As mentioned yesterday, thought I’d do a follow up on the enhanced interrogation technique blog I wrote yesterday. I asked the following question during the May 5th press call sponsored by the National Security Network and the Center for American Progress: …if I’m understanding and hearing correctly, there was historical precedence as well as […]
I have written on the subject of fuel banks before, the idea being to prevent the spread of Enrichment and Reprocessing (ENR) facilities which are capable of producing weapons-grade fuel by providing reactor material produced at a multilateral facility through supply assurances. As I also noted, the IAEA Board of Governors approved a fuel bank […]
In the aftermath of the take down of Osama Bin Laden, there has been much debate and speculation on the nature of the intelligence used to finally track him down. Front and center has been the role played using controversial interrogation techniques. On 5 May I participated in a press call sponsored by the National […]
The chap who deigned to take on the Bush Administration, refusing to kowtow to their demands that he provide evidence of Saddam Hussein’s imaginary nuclear weapons program, has published his memoir. In “The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times”, Mohamed ElBaradei, three-term Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), details his […]
I’d like to highlight three significant effects of the bin Laden killing. First, as I noted last week, some people view the operation as precedential. The first one I caught was from Knesset member, Shaul Mofaz, who took the opportunity to call for similar strikes on Hamas leaders. Additionally, as David Karl of the FPA […]
Beware of arguments like those offered in Jonathan Schanzer’s Weekly Standard article, “The Hamas-al Qaeda Alliance.” The article was a response to the statement earlier this week from senior Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who condemned the bin Laden killing. Schanzer essentially attempts to conflate al Qaeda and Hamas, writing that “over the course of two […]
We are at war. Twelve new wars have broken out in the world since the dawn of the new millennium, including the United States’ war with Afghanistan, Iraq, and the even more recent civil wars in Libya and the Ivory Coast. So much global unrest is enough to make anyone uneasy, despite the recent death […]
My very first post for this blog, on February 24th, discussed the need for consistency in U.S. policy regarding prevention of proliferation. I’d like to return to that subject to review recent Congressional action which, to my mind, helps to institutionalize some much-needed consistency in the context of Agreements for Cooperation, so-called 123 Agreements. The […]
Last week I wrote that inaction in Washington and at the UN does not live up to the brave and hopeful Syrians who have taken to the streets in protest of the Assad government. Many there probably looked at NATO’s intervention in Libya and expected something similar to happen if protests in Syria persisted. They […]
The debate about whether the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden was legal is on. It was legal, says John Bellinger, justified under the same rationale as U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan. Though there’s a pretty fierce debate about the legality of the drones program, thrust to a new level of complexity after Pakistan withdrew […]
Following my April 8th post, John Coster-Mullen wrote to me in response. Luckily, he didn’t dislike what I wrote. In fact, in a series of subsequent exchanges, he has breathlessly and enthusiastically shared with me a whole host of additional information he has obtained and developed in the course of his extensive research on Fat […]
But let’s talk about bin Laden. The first notion we can discard is that the US pulled this feat off alone–that our intelligence and military capabilities allowed a convoy of Blackhawk helicopters carrying teams of Navy Seals, along with gunships (loaded with 100+ Army Rangers or Marines) flying defense above the Blackhawks, to penetrate, probably from Afghanistan, 100 miles or more into Pakistan’s airspace to one of the country’s most heavily guarded locations (Pakistan’s ‘West Point’) without detection by Pakistan’s intelligence/ military forces or without encountering Pakistani fighter jets.
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