.  That’s not the case in Kandahar City, where existing security forces only need to be augmented and security can be increased from the inside.” To be specific, right now there are about 6900 NATO troops and 5300 Afghan troops inside Kandahar. “Those forces include police in the city itself, where there are outbreaks of terrorist violence,” Sholtis continued, “and army in the districts surrounding it, where the Taliban are conducting a more classic insurgency to try to control the approaches to the city.”

For what it’s worth, counterinsurgency doctrine bears Sholtis out. The Army’s field manual on counterinsurgency, known as FM 3-24, postulates a formula of 25 counterinsurgents per 1000 civilian residents. While a hard-and-fast census for Kandahar isn’t on offer, the figures U.S. planners typically cite for the city’s population hover between 800,000 and 850,000. Let’s use the 850,000 number. FM 3-24’s formula would suggest a counterinsurgent force of 21,250. That’s fewer than 1,000 additional troops to the 20,350 counterinsurgents that McChrystal will have in place by September.

None of this is to suggest that FM 3-24’s ratio — a guiding tool for planners, not a magic incantation for success — holds any guarantee of sustainable security for Kandahar. In Marja, clearly McChrystal went far larger in invading the village than FM 3-24 suggested, and the clearing phase, to put it mildly, remains in question after three months. Whether the “rising tide” of security operations lead to deliverable advancements in governance, justice, economic activity and perceptions of insurgent illegitimacy and government legitimacy are the measurements more likely to determine the outcome in Kandahar.

From a U.S. Central Command press release:

The United States government delivered two Bell 412 EP helicopters to the Government of Pakistan today to assist the Pakistan military in its counterinsurgency efforts.

U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Michael Nagata handed over the helicopters to Brig. Gen. Tippu Karim, 101 Army Aviation commander, during a signing ceremony at Qasim Army Air Base near Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

By sheer coincidence, Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post reports that CIA Director Leon Panetta and Jim Jones, President Obama’s national security adviser, are headed to Pakistan to urge Pakistan’s civilian, military and intelligence leadership to take greater action against extremists in the tribal areas in the wake of the failed Times Square car bomb attempt. National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer explains to DeYoung, “It is time to redouble our efforts with our allies in Pakistan to close this safe haven and create an environment where we and the Pakistani people can lead safe and productive lives.”

So do with those helicopters as you will…

A Taliban operative driving a car bomb attacked a NATO convoy in the Afghan capital today, killing at least six U.S. and allied troops and at least 12 Afghan civilians. The Associated Press:

The powerful blast occurred on a major Kabul thoroughfare that runs by the ruins of a one-time royal palace and government ministries. It wrecked nearly 20 vehicles, including five SUVs in the NATO convoy, and scattered debris and body parts across the wide boulevard. The body of woman in a burqa was smashed against the window of the bus.

That’s an immensely powerful blast if it’s able to take out five surely-armored NATO SUVs and still do damage to 15 other cars, motorcycles and trucks. Judging by the photos in this Washington Post gallery, I’ve driven down the road that the Taliban attacked, and it’s indeed heavily trafficked. The blast essentially welcomes home Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who firmed up his ties to the Obama administration last week in Washington.

A group of Oregon National Guardsmen returning from Iraq recently noticed that that the medical care the Army provided at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state differed significantly from what their active-duty comrades received. And they might have discovered a systemic problem in the process.

Some Guardsmen from the 41st Infantry Brigade Combat Team, while still called up on active duty, found themselves getting rushed through Lewis-McChord’s medical facilities. So they contacted their members of Congress to alert them to what they considered alarming anomalies between their treatment and that given to active-duty soldiers. Staffers for two Oregon legislators, Sen. Ron Wyden (D) and Rep. Kurt Schrader (D), visited Lewis-McChord on May 11. They quickly found that “this was more than a couple of isolated incidents,” said Wyden spokeswoman Jennifer Hoelzer.

Interviews with base staff and members of the 41st IBCT eventually led the congressional aides to discover a PowerPoint presentation at the base that clearly placed reservists and active-duty soldiers on two different tracks for medical attention. The PowerPoint, assembled by the family practice department at the base’s Madigan Army Medical Center, indicated that the goal for active-duty soldiers was to “RUSH” attention for an acute illness or infirmity to a unit medical provider. For reservists, the goal for most demobilizing soldiers was “GET HOME NOW.” For Guardmen and Guardswomen getting ready to deploy, it was “Get acute issues resolved and be eligible to deploy.” Feel confident about that standard of care?

The PowerPoint itself carried a flip — to the Oregon Guardsmen, offensive — illustration of the bifurcation. I’ll put the slide below:

In a letter to Wyden and Schrader, the chief of the Army’s Medical Command, Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, “apologize[d]” for what he called the “insensitive and offensive depiction of Reserve Component Soldiers in this presentation.”

That’s not good enough for Wyden and Schrader. They’ve written to Army Secretary John McHugh asking for a full investigation of whether members of the 41st were treated as “second-class soldiers” and ensuring that the Guardsmen get “all the medical, pay and other benefits to which they are entitled.” Wyden spokeswoman Hoelzer expects McHugh in for a discussion about next steps later this week.

Building on his previous noncommittal statement about Iran’s declared deal to send most of its uranium to Turkey for enrichment, Robert Gibbs was a human dose of Ativan during his press briefing this afternoon when asked if the move scuttles the United States’ delicately cobbled sanctions effort at the United Nations Security Council:

Q You’re not concerned at this point that this is going to unravel the whole deal?

MR. GIBBS: No. Again, I think there’s — as I said, there are certain steps that would certainly be progress. I think it’s important to understand what this proposal signifies is less than what they agreed to last October — an understanding that the words and the deeds of the Iranian leadership rarely coincide. So I think before we have — I think we have to get — the international community has to see the proposal in its detail through the IAEA before it can make a final determination.

Notice the burden shifting back to Iran. Gibbs continued:

Q Just the fact that Iran appears to be agreeing to something, even though you want more information to be sent to the IAEA, is this a step in the right direction?

MR. GIBBS: Well, again, I’m reticent to — well, even as I said — if they were to make good on this and ship out 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, yes, that would represent progress. But, again, Dan, I think it is important to understand that this is less than — this agreement is — or proposal is less than what they agreed to last October. And understand that even though they agreed to this last October, it never came to pass because they changed their mind. So that’s why I say the words and the deeds of the leadership in Iran have rarely coincided.

That’s similar to a preliminary conclusion reached by the Institute for Science and International Security, which finds “no reason to stop negotiating in the Security Council the imposition of sanctions on Iran”:

Such an exchange of LEU [Low-Enriched Uranium] today, however, would take place today under very different circumstances.  Iran has continued to enrich uranium in the intervening seven months.  Iran has also begun its own effort at the Natanz Pilot Enrichment Plant to produce 20 percent enriched uranium (the level needed for the Tehran Research Reactor), announced plans to deploy a more advanced centrifuge, and start building two more centrifuge plants without notifying the IAEA until late in the construction process.  Additional outstanding issues with the IAEA also remain.  In particular, despite repeated requests, Iran continues to be uncooperative with the IAEA on implementing more effective safeguards and answering questions about its alleged work on researching the design and delivery of nuclear warheads.

A lot of Jonathan Alter’s (extremely credulous) account of the Obama administration’s fall 2009 internal deliberations over Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy will be familiar to readers who watched that debate unfold. But this is at least a new layer of detail:

When he spoke to McChrystal by teleconference, Obama couldn’t have been clearer in his instructions. “Do not occupy what you cannot transfer,” the president ordered. In a later call he said it again: “Do not occupy what you cannot transfer.” He didn’t want the United States moving into a section of the country unless it was to prepare for transferring security responsibilities to the Afghans.

You’ve heard, since at least the December 1 West Point speech, the administration add “Transfer” to the Iraq-era counterinsurgency formulation of strategy, “Clear, Hold, Build.” Gen. McChrystal first put it into place in Marja. While it’s probably not really right to place Kandahar in the same category — NATO and Afghan forces are already in Kandahar — the “rising tide of security” approach to securing the city presupposes Afghan leadership.

It makes sense, then, to look at places that McChrystal’s forces are no longer occupying. Last month, U.S. forces withdrew from eastern Afghanistan’s treacherous Korengal Valley. More broadly, McChrystal’s effort centers primarily on southern Afghanistan, not eastern Afghanistan, a major departure for war strategy and one predicated on prioritizing the south’s denser population centers. And it’s hard to see an Afghan governmental presence in the east looking stronger this year than in prior ones. When I visited in 2008, U.S. commanders’ concern for eastern Afghanistan centered on the lines of insurgent freedom of movement to and from the abutting Pakistani tribal areas. It’s unclear, to say the least, if that concern has subsided. But it looks at least somewhat clear that the focus has.

It’s a star-crossed nomination, having run into Senate Republican obstruction, but President Obama thinks he’s found an unobjectionable candidate to helm the Transportation Security Administration in deputy FBI director John Pistole. Obama gives a vote of confidence in a just-released announcement of Pistole’s nomination:

“The talent and knowledge John has acquired in more than two decades of service with the F.B.I. will make him a valuable asset to our administration’s efforts to strengthen the security and screening measures at our airports. I am grateful that he has agreed to take on this important role, and I look forward to working with him in the weeks and months ahead.”

Importantly, Pistole’s tenure at the FBI gave him a background in both counterterrorism and civil rights, a mixture increasingly important as the administration has previously waded a toe — since retracted — into ethnic profiling at airports. Pistole also spent last week on the Hill briefing lawmakers on the latest in the Faisal Shahzad attempted car-bombing case, so he might be a reassuring figure in Congress for a crucial position.

Hamid Karzai went home to Afghanistan last week having reached a modus vivendi with the U.S. on the non-offensive in Kandahar. The Obama administration, the military, NATO and Karzai now speak of a “rising tide of security” taking hold over the southern city, with security operations playing a decisively subordinate role to governance and economic functions. But that’s vastly easier said than done. And McClatchy carries a blind quote casting doubt on whether the basic prerequisites for that “rising tide” are even in evidence:

U.S. defense officials and defense analysts said that McChrystal used 10,000 troops in Helmand to gain control of a rural river valley with about 50,000 residents. But in Kandahar, however, Afghanistan’s second largest city, with an estimated population of 800,000, he’s calling for just 20,000 troops.

“None of this makes any sense,” said a U.S. defense official. “If it took you 10,000 (U.S. troops) to do Marjah, there aren’t enough troops (for Kandahar).” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

And Marja isn’t in any important sense done, either.

So now that the pre-trial hearing in Omar Khadr’s military commission has recessed while the government conducts a mental-health exam of the 23-year old detainee, when will Khadr’s proceedings actually resume? July and August, just in time for the most oppressively baking temperatures that Guantanamo Bay has to offer!

According to the judge in the case, Army Col. Patrick Parrish, the final phase of the pre-trial “suppression” hearing — to determine whether Khadr’s statements to interrogators are sufficiently voluntary for the government to use against him — will begin on July 12. That’s when the government’s assessment of Khadr’s mental state as a 15 and 16-year old detainee in American custody, raised by the defense, will square off against Khadr’s attorneys’ experts, who will contend that a teenager under military interrogation is inherently under duress. It emerged during the first phase of the hearing that Khadr’s first interrogator told him a “fictional story” about a young detainee raped and killed for not cooperating with his captors.

The actual trial phase of the military commission, in which the government will seek to prove that Khadr threw a grenade in 2002 that killed U.S. Army Special Forces Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer, will commence on August 10. That’s the first military commission of the Obama era. And it may not even happen: both the government and Khadr’s attorneys have publicly acknowledged seeking a plea deal to settle the government’s case against Khadr. But if they can’t reach one, it’s back to Guantanamo on August 10 for a hot and tense trial.

Sure enough, as soon as I run with my previous post on the Iran enrichment offer, here’s White House spokesman Robert Gibbs’s official comment. It’s fairly noncommittal. It doesn’t rule out the prospect that the foreign-enrichment deal might be substantive, but Gibbs highlights the concern the previous post did: that Iran appears to reserve the right to continue to pursue enrichment to a threshold state for a weapon (and for the technical side of why that is, check out Arms Control Wonk). As well, Gibbs wants more demonstration of why the deal can begin to settle Iran’s nuclear account without a new round of sanctions, and reiterates the U.S.’s commitment to diplomacy (i.e., not war not war not war) when it comes to that account.

So, at first blush, nothing really ruled in or ruled out. But judge for yourself. Gibbs:

We acknowledge the efforts that have been made by Turkey and Brazil. The proposal announced in Tehran must now be conveyed clearly and authoritatively to the IAEA before it can be considered by the international community. Given Iran’s repeated failure to live up to its own commitments, and the need to address fundamental issues related to Iran’s nuclear program, the United States and international community continue to have serious concerns. While it would be a positive step for Iran to transfer low-enriched uranium off of its soil as it agreed to do last October, Iran said today that it would continue its 20% enrichment, which is a direct violation of UN Security Council resolutions and which the Iranian government originally justified by pointing to the need for fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor. Furthermore, the Joint Declaration issued in Tehran is vague about Iran’s willingness to meet with the P5+1 countries to address international concerns about its nuclear program, as it also agreed to do last October.

The United States will continue to work with our international partners, and through the United Nations Security Council, to make it clear to the Iranian government that it must demonstrate through deeds – and not simply words – its willingness to live up to international obligations or face consequences, including sanctions. Iran must take the steps necessary to assure the international community that its nuclear program is intended exclusively for peaceful purposes, including by complying with U.N. Security Council resolutions and cooperating fully with the IAEA. We remain committed to a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear program, as part of the P5+1 dual track approach, and will be consulting closely with our partners on these developments going forward.

There’s one up high in this morning’s New York Times piece on the Iran/Turkey/Brazil uranium enrichment deal:

According to a Western diplomat who spoke in return for anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters, the amount of low-enriched uranium that Iran was prepared to ship to Turkey was believed to represent a little more than half its current stockpile.

“The situation has changed,” the diplomat said.

If you read on in the piece, you’ll see that Iran’s move may not be enough to satisfy the so-called P5+1’s concerns about an Iranian weapons program:

In Tehran, the Foreign Ministry spokesman told a person attending the news conference that Iran would not, for example, suspend its program to enrich uranium to 20 percent — which brings it closer to weapons grade.

Still waiting on an actual official reply from the Obama administration here. But in the meantime, Amb. Susan Rice’s next few weeks are going to be consumed with shepherding a sanctions package through a Security Council that at the very least would rather not pass a new round of sanctions on Iran. The Iranian negotiating posture to date has been to bust up punitive-minded coalitions at the last minute with the prospect of cooperation, so it’s diplomatic malpractice if this comes as a surprise. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t wavering nations who’d want to get off the sanctions bus at the first sign of Iranian openness to a longed-for enrichment deal. What the administration says — and Rice does — today in reaction to the new offering will be crucial.

This New York Times piece about farmers in Marja voting with their feet is perhaps the clearest evidence yet that the “holding” phase of February’s massive NATO/Afghan invasion of the Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province is going poorly:

Over 150 families have fled Marja in the last two weeks, according to the Afghan Red Crescent Society in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

Marja residents arriving here last week, many looking bleak and shell-shocked, said civilians had been trapped by the fighting, running a gantlet of mines laid by insurgents and firefights around government and coalition positions. The pervasive Taliban presence forbids them from having any contact with or taking assistance from the government or coalition forces.

“People are leaving; you see 10 to 20 families each day on the road who are leaving Marja due to insecurity,” said a farmer, Abdul Rahman, 52, who was traveling on his own. “It is now hard to live there in this situation.”

More than once, I’ve heard from officials involved in the Marja operation that a key metric for determining success is watching the locals return home and rebuild their lives. It’s worth noting that the farmers fleeing Marja for the relative safety of Lashkar Gah don’t evidently express hostility toward the Marines who spearheaded the February invasion. They express discontent and anger over the inability of the NATO and Afghan government forces to actually protect them from Taliban fighters who are deeply embedded within the structure of Marja:

More Taliban fighters have arrived in recent weeks, slipping in with the itinerant laborers who came to work the poppy harvest and staying on to fight, villagers and officials said. Haji Gul Muhammad Khan, tribal adviser to the governor of Helmand Province, said he had reports of Taliban arriving in the area in the last three or four days.

Everyone in Marja knows the Taliban, since they are village men who never left the area although they quit fighting soon after the military operation. Gradually they found a stealthier way of operating, moving around in small groups, often by motorbike or on foot.

An intimidated population is not going to provide intelligence for NATO or Afghan government forces to adequately distinguish between civilians and insurgents. That makes it less likely to remove the sources of such intimidation. And that’s a downward spiral.