Today's Headlines and Commentary

The only true casualty of Ben's accidental cyberattack on Lawfare was yesterday's Headlines and Commentary post, which survived no better than an Iranian nuclear centrifuge infected with the Stuxnet virus. For those who have been jonesing, here's your fix. Ben and Bobby and Steve have written extensively about the NDAA conference report. Here is coverage from the Politico, the Hill, and the Washington Post. This op-ed in the New York Times by Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar, both retired Marine four-stars, argues that the President must veto the NDAA to protect both our safety and our ideals. Well, that's not happening. An editorial in the Post asserts that "House and Senate negotiators have improved legislation governing the handling of terrorism suspects--but not enough." In related news, as I posted earlier, FBI director Robert Meuller testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his concerns  regarding the defense bill, says the Post. Money quote:

The statute lacks clarity with regard to what happens at the time of arrest. It lacks clarity with regard to what happens if we had a case in Lackawanna, New York, and an arrest has to be made there and there’s no military within several hundred miles. . . . What happens if we have . . . a case that we’re investigating on three individuals, two of whom are American citizens and would not go to military custody and the third is not an American citizen and could go to military custody?

In case you want a new insight into where Hezbollah's been getting its money recently, check out this article from the Times. And if you thought the Taliban lured people to join up with visions of heaven and harems, you were wrong. Pakistani police have rescued 68 students from the basement of a madrasa, "several of whom were reportedly chained in a basement, denied food and pressured to join the Taliban," reports the Los Angeles Times. National Public Radio informs us that Yemeni police have arrested 6 Al-Qaeda militants. Before you get too excited, recall that between 10-15 escaped on Monday. So that's still a net loss. The Post reports that we've lost another drone, this time in Seychelles. And here's a surprise: It turns out Iran had the nerve to ignore President Obama's request to return our downed drone, says the AP. The AP has this story about Chinese government and Chinese military-backed hacker groups "stealing critical data from U.S. companies and government agencies." The Miami Herald reports that the fate of Adel el Gazzar, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, who returned to his native Egypt after Mubarak fell, will be decided on December 27 by the new Egyptian government. Karen Greenberg, Director of the Center on National Security at Forham Law School, has this op-ed in the Guardian about how entrapment "ensnares us all." Richard A. Clarke, ex-counterterrorism coordinator at the National Security Council, argues in this op-ed that Republican accusations that President Obama does not side with his commanders in the field misunderstand the relationship between the executive and the military: "Letting generals in the field dictate strategic decisions didn’t turn out well for Mr. Obama’s predecessor, and the president is wise not to do the same." And, after all that, if you feel like ending your day with the news that Obama really has closed Guantanamo Bay after all, this California newspaper provides today's Moment of Zen. For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter, and visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief as well as the Fordham Law Center on National Security’s Morning Brief. Feel free to email us noteworthy articles we may have missed at wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com and  singh.lawfare@gmail.com.