Today’s Headlines and Commentary
This morning, the New York Times cites recent Western officials and experts who have indicated that Iraq's military forces are "combat ineffective" and its leadership is crippled by corruption. In an interview with CB
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This morning, the New York Times cites recent Western officials and experts who have indicated that Iraq's military forces are "combat ineffective" and its leadership is crippled by corruption. In an interview with CBS scheduled to air in full this morning, President Obama stated that the U.S. will have to pursue a "more focused, more targeted strategy" than "play[ing] whack-a-mole" and sending in U.S. troops to address terrorist threats wherever they emerge.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced trip to Baghdad to meet with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) seized more territory along the Iraq-Jordan border, reports Bloomberg. The Associated Press said yesterday that Sunni militants have now captured four towns and three border crossings in western Iraq.
On Sunday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the U.S. of falsely portraying the conflict in Iraq as a sectarian war and attempting to retake the country, says Reuters.
President Obama is faced with two terrible choices in Iraq, writes Meghan L. O'Sullivan over at Politico:
Obama can either pursue an incremental, conditional approach that will satisfy his desire to put maximum pressure on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and minimize America’s return to Iraq—but will likely fail to address the severity of the crisis. Or Obama can set aside his understandable caution and provide more robust military assistance before he can be confident of getting the political changes that are needed to turn any Iraqi government military gains into strategic successes.
Richard Barrett, former head of counterterrorism at the MI6 intelligence agency, told the BBC that as many as 300 radicalized Britons may have already returned to Britain after fighting in Syria and Iraq.
Afghanistan's election crisis continues. The party of presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, former leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, broadcast audio on Sunday that purportedly showed that the head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) Secretariat had ordered officials in several provinces to stuff ballot boxes, reports Reuters. The country's chief electoral officer has resigned over allegations of fraud in the presidential run-off, says the AP by way of ABC.
On Sunday, after a 90-minute meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Obama administration was prepared to reaffirm a U.S. partnership with Egypt. He said that the U.S. would soon restore $650 million in aid that it had withheld after Gen. Sisi deposed his predecessor in a military coup. Here is the New York Times. While there, Secretary Kerry also hinted that the U.S. would be open to a new Iraqi leader.
But in what the Times is calling a "potentially embarrassing turn for the Obama administration," the next day, an Egyptian court sentenced three imprisoned Al Jazeera journalists to years behind bars on charges of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood and reporting false news. Two other Al Jazeera journalists tried in absentia were sentenced to ten years in prison; according to Al Jazeera English managing director Al Anstey, the decision defied "logic, sense, and any semblance of justice." An Egyptian court also handed down a mass death sentence on Saturday for the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual leader Mohammed Badie and more than 180 others, writes the Wall Street Journal.
This weekend, the Economist published a short piece on Ahmed Abu Khattala, reviewing the Republican response to the Libyan's capture.
It has been more than ten days since three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped from the West Bank; in the ensuing crackdown, Israeli troops have killed four Palestinians, including a 15-year-old. The Times reports. The Guardian noted yesterday that the Israeli military also struck Syrian army targets over the weekend in retaliation for the killing of an Israeli teenager in an attack on an Israeli defense contractor's vehicle.
At least 47 large military drones have crashed in the U.S. during test or training flights from 2001 to 2013. See the exclusive findings from the Washington Post's yearlong investigation here.
Is President Putin secretly funding efforts to fight fracking---not because he cares about the environment, but because he wants to keep Europe dependent on Russian gas? That's the charge being levied by NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, notes Foreign Policy.
Human Rights Watch has just released a report on non-state armed groups' use of children as young as 10 to participate in combat operations in Syria. Here's the Al Jazeera coverage.
A 22-year-old South Korean soldier killed five of his fellow soldiers near the DMZ this weekend, before turning the gun on himself in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. CNN has more.
Reuters notes that on Sunday, the U.S. missile defense system successfully hit a simulated enemy missile over the Pacific, after failing five of eight previous tests, including two in 2010.
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Jane Chong is former deputy managing editor of Lawfare. She served as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and is a graduate of Yale Law School and Duke University.
