Today's Headlines and Commentary

The day's lead news story is, of course, the horrific shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The alleged gunman, the New York Times reports, was Wade Michael Page, a U.S. army veteran. Details surrounding the shooting remain murky. Reuters reports that the gunman has been linked to hate groups. The Los Angeles Times also has the story. Speaking of people who go on shooting rampages, Jared Loughner, the Tuscon shooter who killed six people and wounded thirteen others--including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords--will plead guilty tomorrow. He has been deemed mentally competent to stand trial. The Times has more. CNN informs us that the three men who were arrested in Spain last week may have been planning to bomb a shopping mall in Gibraltar. Apparently the men were part of "one of the most skilled and experienced terror cells seen in recent times, and appear to have been dispatched by al Qaeda to carry out an ambitious attack in Europe." Get this: one of the men, Ahmad Avar, was a former member of the Russian special forces, and then went on to training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including one run by LeT. According to The Hill, President Obama is contemplating "issuing an executive order to strengthen the nation's defenses against cyber attacks" in the wake of the failed cybersecurity bill. Hussain Nadim, a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, has this piece in the National Interest about how drone strikes are really viewed in Pakistan. He says:

Locals I talked to are frustrated over the fear that they might get hit by a drone if the militants are hiding in their neighborhood. But this frustration may have a positive impact as it motivates civilians to flush out and close doors to militants who seek refuge in their areas. Surprisingly, there isn’t as much anti-Americanism as one would suspect in areas where the United States is conducting drone strikes, largely because the locals are fed up with the influx of militants in their areas and have suffered because of terrorism. However, urban centers, which have suffered the least from terrorism, are far more radicalized and anti-American. Hence, we see large anti-drone rallies in the cities of Punjab, where people have little first-hand experience with drones. The anti-American lot in these places will start a rally for any reason at all as long as they get to burn a few American flags.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post tears into President Obama and Mitt Romney for ignoring the war in Afghanistan. The Long War Journal reports that Hamas has freed a gentleman by the name of Abu al Walid al Maqdisi, who belongs to a jihadist group linked to Al Qaeda. The Associated Press states that Al Qaeda-linked suicide bombers struck a funeral service in Yemen over the weekend. Forty-five people were killed and just as many wounded. In better news about Al Qaeda-linked groups, the Times says that a gentleman named Uthman Adil, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, was killed by a drone strike in Pakistan this weekend. And the Times discusses the conflict between the militia and the Islamists in Mali. For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter, visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief, Fordham Law’s Center on National Security’s Morning Brief, and Fordham Law’s Cyber Brief. Email us noteworthy articles we may have missed at wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com and  singh.lawfare@gmail.com.