Today's Headlines and Commentary

Amnesty International's web site has been hacked by supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad, reports James Ball of the Washington Post.

Some new details are emerging about Matt Bissonnette's book about the bin Laden raid, and they seem to be in conflict with details released by the administration. For one, the book says that the SEALs shot bin Laden when they saw him looking out of a doorway, not, as administration officials reported, only after following him back into a bedroom to pick up a weapon. The AP has this report.

It seems that the Navy's recently-released data on piracy attacks jibe with the International Maritime Bureau's data released earlier this summer. The Navy reports that attacks around the Horn of Africa have dropped significantly this year. Thom Shanker of the Times discusses the details here.

Yemeni military officials say that a drone strike killed two militants on Tuesday, although its unclear who launched the attack.

A Pakistani Taliban attack on Pakistani soldiers in South Waziristan has killed at least eight Pakistani soldiers. Declan Walsh and Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud of the New York Times provide details.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will be making some significant changes to his cabinet and national security teams, write Richard Oppel and Graham Bowley of the Times. Among the adjustments, sources say Karzai will nominate a Tajik commander (who was just dismissed as interior minister by the Parliament) to lead the Defense Ministry and shift a long-time police officer and the current head of the spy agency to other prominent security-related posts.

Let's not forget about cybersecurity: Senator Dianne Feinstein joined the chorus calling for an Obama executive order to establish standards and incentives for operators of critical infrastructure to improve their network security. Jennifer Martinez of The Hill shares the details of Senator Feinstein's letter to the president.

And the GOP is hard on the case against the Obama administration's cybersecurity policies, calling them over-regulatory. It says in part:

The government collects valuable information about potential threats that can and should be shared with private entities without compromising national security... We believe that companies should be free from legal and regulatory barriers that prevent or deter them from voluntarily sharing cyberthreat information with their government partners."

From the Law Times of Canada comes this story by Siobhan McClellan on Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr's lawyers and their ongoing effort to get Khadr transferred to a Canadian prison to serve his sentence.

Two U.S. government employees were shot while they were being pursued by Mexican federal police officers in a high-speed car chase last week, and it seems that the Americans may have been CIA employees involved with a multi-agency collaboration to help Mexico in its efforts to combat drug trafficking. The New York Times story confirming the affiliation of the Americans is here, and the Post story reporting that 12 Mexican federal police officers are in custody in connection with the shooting is here.

Mark Thompson of Time's Battleland blog shares this transcript of an interview with Army Major Christopher Miller, recounting the challenges facing those training the Afghan security forces.

More terrorist attacks in Russia, says David Herszenhorn, this time in the Republic of Dagestan, which is in the North Caucasus. Seven people were killed in a suicide bombing (perpetrated by a woman who targeted a Sufi scholar and Muslim leader in the republic) and a border guard opened fire on his fellow soldiers, killing at least seven.

An update on the Bradley Manning trial from the AP: Manning's lawyers argued yesterday that he is still waiting for more than 700 emails from the prosecutors pertinent to the case. The pre-trial hearing continues today.

In the case against Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who is on trial for the Fort Hood shooting, the judge presiding over his pretrial hearing ruled that Hasan could have his beard forcibly shaved prior to the commencement of the trial, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces upheld the ruling on Monday. Manny Fernandez of the Times reports.

And China will be deploying drones to patrol its coastline, according to IANS.

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