The expected shakeup in US military leadership appears to be ready, with AP making one of the tersest and shortest news agency reports in some time, with an announcement shortly after noon Swiss time that its sources say Robert Petraeus will become head of the CIA intelligence agency and CIA director Leon Panetta is being named secretary of defense. The news was elaborated slightly an hour later, with the addition of the names of Lt. Gen. John Allen, to oversee the war in Afghanistan that Petraeus has headed and Ryan Crocker, a diplomat, as US ambassador to Afghanistan. ABC News in the US confirms that its sources have provided the same information.
The Pentagon and White House are so far mum on the disclosures. AP says the announcements are expected to be made Thursday 28 April.
The names come as no surprise, having been mentioned by US media for the past three weeks for the posts, but without a clear sense of when the shuffle would occur.
US refuses to rule out any options, Britain says military intervention not an option
Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s stranglehold on power appeared to be loosening even as he told television audiences that his people love him, in interviews he granted 28 February to international media. The number of refugees fleeing the country now includes thousands from some of the world’s poorest nations, who have had trouble getting out of Libya.
Qaddafi’s Ukrainian nurse, who has worked for him for several years, reportedly says she is leaving the country, according to the Wall St Journal: “Galyna Kolotnytska, described in a diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks as a “voluptuous blond” who “travel[s] everywhere” with Col. Gadhafi, called her family in Kiev on Friday to say she intends to return to Ukraine, her daughter told daily Segodnya.”
US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice called Qaddafi’s remarks that his government has not used force against his people “delusional”.
Rebels holding the eastern oil city of Zawiya reportedly repelled government troops in overnight fighting, with many of the government forces joining the rebellion.
The US Treasury froze assets held by Qaddafi and his family Friday 25 February, which the Wall Street Journal estimates to be $30 billion, the largest single seizure in US history.
The Pentagon has ordered warships and planes to re-position to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya and the delivery of humanitarian aid, should it be necessary. European leaders are reviewing all options, but Britain’s David Cameron says military force is not an option.
Links to other sites: Financial Times (registration required), Guardian, US Treasury asset freeze announcement, Wall Street Journal
The US Department of Defense has spent $250,0000 to buy the entire first run of 10,000 copies of Operation Dark Heart, a book by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, and pulped them. The book published 24 September is an account of Shaffer’s experience as a “black ops” team leader in Afghanistan during the Bush administration. The Pentagon fears that too much sensitive information may be revealed.
The book recounts the experiences of Shaffer as a Defense Intelligence Agency operative combatting the Taliban in their hideouts in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas in the early stages of the war in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon asked for edits for the second edition of the book, which the publisher Thomas Dunne Books says have been made.
Links to other sites: Daily Mail, DBKP, Fox News,
US officials have told the New York Times that Afghanistan contains huge reserves of several minerals, including iron, copper, cobalt, gold and “critical industrial metals like lithium”. The US Geological Survey began carrying out studies in 2006, working with the US military and using old Russian maps and have found evidence of enough veins to make Afghanistan, which now has an annual GDP of $12 billion, a wealthy nation, potentially one of the world’s largest mining centres. The lengthy article reviews the good that could come from the economy getting a boost, but also the potential problems that could arise from the discoveries, such as worse corruption in a country already troubled by it and increased tension if “resources-hungry” China makes a bid to obtain the minerals.
A man walked up to two police officers guarding the Pentagon, US military headquarters in Washington, DC, and “without emotion”, according to the head of the Pentagon police, started shooting them. The officers, who have non-life-threatening graze injuries, returned fire and critically shot the man, John Patrick Bedell, who later died at a nearby hospital. Several shots were fired at 18:40 local time, at the busy subway entrance that leads to the large Pentagon complex. Bedell, 36, grew up in the area and had been a graduate student in physics at San Jose University in California, according to the Washington Post.
The newspaper notes that “The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon – the U.S. capital’s ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 – came four months after a deadly attack on the Army’s Fort Hood, Texas, base allegedly by a US Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings. In the immediate aftermath Thursday, investigators did not think terrorism was involved but were not ruling that out and did not discuss possible motives.
Links to other sites: CNN, Washington Post
Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators Tuesday 2 February that the US should end its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that obliges gay soldiers to keep their sexual preferences to themselves. “”No matter how I look at the issue I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.” The policy began in 1993 but the Pentagon says it will now review it.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, NPR, MSNBC
The Pentagon in the US is considering banning all smoking by soldiers, including those in battle, and stopping sales of cigarettes at military bases. A study done for the Pentagon is recommending the ban saying that in the short term it harms battle readiness and in the long term the cost to the health of soldiers is high, which also creates a financial burden for the government. CNN
A bomb explosion in Mredi market, a popular market for birds in Sadr City, a poor Shia district in eastern Baghdad, Iraq killed over 70 people and wounded more than 150 early evening 24 June, just days before US military forces are to withdraw from city centres around Iraq. It was the worst such bombing to date in 2009. The bomb was hidden under vegetables on a motorcycle-driven cart, witnesses said. The US signed an agreement with the Iraqi government last year under which all US offensive forces are to withdraw from cities and towns by 30 June, leaving internal security to Iraqi forces. The Pentagon said yesterday it expected more violence in the run-up to its withdrawal but that it would not alter its plans. BBC, CNN, Reuters
The US Pentagon’s multiple cyber commands will be unified under one roof after Robert Gates, secretary of defense, wrote a memo 23 June that creates the new office, which will employ several hundred people, probably in Maryland, near Washington DC. The current head of the US National Security Agency (NSA), Lt Gen Keith Alexander, has been recommended by Gates to head the new Cyber Command to defend the Pentagon’s 15,000 computer systems and 7 million computers which are subjected to millions of attacks every day, from nuisance hacking to cyberspying, Pentagon officials have said.
Pentagon spokesperson Bryan Whitman was asked by Reuters if the new command would also develop offensive capabilities, but he replied only that “This command is going to focus on the protection and operation of DoD’s (Department of Defense) networks.” Federal News Radio in Washington notes, however, that “Pentagon officials have stressed in recent weeks that the cyber command will not infringe on the Department of Homeland Security, which is the lead agency for other federal digital systems.”
The Pentagon funded the creation of the Internet in the 1960s in order to develop a communications system that would be impervious to the electromagnetic pulses of a nuclear bomb. Computerworld, NYT, Wall Street Journal
