Targeting Terrorists by Richard A. Clarke

Not since 1975 when the Church Commission investigated Nixon-era abuses in intelligence agencies, have such unusual things occurred in the world of Washington intelligence agencies as in these past few weeks. The Democratic House of Representatives threatened to pass an intelligence authorization bill which the Democratic White House has promised to veto. The former Democratic congressman who now heads the Central Intelligence Agency has been having a public disagreement with leading House Democrats about whether the CIA lies to Congress. There is a controversy about a secret CIA program to do something most Americans presumably want the CIA to do, to kill al Qaeda terrorists. The attorney general is rumored to be looking for a special prosecutor to investigate CIA interrogators, even though the president seemed to have earlier told CIA employees that there would be no prosecutions about alleged torture. Former CIA employees are publicly trotting out the claim that all of this attention “hurts the Agency’s morale” and that damage could result in another successful terrorist attack on the U.S. Even seasoned Washington policy wonks are finding it hard to navigate their way through all of those stories and make some sense of what has been going on.

Unless we understand what all of this drama is really about, we will not get the delicate balance right between the needs of a democracy and the rule of law on one side and the requirements of a secret intelligence service on the other. And this democracy needs a functioning secret intelligence service to protect it against the current genres of threat.

All of this recent Washington activity about intelligence is perhaps best understood as three distinct, but related stories playing out against a backdrop of suspicion about what the previous administration may have done in reaction to the 9-11 attacks. It is also part of a 60-year historical pattern of manic swings of opinion in Washington about the efficacy of covert action.

The first story should probably have been headlined “House Democrats finally realize intelligence oversight system is broken.” Most of the time the CIA collects and analyzes information, but on rare occasions it goes beyond reporting and tries to change things in the world by carrying out activity in secret, activity which it does not want attributed to the United States. For three decades laws have required the president to inform key Congressional leaders before the CIA undertook such “covert actions.” For most of those three decades few of the Congressional leaders eligible to be briefed took that responsibility very seriously. Often they would grudgingly make time to meet with someone from the CIA, ask a few questions, and go on their way. That Congressional disinterest generally suited the CIA, which did not really want any serious supervision of covert action by anyone outside of the Agency, least of all by members of Congress. Had a Congressional leader really wanted the oversight responsibility for covert action, the notification system would have made that almost impossible.

Here is how that system works for sensitive programs: Eight Congressional leaders get calls from the CIA director’s office, asking for an immediate appointment to brief on a “sensitive matter.” The CIA does not say what the subject of the briefing is, so there is no way the congressmen can get ready for the meeting. The briefing usually occurs with only one congressman in the meeting at a time. None of the expert staffers from Congress can come to the meeting, or even know after the fact what was discussed. If the congressmen find the proposed covert action troubling, there is little they can do but express that opinion orally in the meeting. Because the subject is highly classified, the congressmen cannot easily send a letter to the president dissenting.

In short, the oversight of covert activity was more of a ritual than a reality. House Democrats seemed finally to understand that this month in the wake of confusion about what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was or was not told several years ago about waterboarding. They, therefore, proposed an amendment to significantly broaden who in Congress could be told about covert action. The CIA, reasoning that if more people knew about a proposed covert action the chances of a program leaking to the media would increase, persuaded the White House to issue a rare veto threat if the amendment passed. What is unusual is that the White House staff did not succeed in working out a compromise behind closed doors and avoiding the public spectacle of warring Democrats.

The second intelligence-related story last week involved a several-year-old secret program which CIA Director Leon Panetta allegedly learned about in late June. When Mr. Panetta asked if Congress had been briefed, he reportedly was told that former Vice President Dick Cheney had blocked such notification. Mr. Panetta is said to have then cancelled the program and immediately informed the Congressional intelligence committees. Rather than being pleased by such quick action, the House Democrats used this diligence by Mr. Panetta as an example of how the oversight system does not work and why their amendment to expand the notification process should be passed. CIA proponents used the story as an example of how highly classified programs get leaked if you tell Congress about them. The initial news stories did not, however, reveal what the canceled program had been. Only after several days of investigation did the Wall Street Journal report that the hush-hush effort, which provoked Mr. Panetta’s wrath, was a program to kill al Qaeda terrorists. Most Americans might not think it was a big secret that CIA agents were trying to kill al Qaeda members, but in the weird world of Washington intelligence, it was.

For over a decade, in three different presidencies, there has been an ongoing debate about whether and how to kill al Qaeda terrorists and what part of the U.S. government should have the mission. The 9-11 Commission report details how President Clinton decided that killing Osama bin Laden and his supporters was not a violation of the ban on assassinations, how he authorized attacks, and how the CIA failed successfully to use that authority. Several media accounts this week indicate that after 9-11, the CIA put together a more serious effort to take out terrorists, but that the program was variously activated, deactivated, and put on hold by the four directors the CIA has had since 9-11. Senior CIA officers have been reluctant for years to create hit squads, fearing that a wave of CIA assassinations of terrorists would provoke a major al Qaeda retaliation against U.S. intelligence officers worldwide. They have also, with good reason, doubted the ability of their own agency to successfully kill the right people and then escape. Some have pointed to the Israeli terrorist targeting effort as evidence that such killings can be counter-productive, providing the terrorist groups with propaganda victories. Israeli experts are themselves split on the effectiveness of their killings, but it does seem likely that it has made it harder for terrorist leaders to operate.

It is puzzling that some people object to U.S. personnel killing terrorists with sniper rifles or car bombs, but have little apparent problem with CIA and Department of Defense personnel tracking down specific terrorist leaders with Predator drones and then killing those leaders with the unmanned aircraft’s Hellfire missiles. The terrorist groups probably see little difference in how we choose to kill their leaders. The dramatically increased Predator strikes that began last October have reportedly killed much of the leadership of the Taliban, al Qaeda, and related groups operating near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Without those attacks, the situation in that region would undoubtedly have become much worse. One unnamed administration intelligence official recently told a reporter that the Predator hits on terrorist leaders are “the only game in town” because of the inability of the CIA to come up with any other way of effectively combating terrorists along the border. Thus, the real reason some in U.S. intelligence may not want attention given to the issue of hit squads against terrorists may be their embarrassment that for both bureaucratic reasons and lack of capability, the CIA has been unable and often unwilling to attack terrorist leaders except from the air. The two top leaders of al Qaeda have now been fair game for the CIA for a decade.

The third of the recent CIA-related stories was about the possibility that Attorney General Eric Holder may appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether some CIA interrogators broke the law by the way in which they used waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Mr. Holder is said to have been sickened by the description of what some CIA personnel may have done, as detailed in a 2004 report by CIA Inspector General John Helgerson. Most people thought the president had put the prospect of such an investigation to rest when he went to CIA headquarters and promised the staff that there would be no prosecutions. Examined carefully, however, what the president said was no one would be charged for carrying out what were, at the time, the procedures approved by President Bush and his Justice Department. The Helgerson Report apparently says some CIA personnel went well beyond even what the Bush guidelines permitted. The report is also alleged to say that little of real intelligence value was gained by the torture.

If a special prosecutor investigates, he may have to decide whether to accept the defense of “I was only following orders.” The United States rejected that defense at Nuremberg. If it rejects it again, low-level CIA staff and contractors might be tried. Or, they might be offered a way out if they detail whose orders they were following. There is, therefore, at least some potential for political-level officials being tried. The distracting and divisive frenzy that would ensue is probably one of the last things the Obama White House wishes to see. Nonetheless, as the history of special prosecutors shows, once launched, such investigators cannot be easily recalled or redirected.

It is this prospect of some CIA personnel being investigated, as well as the moves to expand Congressional oversight, that have provoked several former CIA staff and unnamed current intelligence officers to complain to the media that they are on the verge of damaging the Agency’s morale. If that morale is decreased, they warn, some intelligence officers will quit, others will become even more risk averse, and the probability of another 9-11 like attack will increase. Of course, if people keep telling CIA employees that their morale should be poor, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

One thing that these recent stories have in common is that they occur in an atmosphere in Washington in which many believe that after 9-11 the previous administration, guided by the former Vice President, ignored laws, abused power, illegally hid their activities and engaged in excesses that, in the end, were counter-productive. Backers of the former Administration, of course, contend their actions were not counter-productive and, they claim, prevented attacks. In the absence of some Commission or Group of Wise People creating the definitive account of what did and did not happen, those suspicions stand and, it seems, grow. To date, however, President Obama and former Vice President Cheney are in agreement that such a truth commission would be a bad idea because it might become a diverting, dividing, and partisan circus. Others fear that it would set a precedent that would allow new administrations to criminalize the acts of their predecessors. Those objections could be addressed by a truly bipartisan panel of respected statesmen, if there still are people who can rise above partisan politics. The Commission would also need both subpoena and immunity powers to preclude criminal charges. Until we have such a Commission, these issues will linger and make it difficult for policy makers, legislators, and intelligence officers to know where the boundaries are.

Overarching all of this controversy is whether, when, and how the United States should engage in covert action. One former CIA director once told me that “CIA should do intelligence collection and analysis, not covert actions. Covert actions almost never work and usually get the Agency in trouble.” Can a nation with as many interests and enemies as we have be safe with no covert action capability? There have repeatedly been periods since World War II, when White House policy makers saw a threat so concerning that they wanted the CIA to use lethal force secretly against an enemy (the Viet Cong, the Sandanistas, al Qaeda). The Agency has often responded in a way that involved excesses, which eventually triggered investigations and recriminations. The ensuing public review often becomes partisan and reflects on the entirety of CIA. The Agency then enters into a period when it dismantles much of its covert action capability and loses its institutional memory. Then time passes, another threat emerges and the wheel is reinvented. Often that wheel is not round.

Since well over 90% of the CIA’s personnel are not engaged in covert action, but are doing the important work of intelligence collection and analysis, this cycle of contentiousness suggests that perhaps covert action should be done by someone else. We need a professional intelligence gathering and analysis organization and it would be better if that agency were not tied to, prejudiced by, and often tainted with a connection to covert action. If we are capable as a nation of learning from history, we should also take this opportunity to decide that covert operations should be done rarely, and then only by a special component of the military and perhaps by a small, separate, civilian agency under the joint supervision of a group of experienced administration and bi-partisan Congressional overseers. Democracy and the rule of law are not inherently incompatible with self defense involving a secret intelligence service. Its just that the way we do it now does not work well.

Iran: Nuclear Chief's Resignation Sign of Division within Ruling Elite by Manal Lutfi

One day before the anticipated gathering of the reform movement leaders in Iran Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, chairman of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency -- the pragmatist politician who is close to Mousavi and Hashemi-Rafsanjani and considered the "heart" of the Iranian nuclear program where he had been in charge since 1997 - had resigned. Though the resignation letter did not mention the reasons for his decision, he is known for his very close relations with the reformist movement's symbols and voted for Hashemi-Rafsanjani during the 2005 presidential election against Ahmadinejad. He also supported Mousavi in the recent election against Ahmadinejad.

An informed Iranian source told Asharq Al-Awsat that Aghazadeh's resignation "is the first sign of the magnitude of difficulties that Ahmadinejad will face to form his government. Many politicians and officials who rejected the election outcome do not want to work with his government and he might find himself forced to limit his government to those who are very close to him."

Another Iranian source told Asharq Al-Awsat that Aghazadeh is a strong supporter of Mousavi and backed him in the election and his resignation reflects the division inside the ruling elite. It added: "Aghazadeh was not an ordinary minister or official. His resignation is a big loss for the ruling establishment. I do not think the leader, Khamenei, is very happy with this news." The Iranian source also expected the formation of the Iranian government to be a difficult process, saying there are strong speculations that Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki would resign during the coming days or ask Ahmadinejad not to include his name in the new government formation. It added that "no one is expecting Mottaki to remain in the new government. He does not want to remain in it and expressed this before in various ways." The Iranian source did not rule out the possibility that Aghazadeh's resignation was linked to the reformists' plans not to support Ahmadinejad's government or participate in it in preparation for challenging it legally in parliament and bringing it down later on.

What Went Wrong in Iran? by Ataollah Mohajerani

Ataollah Mohajerani is an Iranian historian, politician, journalist, and author. He was Mohammad Khatami first Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance of Iran. He also served as Speaker of the Cabinet. He later became the president of the Iranian International Centre for Dialogue among Civilizations.

What went wrong in Iran? What is the main reason behind the current crisis in Iran? It seems that Iran is now divided into two, between the government and the people. It is also clear that any government is capable of gathering a crowd of people in order to show that it has popular support. I believe that it will be impossible to uncover the root cause behind the crisis in Iran without first examining the evolution of the theory of the Wilayat Al Faqih. In the following article I intend to examine the evolution and changes seen in this theory.

Sheikh Mahmud Shabistari's famous collection of poems, Gulshan-i-Raz [The Gardens of Secrets] is the bible of Persian mysticism. In it Shabistari wrote the following on the evolution of language:

"Since the language of each is according to his degree of progress,
They are hard to be understood of the people.
He who is perplexed as to these mysteries
Is bound to learn their meaning"

It seems to me that the evolution of language is based upon the evolution of theory, and this in turn is based upon the evolution of one's views as an intellectual, philosopher, or politician.

We have a rich literature that deals with the evolution of ideas and theories based upon our Islamic heritage. For instance, in the Holy Quran, there is the extremely important verse that serves as an explanation of the behavior of God Almighty.

"All that are in the heavens and the earth entreat Him. Every day in (new) Splendour doth He (shine)!" [Al-Rahman, Verse 29].

The term "day" in this instance does not have the definition that we are used to. In his brilliant Quranic interpretation "Tafsir Al-Nukat Wal Ayoon" Imam al-Mawadi wrote;

"Ibn Al Bahr narrated: There are two epochs which are known as days. One of these is all the days of worldly existence. The other is the Day of Judgment. During the days of worldly existence we will experience.trials and tribulations, whilst on the Day of Judgment we will face the [final] reckoning and be rewarded or punished.

The second meaning of this verse is God verifying his exercise of power everyday during the days of worldly existence.

There are two opinions that explain this;

Firstly, this could mean the prophets that were sent for every age and time, and the power that is exercised is the message brought by each prophet for that time. In this case the term day references an "age" or "epoch."

The second opinion is that God's actions are felt every single day [with day signifying a 24-hour period]."

Based upon the Old Testament, God created the world in six days. However this was before God created the Sun and the Earth. How can there be a "day" without a night?

I remember in the summer of 1980 the first Assembly of Experts was preparing the Constitutional law for referendum. An important discussion took place between Dr. Beheshti and Ayatollah Montazeri. Back then, Montazeri was Speaker of the Assembly and Beheshti was serving as his deputy. When Ayatollah Montazeri began to explain his view on his role and power, Dr. Beheshti informed him "During the last session your view was different."

Ayatollah Montazeri promptly replied "Every day I shine in new splendor."

Dr. Beheshti replied "Not just everyday, every hour you shine in new splendor."

There is another example of this; Jalaluddin Rumi famously wrote "The Sufi is the son of time." This is a view that is not only present in Islamic mysticism, but also in other schools of thought and literature.

Luigi Pirandello (28 June 1967 - 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934. One of his books entitled "Uno, Nusseuno e Centomila" (One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand) deals with this issue. This novel was Pirandello's last and perhaps greatest work. In this novel he deals with some of the issues of the human condition, and concentrated particularly on the idea that human beings are predisposed to change their mind when confronting a new situation. It therefore seems to me that Karl Popper's theory of critical rationalism has its roots in Pirandello's work.

To cut a long story short, Ayatollah Shabistari, Rumi, Pirandello, and Popper share some common ground [with regards to their view on change and evolution]. It is therefore clear that intellectuals, philosophers, and even politicians, change their minds all the time.

It is over thirty years since the Iranian Revolution, and the crucial question facing Iranian society at this current political, economic, and social crossroads is with regards to the role of the Supreme Leader of Iran and the concept of the Wilayat Al Faqih from which he derives his power.

Let us concentrate on this issue, and particularly on the question; Did the theory of the Wilayat Al Faqih change over time under Grand Ayatollah Khomeini?

In my opinion, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, who was a mystic, a poet, and a Jurist, changed his thinking with regards to this theory. Let us first look at the theory of the Wilayat Al Faqih, and then we will discuss the changes that took place between 1970 and 1988.

We will divide the evolution in the theory of the Wilayat Al Faqih into three parts. One can think of these as the roots, the trunk, and the fruit of the Wilayat Al Faqih.

Najaf period, 1964 - 1978

Khomeini's book "Hokmut-e Islami: Wilayat al-Faqih" [Islamic Government; Guardian of the Jurists] is a compendium of thirteen speeches delivered by Khomeini during his stay in Najaf between 21 January and 8 February 1970. The theory that this book discussed went on to become the cornerstone of the Islamic Republic of Iran and something which the country's constitution is based upon.

In the first chapter of the book, Khomeini says "The subject of the government of the jurist (Wilayat Al Faqih) provides us with the opportunity to discuss certain related matters and questions. The governance of the faqih is a subject that in itself elicits immediate assent and has little need of demonstration, for anyone who has some general awareness of the beliefs and ordinances of Islam will unhesitatingly give his assent to the principle of the governance of the faqih as soon as he encounters it; he will recognize it as necessary and self-evident."

Based upon this, it is clear that Ayatollah Khomeini believed the Wilayat Al Faqih theory to be applicable upon every Muslim. It is also equally clear to me that Ayatollah Khomeini mixed four separate genres in coming up with this theory, namely; the mystical, the philosophical, the juristic, and the political.

As you may or may not know, the term "Wali" is an extremely complex one, and conveys several multifaceted meanings. It is a word derived from the Arabic term "Wilaya" which means to have jurisdiction or guardianship over something. However technically "Wilaya" simply means rule or power although in another sense of the word, it could also mean friendship or loyalty. Ayatollah Khomeini used this term to refer to the same power traditionally held by the Prophet and the Twelve Infallible Imams of the Shiite sect.

In the Hokmut-e Islami, Khomeini writes "If a worthy individual possessing these two qualities arises and establishes a government, he will posses the same authority as the Most Noble Messenger (pbuh) in the administration of society, and it will be the duty of all people to obey him.

The idea that the governmental power of the Most Noble Messenger (pbuh) were greater than those of the Commander of the Faithful or that those of the Commander of the Faithful were greater than those of the faqih is false and erroneous. Naturally, the virtues of the Most Noble Messenger (pbuh) were greater than those of the rest of mankind, and after him, the Commander of the Faithful was the most virtuous person in the world. But superiority with respect to spiritual virtues does not confer increased governmental powers. God has conferred upon government in the present age the same powers and authority that were held by the Most Noble Messenger and the Imams (pbuh), with respect to equipping and mobilizing armies, appointing governors and officials, and levying taxes and expending them for the welfare of the Muslims. Now, however, it is no longer a question of a particular person; government devolves instead upon one who possesses the qualities of knowledge and justice.

When we say that after the Occultation, the just faqih has the same authority that the Most Noble Messenger and the Imams had, do not imagine that the status of the faqih is identical to that of the Imāms and the Prophet. For here we are not speaking of status, but rather of function. By "authority" we mean government, the administration of the country, and the implementation of the sacred laws of the Shariaa. These constitute a serious, difficult duty but do not earn anyone extraordinary status or raise him above the level of common humanity. In other words, authority here has the meaning of government, administration, and execution of law; contrary to what many people believe, it is not a privilege, but a grave responsibility."

During a meeting with some families of martyrs in 1978, Khomeini also said "One of the duties of a jurist is, if a man treats his wife wrongly, to first advise him, and then punish him, and then - if he sees that it will not get better - perform the divorce. You agree that this is the Wilayat Al Faqih. Wilayat Al Faqih is a gift to the Muslims; a gift given by Allah." [Sahifah Nur, v 10, p 87-88].

Najaf and Qom, 1978 -79

Since the first demonstrations broke out in Qom and until the eventual victory of the Islamic Revolution and the approval of the Constitution by the Assembly of Experts, Ayatollah Khomeini did not mention the concept of the Wilayat Al Faqih. It was clear that Khomeini was the undisputed leader of the Islamic Revolution, and so in other words, this theory was already being practiced on the ground. However Khomeini did not make reference to the Wilayat Al Faqih, and nor did any of his close aides, such as Ayatollah [Hossein Ali] Montazeri, Ayatollah [Morteza] Mothari, Ayatollah [Dr. Mohamed] Beheshti, as well as Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Ayatollah Khamenei. As a result of this, the last Prime Minister to serve under the Shah, Shapour Bakhtiar described Islamic government as an absolute unknown category.

It seems to me that Ayatollah Khomeini and his close circle of confidants who initiated the revolution were very clever as they knew that publicizing the theory of the Wilayat Al Faqih would not have been appropriate during that time. Jalal Farsi, a famous radical cleric gave an interview to the Abrar newspaper in which he said that Ayatollah Khomeini cheated the West. Khomeini's objective was always the Wilayat Al Faqih, even when he pretended to be concerned with democracy and freedom and defending the republic.

This is a very important conclusion as Farsi was responsible for editing Ayatollah Khomeini's speeches about the Wilayat Al Faqih in 1970 which were later published in the "Hokmut-I Islami: Wilayat Al Faqih". Controversy surrounds this book, especially over how much of this book's success is due to its persuasive power, and how much is as a result of the political skill of its author.

Many observers of the Iranian Revolution maintain that while the book may have been distributed to Khomeini's core supporters in Iran, both he and his aides were very careful not to publicize the concept of the Wilayat Al Faqih as they were well aware that secular and moderate Islamic groups that were crucial to the revolution's success would be irreconcilably opposed to a theocracy. Only after Khomeini's supporters consolidated their grip on power did the Wilayat Al Faqih concept become known to the general public, and it was later written into the country's Islamic constitution. Amazingly, in the original first draft of the constitution prepared by Dr. Hassan Habibi no mention whatsoever is made of the Wilayat Al Faqih.

Third period, 1980 - 88

During the first decade following the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, now Supreme Leader of Iran, changed his attitude on a number of important issues. On one hand, Ayatollah changed his opinion about music and cinema; however he also put forward a very important idea, namely allowing a two-third majority of parliament to ratify laws that contravene the constitution and Shariaa law. After Khomeini's death, one word was used to describe the Wilayat Al Faqih, and that is absolutism. This was the beginning of a new story in Iran and the last presidential elections and the crisis that the country is currently facing are the fruits of this.

And If Iran Doesn't Want To Talk? by Michael Singh

Six weeks before Iran's descent into electoral chaos, the hardline Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami rebuked the United States in his Friday sermon, stating, "You do not want talks!"

Ayatollah Khatami (no relation to former president Mohammad Khatami) is clearly not a keen observer of the Washington scene. Given the persistence of American efforts to engage the Iranian regime in dialogue over the last 30 years, and the resilience of the Obama administration's own commitment to engagement, the one constant in American policy toward Iran seems to be that we do indeed want talks.

Hence, as the violence has subsided, attention has turned to whether President Obama still intends to talk to Iran, and if so how.

But this question misses the point. It is a bit like me wondering whether I should invite Angelina Jolie over for dinner: The question isn't really whether I should ask, but how on earth I would get her show up. When it comes to Iran, the question isn't so much whether to engage, but how to get Iran's leaders to want to engage earnestly with us.

While in the past the United States pursued engagement intermittently, in recent years the effort has gained new urgency as Iran has neared the nuclear threshold. It's worth remembering why the Iranian regime wants the bomb, despite all the trouble involved in getting one: Not primarily for prestige, and not primarily to achieve a balance of power with potential foes. Iran wants a nuclear weapon because the regime is insecure to the point of paranoia.

Understanding this insecurity helps to explain many of the regime's actions. Only a jittery regime would so transparently and clumsily rig an election contested only by candidates it had handpicked. And any opening to the U.S. is a threat, not a prize, to a regime that thrives on closure and whose ideology rests on anti-Americanism.

Also evident in the recent violence in Iran, however, was the inescapable fact that neither the United States nor any of its allies can provide the regime with meaningful "security guarantees," which are so often proffered as the key to unlocking a grand bargain with Tehran. No U.S. president would, or for that matter could, protect the regime against the greatest threat to its continued prosperity -- popular resentment.

If we cannot alleviate the pressure on the regime as a means to induce them to accept our offer to negotiate, the only path that remains is to add to that pressure. The free world should fully and speedily respond to Iranian dissidents' calls for support, but we should not aspire to supplant or direct their activities.

There are other means of pressure that are within our control, such as economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation targeted at regime heavyweights. These efforts have recently slowed both as a result of the sequential, engagement-first approach taken by President Obama as well as the dwindling enthusiasm of partners such as Russia and China.

The present crisis provides an opportunity to revive the latter by channeling international disgust with the regime's abuses into concerted action, and suggests a need to revisit the former. While engagement need not be abandoned, it should be pursued in parallel with pressure. The regime must come to see the president's outreach not merely as an invitation, but as an off-ramp from a road that leads to escalating penalties.

The Iranian regime has demonstrated that it is in no mood for compromise, and not particularly eager to win the world's regard. So serious U.S.-Iran engagement is more likely to be the product of a fundamental reorientation by Iran's leaders than to produce one.

The Rise of Google: Beating Yahoo at Its Own Game by Tom Hormby

Before 1995, search engines relied on databases of textual keywords to find relevant results. Whenever a user entered a search term, search engines such as AltaVista and Lycos would compare the search term to their databases of terms. The pages that had text most similar to the search term were considered to be more relevant and were featured higher in the list of search results.

Excite, a popular search engine in 1996.

Unfortunately, this automated process did not always return the logical results. For instance, when searching for "Microsoft", pages for retailers selling Microsoft products might be featured before the Microsoft corporate homepage because a single page might list dozens of Microsoft products.

By 1997, students at Stanford had discovered a better approach to Web search called Google. Google delivered unusually relevant results compared to the existing search engines. Not only did Google offer superior results, it lacked the growing clutter found on the popular search portals of the time.

Larry Page at Stanford

Despite its rapid ascent to search engine supremacy, the technology behind Google was not envisioned as a search engine - or even as a commercial product. Instead, it was the product of Stanford graduate student Larry Page's research.

Page, the son of a computer scientist from Lansing Michigan, came to Stanford in 1995 at age 22 after graduating from the University of Michigan. Page selected Terry Winograd as his academic advisor but did not have a clear idea what he wanted to write about in his dissertation, though he was intrigued by the mathematical implications of the World Wide Web.

At a time when Stanford graduates were launching lucrative startups all over Silicon Valley, Page was not interested in finding potential commercial applications for his work. The Web could easily lend itself to being diagrammed through nodes and branches. Such a graphical representation shows the interconnectedness of websites and how users move from site to site.

Page, along with many other Stanford researchers, decided to take advantage of the Digital Library Initiative (DLI) of the National Science Foundation, whose mission was to create a universal library of data including personal information, the information found in conventional libraries, and information published by scientific researchers. Archiving and making this data accessible was an important part of the project, and Page used some of this funding in his research (much of which resulted in published papers in peer-reviewed journals). Focusing on projects related to the Web and search, the DLI would ultimately distribute $4.3 million to different research initiatives and was largely responsible for paying for much of the research behind Google.

Patterns and Relevance

Page decided to create an algorithm to evaluate the relevance of certain pages by analyzing the patterns formed by hyperlinks. As described earlier, search engines of the time determined relevancy by looking at the text of a website, or, in Yahoo's case, by employing human editors to categorize and describe each page. Instead of using text or human-beings, Page would calculate the relevancy (a numerical value) of a page based on links embedded in its HTML and by outside links to the page.

Links originating on the website being examined are easy to gather, a spider (a piece of software that crawls the Internet looking for data) parses the HTML and can create a database of links. Incoming links are more difficult to capture. Analyzing these links requires a more sophisticated spider. By following link after link after link ad infinitum, a spider is able to work backwards and create a list of links pointing towards each page This process consumes a great deal of both CPU resources and bandwidth, but it provides a more accurate estimate of a site's relevancy, because linking to a website requires both human effort and human judgment.

Page's method of evaluating the relevancy of websites is very similar to how academic writing is evaluated. Authors pay attention to the abstract (the "keywords" of an academic paper) but determine the importance of a paper by finding the number of academic papers that it cites and the number of times it is cited in other papers. Papers that have a breadth of sources and that are cited by other authors are more likely to be useful than papers that are not. Furthermore, articles that are cited and cite more prestigious journals are likely to be even more relevant than a paper that uses only obscure sources.

Page applied this method of evaluating academic writing to his evaluating the relevancy of pages on the Web. This system is intuitive but complicated. Relationships between pages become very elaborate. For example, links from the Yahoo homepage are going to be more authoritative than links from a child's GeoCities page. Page devised a system of assigning numerical values to each page based on the number of links it has and the number of times the page is linked to. This system was called PageRank, named after Page himself.

Enter Sergey Brin

In 1996, Page teamed up with fellow Stanford graduate student Sergey Brin. Page had met Brin during a campus tour, and by all accounts, the two had not hit it off. As the group walked around the Stanford campus and nearby San Francisco, the two computer scientists argued incessantly, even discussing the finer points of urban planning amidst the hills of San Francisco.

Both of Google's cofounders recall the other as being obnoxious, but they stayed in touch. Page recruited Brin to help write the software that would keep track of each page's relevancy, a complex task that could easily overwhelm the network at Stanford if resources were not used efficiently.

Page and Brin's research thrived at Stanford, an institution known for incubating startups. Some of the most famous figures in the field of computer science have been on the faculty or are alumni of the university.

Proof of Concept

At the urging of Page's academic advisor, with whom he had coauthored several papers, a search engine based on PageRank was made available to Stanford students in August of 1996 with both a text index of 24 million pages (like the databases maintained by search engines such as Alta Vista) and databases of the links between these pages. By year's end, the search engine, named BackRub, was receiving 10,000 searches a day.

The initial index of PageRank began from Page's personal website on Stanford's server. Following the handful of links on the bare-bones site, the index swelled to over 28 GB by the time Page and Brin left Stanford, a considerable size for 1996, when storage was still quite expensive.

Another advisor, Rajeev Matwani, famous for his work in the field of databases - and data mining in particular - helped develop the search tools that tapped into the PageRank database.

As the search engine became more popular within Stanford and with the general public, it was renamed Google, a corruption of the name googol given to the number with '1' followed by 100 zeroes. Soon, Google was using so much bandwidth crawling the Internet that it would occasionally overwhelm Stanford's connection. Students and faculty, many of whom were enthusiastic Google users, did not seem to mind, but it was time for the search engine to find a new home.

Incorporation and Independence

After a 15 minute presentation to Sun cofounder and venture capitalist Andy Bechtolsheim, Google received a $100,000 investment. This investment allowed Google to find a new home off campus (appropriately for a new startup, Google's new home was a Silicon Valley garage), but the investment created some practical difficulties for Page and Brin. Google did not yet exist as a legal identity; it was a project being run out of student offices at Stanford's computer science department. As a result, the check was not deposited until September 4, the earliest date that Google could be incorporated.

Now separate from Stanford, Google continued to expand. Page and Brin were both driven to reach profitability as soon as possible and started expanding Google's operations with an eye towards controlling costs.

When Google was still at Stanford, Page and Brin would beg for components from other departments. A CPU was salvaged from the loading dock, and faulty hard drives were rescued from all over campus. Brin wrote a piece of software that made these broken drives usable, important for storing the very large (and ever-growing) databases holding PageRank ratings and text indexes.

This type of scrounging was impossible in the private sector, but Google was still frugal. Instead of buying dedicated servers running expensive software, Google's datacenter ran on Linux and used (literally) homemade rack-mountable servers. Pictures of the server racks from the time looked like rats nests with tangles of cable and components scattered everywhere.

As Google found more outside funding, its datacenter became more professional, but it was always characterized by being efficient, stable, and cheap. Google was also careful to control hiring practices, avoiding piling up costs before it had a chance at becoming profitable.

Google received outside recognition in the December issue of PC Magazine, which hailed Google for having "an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results" and was included in the Top 100 Web Sites of 1999.

Focus on Search

Despite Google's increasing reach, Page and Brin refused to change the core focus on search. Brin, in a later interview, said that "with 100 services, they assumed they would be 100 times as successful. But they learned that not all services are created equal. Finding information is much more important to most people than horoscopes, stock quotes, or a whole range of other things." As a result, Google retained its now-famous user interface consisting of little more than a search box and an early version of the iconic logo.

Traffic to Google's website increased quickly with the publicity. By February of 1999, Google was handling 500,000 searches a day. The growing traffic attracted both venture capitalists and technology partners. Armed with the reputation of Google's original investor, Bechtolsheim (who had backed many other successful startups before), Google was a darling of the top tier venture capitalist firms of Silicon Valley. Both Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital were brought in as new investors for a total of $25 million of new capital, recognition of Google's rapidly increasing valuation.

Improving with Age

On June 26, 2000, Google made two major announcements. First, it had become the largest search engine in the world in terms of pages indexed, beating out much older competitors like Lycos and HotBot. The longer that Google's spiders crawled the Internet, building its index and recalculating PageRank, the better its results. Instead of becoming bloated and unfocused, like many of the other portals, Google was actually becoming better with age.

Google's results had become so accurate and so popular (it was now the second most popular search engine on the Internet, only behind Yahoo) that it was impossible to ignore. Short of writing a new search engine, Google's competition was unable to match Google's prowess at search. This forced some of the most popular portals on the Internet to turn to Google for their search technology, turning over a significant amount of their traffic to a third party and a competitor.

The second announcement: The first major portal to switch from its own search engine to Google was Yahoo. This was a major coup for Google, which had finally found a reliable revenue source (this was before AdWords) and whose homepage would receive even greater traffic because of the publicity of the deal.

Yahoo had compromised. The company could not afford to compete with Google - Google's results were too good, and Yahoo needed a stopgap before it would be able to compete. Yahoo feared that customers would realize how good the Google-powered results were and would just move to Google.com.

Only two years after incorporation, Google had beat Yahoo at its own game.

Why We Endorsed Warrantless Wiretaps by John Yoo

It was instantly clear after Sept. 11, 2001, that our security agencies knew little about al Qaeda's inner workings, could not detect its operatives' entry into the country, nor predict where it might strike next.

Suppose an al Qaeda cell in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles was planning a second attack using small arms, conventional explosives or even biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies faced a near impossible task locating them. Now suppose the National Security Agency (NSA), which collects signals intelligence, threw up a virtual net to intercept all electronic communications leaving and entering Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan headquarters. What better way of detecting follow-up attacks? And what president -- of either political party -- wouldn't immediately order the NSA to start, so as to find and stop the attackers?

Chad Crowe

Evidently, none of the inspectors general of the five leading national security agencies would approve. In a report issued last week, they suggested that President George W. Bush might have violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by ordering the interception of international communications of terrorists without a judicial warrant. The report also suggests that "other" intelligence measures -- still classified only because they are yet to be reported on the front page of the New York Times -- similarly lacked approval from other branches of government.

It is absurd to think that a law like FISA should restrict live military operations against potential attacks on the United States. Congress enacted FISA during the waning days of the Cold War. As the 9/11 Commission found, FISA's wall between domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence proved dysfunctional and contributed to our government's failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

Under FISA, to obtain a judicial wiretapping warrant the government is supposed to show probable cause that a specified target is a foreign agent. Unlike, say, Soviet spies working under diplomatic cover, terrorists are hard to identify. Yet they are vastly more dangerous. Monitoring their likely communications channels is the best way to track and stop them. Building evidence to prove past crimes, as in the civilian criminal system, is entirely beside the point. The best way to find an al Qaeda operative is to look at all email, text and phone traffic between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the U.S. This might involve the filtering of innocent traffic, just as roadblocks and airport screenings do.

In FISA, President Bush and his advisers faced an obsolete law not written with live war with an international terrorist organization in mind. It was to meet such emergency circumstances that the Founders designed the presidency. As John Locke first observed, foreign threats "are much less capable to be directed by antecedent, standing, positive laws." Legislatures are too slow and their members too numerous to respond effectively to unforeseen situations. Only the executive can act to protect the "security and interest of the public."

The power to protect the nation, said Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist, "ought to exist without limitation," because "it is impossible to foresee or define the extent and variety of national exigencies, or the correspondent extent & variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them." To limit the president's constitutional power to protect the nation from foreign threats is simply foolhardy. Hamilton observed that "decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man, in a much more eminent degree, than the proceedings of any greater number." "Energy in the executive," he reiterated, "is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks."

Clearly, the five inspectors general were responding to the media-stoked politics of recrimination, not consulting the long history of American presidents who have lived up to their duty in times of crisis. More than a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized the FBI to intercept any communications, domestic or international, of persons "suspected of subversive activities . . . including suspected spies." FDR did not hesitate long over a 1937 Supreme Court opinion (United States v. Nardone) interpreting federal law to prohibit electronic surveillance without a warrant. It is too late to do anything about it after sabotage, assassinations and 'fifth column' activities are completed," he wrote in a secret 1940 memo authorizing the wire tapping. Indeed, he continued to authorize the surveillance even after Congress rejected proposals from his attorney general, Robert Jackson, to authorize national security wiretapping without a warrant.

Every federal appeals court to address the question has agreed that the president may gather electronic intelligence to protect against foreign threats. This includes the special FISA appeals court, which in a 2002 sealed case upholding the constitutionality of the Patriot Act held that "the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." The court said it took the president's power "for granted," observing that "FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."

Now, according to the inspectors general, those of us in government following the 9/11 terrorist attacks should have assumed that the usual peacetime rules for domestic wiretaps applied and interpreted FISA in a most curious way -- to delete the president's traditional authority as commander in chief to collect signals intelligence in wartime.

The 1952 Supreme Court case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer is the IG's lodestar. In Youngstown, the Court addressed President Harry Truman's effort to seize steel mills shut down by a labor strike during the Korean War. Truman claimed that maintaining production was necessary to supply munitions and material to American troops in combat. Youngstown correctly found that the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the exclusive power to make law concerning labor disputes. It does not, however, address the scope of the president's power involving military strategy or tactics in war. If anything, it supports the proposition that one branch cannot intrude on the clear constitutional turf of another.

Moreover, earlier Justice Departments -- reaching across several administrations from both parties -- had likewise concluded that Youngstown did not limit the president's legitimate conduct of foreign affairs and national security policy. This is why all administrations have refused to accept the 1973 War Powers Resolution and have regularly engaged in military conflicts without congressional approval.

Our Constitution created a presidency whose function is to protect the nation from attack. Gathering intelligence -- including intercepting enemy communications -- has long been a key aspect of war. Our military and intelligence agencies cannot attack or defend the nation unless they know where to aim. As we confront terrorists who remain intent on attacking the U.S., using weapons we cannot anticipate, we should be skeptical of those who insist that we radically change the way this country has always made war.

Infosec As a Form of Asymmetric Warfare by Steven Fox and Information Security Resources

I recently had the privilege of discussing the applicability of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to information security with Amit Yoran, Chairman and CEO of NetWitness.

Mr. Yoran’s experience in military, government, and private information security domains provided valuable insights on the value of this military treatise. Below are highlights from the podcast.

The Art of War

Sun Tzu’s influence is felt across disciplines – business, politics, and sports.

According to Mr. Yoran, “There are an amazing number of parallels between The Art of War and the information security business. In its very basic form – knowing your enemy – knowing how cyber vandals, miscreants, criminals, and even nation-state actors use cyber attack and cyber exploitation for their various objectives.”

In a cyber landscape, we face adversaries that, in some cases, employ advanced techniques in their attacks.

“Cyber security is an asymmetric form of warfare,” says Yoran. The issue of attribution compounds the difficulties associated with cyber security.

According to Mr. Yoran, attackers rely on anti-forensic attack techniques to cover their tracks.

In response, NetWitness’s network monitoring technologies apply “forensic rigor” to the examination of network traffic. This allows the attack target to gather intelligence on the attacker.

Mr. Yoran states that this focus on forensic analysis enables strategic and tactical agility.

Sun Tzu stresses the importance of understanding yourself as well as the enemy. It is important to recognize how your existing assets can be positioned to compete successfully.

Mr. Yoran agrees. “There’s no way for you to flip a switch and have people change their perception, processes, or mode of operation. Nor should they abandon the security infrastructure they’ve invested in. These are necessary. They are also insufficient when dealing with advanced threats.”

However, this awareness allows organizations to invest strategically to enhance their defenses.

The Cyberspace Review

In the July installment of my Art of War column, I detailed Sun Tzu’s perspective on the Obama Administration’s Cyberspace Review document. This article outlines three scenarios where government oversight can hamper the effectiveness of security leaders.

When asked about his perspective, Mr. Yoran conceded that parts of the plan relate to government agencies and are not applicable to the private sector.

He stressed, however, that matters of cyber defense is an all-inclusive responsibility given that the vast majority of these resources are developed, owned, and operated by the private sector.

He feels it is appropriate for the government to set the rules of engagement on the battlefield. “It is illegal – criminal - to use offensive methods in your defensive strategy,” said Yoran.

By doing so, we would be no better than those attacking us.

The Conditions for Victory

Sun Tzu said that “the winning army realizes the conditions for victory before fighting.”

When asked about these conditions, Mr. Yoran replied that the conditions for victory in the cyber battlefield do not align with those of conventional warfare.

“We must accept that, in this venue, the advantage goes to the aggressor,” said Yoran. “Any medium to large scale enterprise is compromised already or significantly vulnerable to compromise.”

Given the recent cyber attack on government web sites, this statement is particularly salient.

“If we are going to win in cyber,” said Yoran, “we must be prepared for our systems to be comprised. We need to be able to operate our businesses, and conduct our government and public services, in a state where we know or we can reasonably assume that parts of our IT infrastructure are comprised.”

This aligns with Sun Tzu’s advice to assume that the enemy will attack and act accordingly.

Cyber Espionage

Sun Tzu offered that foreknowledge of the enemy’s plans is critical to success. The Art of War dedicates a chapter to the different types of spies one can employ for intelligence gathering.

When asked about cyber espionage, Mr. Yoran discussed the magnitude of this threat.

“FBI has estimated that over 100 nations have offensive cyber capability and organizations that have offensive mission around the world,” said Yoran.

He cited a National Research Council policy framework that states that the capabilities of these nations are at least as sophisticated as what we see from cyber criminals.

“Our own national infrastructure is perhaps more vulnerable than most given its size, its age, and the fact that we are adding interoperability technologies and communications on top of an existing platform,” Yoran continued.

Mr. Yoran cited increased coordination between government and private sector practitioners as a positive step in dealing with those vulnerabilities.

Leadership in the Modern Enterprise

Sun Tzu highlights the importance of balanced leadership composed of the following attributes: intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and sternness.

I asked Mr.Yoran to comment on which of these attributes are needed to tackle the current business risks.

“Trustworthiness is always at the core,” said Yoran. “By that I mean trustworthiness in government, in the private sector, and in the relationship between government and the private sector.”

Mr. Yoran also emphasized that trust must be developed between the cyber warriors/defenders and leadership.

This mutual trust has been hampered by the fact that these groups speak different languages. We need to focus on how we can improve those communications with an eye on engendering trust between these communities.

Mr. Yoran cited intelligence as a critical attribute a leader must develop.

“The better we understand our own vulnerabilities, our own exposure, and our own reliance on technology – the better [able] we are to address the business risk and modify our behavior so we are mitigating the risk.”

'Caveats' Neuter NATO Allies by Arnaud de Borchgrave

The outgoing NATO SACEUR, or supreme allied commander Europe, would gladly forgo more NATO troops to fight Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan if allied countries dropped their caveats against their use in combat operations.

Gen. John Craddock, the outgoing supremo, says these caveats "increase the risk to every service member deployed in Afghanistan and bring increased risk to mission success." They are also "a detriment to effective command and control, unity of effort and ... command."

NATO's ISAF, for International Security Assistance Force, has 58,300 troops from 41 countries. But NATO's 28 member-nations provide the core of the force. Most of them labor under operational restrictions, known as caveats, on combat imposed by their governments or parliaments, U.S. soldiers joke that ISAF stands for "I saw Americans Fight."

In addition to American troops who have no combat caveats, British, Canadian and Dutch are the only national contingents under NATO command that are not handcuffed. Gen. Craddock was succeeded by Adm. James Stavridis on July 2, the first Navy man in the four-star slot and 15th supreme commander Europe since Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower first assumed the new command April 2, 1951. Eisenhower moved the date forward by 24 hours as he didn't want any April Fools' Day jokes associated with the defense of Europe against Soviet expansionism.

Now free to speak his own mind, Gen. Craddock let loose with zingers he said were inspired by David Letterman's "Top 10 List." NATO forces in Afghanistan were originally weighed down by 83 caveats against any fighting, he told Washington think tankers. It took 18 months to get member countries to reduce the number to 70. "There are restrictions at every level," he said. "Some governments say their troops cannot take part in any counter-narcotics operations." Gen. Craddock said Taliban gets about $400 million a year from opium poppy crops, which supply 95 percent of the illicit heroin market in Europe, and is still Afghanistan's export mainstay, which represents well over half the country's gross domestic product. The following is Gen. Craddock's rundown:

"(10) NATO Council elders refer to an era that included the threat of widespread, world-ending, nuclear exchange as 'the good old days.' The Cold War -- for NATO those were simple times, exceedingly dangerous but simple. We trained, we exercised, we planned -- but we didn't deploy anywhere, and we did not resource or conduct operations. We did not live in a time when information was literally at the fingertips of citizens around the globe. We didn't have to convince our populaces of the merit of our action. National survival hung in the balance.

"[Today] with almost 74,000 from 44 countries deployed in six operations within and beyond the Euro-Atlantic area ... [we lack] political will, commitment in resources ... and commitment to communicate the need ... to our citizens. Defense spending is on the decline [while] security demands are on the rise.

"(9) You need to reach consensus on whether to serve red sauce or white sauce on the pasta. Consensus in garnering international support and legitimacy (is one thing). But for routine alliance business? Easier said than done. NATO would need to reach consensus on a decision to no longer need to reach consensus. Time to change the MO. But let's always remember Churchill -- 'the only thing worse than fighting a war with allies is fighting a war without them.'

"(8) You're part of an organization that's been a pillar of strength and provider of peace and security for member and partner nations for more than 60 years ... fostered the reunification of Germany -- and through enlargement extended democratic values throughout Warsaw Pact countries ... resolved conflict in the Balkans [and] its reintegration into the whole of Europe. And today, NATO reaches around the globe to collectively confront 21st century challenges ... but we're still lacking modern crisis management capabilities to respond to challenges in an unpredictable world.

"(7) Your relationship with 27 European Union nations, 21 of whom are also members of NATO, is, at best, cordial. (gobbledygook for sleight-of-hand). A tight working relationship between EU and NATO is the overdue prerequisite for solutions to 21st century challenges. Signed agreements guarantee EU access to NATO assets and capabilities for EU-led missions. ... Time to work together by playing to strengths of both to address current/future crises.

"(6) When you tell a 20-something you work for NATO, he says, 'Isn't that the dog in the Wizard of Oz?' No, Billy, it's not. It's the most successful security alliance in world history, [to which we owe] freedom, peace, prosperity and our way of life. (Up to us to make sure younger and future generations) understand NATO's essential role ... in the civilized world.

"(5) A 'teeth sucking' sound that follows any request to commit resources resonates in the hallways of Brussels. The crux of NATO's operational problems is that its ambition outstrips its political will to resource that ambition. Afghanistan is the textbook illustration ... since mission inception, NATO nations have never completely filled the agreed requirements for forces needed in Afghanistan.

"(4) NATO enlargement, alongside EU's, is responsible for the advance of democracy across the European Continent in the aftermath of the Cold War. Increase in security for NATO's members is not a decrease in security for any other. However, candidate nations must be contributors to security, not consumers of it.

"(3) Words like urgent, rapid and swift better describe the demeanor and movement of a Galapagos tortoise than action in NATO. Consensus stands in the way of agile decision-making. It currently takes NATO 62 weeks to process a submitted urgent operational requirement, down from 80 weeks. Next goal 35 weeks. That means operational commanders still wait almost nine months for what they deem an urgent requirement. In our current security requirement, these delays are simply untenable. NATO is not postured for the realities of today's world.

"(2) NATO is a great forum for strategic debate among allies, but fear of open disagreement inhibits debate. We engage in less now than 15 years ago. Debate is not a way into problems -- but a way out, onto a road of consensus and action. Yet we face multiple new and emerging threats -- transnational terrorism, the proliferation of WMD [weapons of mass destruction], piracy, climate change, energy security, mass migrations, cyber attacks, to name a few. The spectrum of potential conflict is wide. NATO must be agile and capable.

"(1) If you got this far, you work in NATO ... part of an organization "whose future is as bright as its history is impressive."

Pity the new U.S. commander on the ground in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. He has to live with paralyzing caveats from timid allies.

All Pakistan should be under sharia law, says Taliban spokesperson by Tony Cross

Pakistan's Taliban aim to spread Islamic sharia law through all of Pakistan and beyond, says Taliban Swat valley spokesperson Muslim Khan. As government troops try to clear two districts the Islamists took over last week, Khan told RFI that the government has no reason to believe that they will honour a deal to stay within the valley.

Khan admits that the Taliban "don't care" if the government believes that they will keep to an agreement signed earlier this year. That deal allowed the Taliban to impose Islamic sharia law in just one district, Malakand, in exchange for peace.

"These people believe or not believe, we don't care about that," Khan says. "And we never care about the policy of Pakistan [if it] is going on the United States or other countries."

Khan, who learnt English while living and working in Boston in the 1990s, says that an Islamic caliphate should be established to rule all countries where Muslims are the majority and that sharia should spread beyond Swat valley to the whole of Pakistan.

"If you are a Muslim [like] 95 per cent of Pakistan, Khilafa [caliphate] should be not only for this division, Khiafa should be for all Muslims around the world," he says. "Khilafa is the better system, the Shariat is the better system for the life of Muslims. Any other system we cannot accept."

Military jets moved in to back up troops in the offensive in the North-West Frontier Province. It was launched on Sunday after the Taliban moved into Dir and Buner districts, in breach of a peace deal in which they agreed to lay down their arms in return for imposition of sharia law in Malakand.

The military on Monday claimed to have killed over 20 Taliban fighters. Khan says that the movement has killed 22 soldiers and lost only two of its members. He also says that two civilians have been killed.

The offensive has displaced 30,000 people, according to Provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain on Tuesday.

Officials have reported that the broker of the deal, Soofi Muhammad, had disappeared. Khan, who says that he is about 100 km from the fighting, told RFI that he has talked to Muhammad by phone and that he is in Dir district, which the government claims to control.

He accuses President Asif Ali Zardari of reaching a deal with the Taliban in order to gain grants from the administration of US President Barack Obama.

He believes that Zardari thought that "Obama will not accept, so they will offer more money ... then they signed and they get the money and now they start again".

Despite the fighting, the peace deal is not dead, according to Khan, who says that Soofi Muhammad has ordered that it continue to be observed in Swat valley.

Israel Worries Over Intense 'Legal War' by Amir Mizroch

The defense establishment is concerned at intensifying legal campaigns in foreign courts that aim to deter Israel from using force against Hamas and Hizbullah.

Reeling from four damning reports in one week from human rights organizations about the IDF's conduct in Operation Cast Lead, the sense among senior defense officials is that the "legal front" against Israel is growing at an alarming rate.

There is also a palpable urgency within the legal and defense establishments to thoroughly and professionally investigate allegations of war crimes against the IDF, not only because this has been standard practice, but also in an effort to ward off foreign lawsuits, investigations and arrest warrants against officers.

Officials are calling for an increased appreciation throughout the government of the complexities of fighting and winning asymmetric wars within the boundaries of international humanitarian law. There is also a certain level of frustration within the defense establishment at the disconnect between what is believed here to have been a carefully thought-out operation, where huge efforts were invested in minimizing harm to Palestinian civilians, and the growing tide of international accusations of war crimes emanating from the offensive against Hamas six months ago.

"There is a war being waged against us in the legal sphere. Its aim is to delegitimize Israel and to create deterrence against a possible use of force in Gaza and Lebanon again," a senior defense official told The Jerusalem Post.

The Post has also learned that, increasingly, legal officers, as well as soldiers from the IDF Spokesman's Office, are taking part in operational planning for possible future conflicts, at the highest levels.

"The last Gaza war is not over yet. It is being fought on another front for now. It is not just in Spain, England and Belgium. Lawyers and jurists in many countries, some of them Arab, some Jewish, are using legal means to attack Israel.

"There are hundreds of petitions, cases, legal opinions and actions cropping up across the world. The phenomenon is very wide and growing. The other side has a lot of money that comes from countries and people not friendly to Israel. This is another front in the war, and if we don't realize it we'll have a problem," the senior defense source said.

To counter this legal offensive, the IDF Military Prosecutor's unit has steadily increased its involvement across all levels of the army, in an attempt to give commanders the tools to be able to win wars while staying within the bounds of international humanitarian law. Legal officers have been attached to commanders from the Brigade level up and are present when the target banks are drawn up, where questions are asked about whether the target is purely military or has a dual purpose.

Legal officers work closely with commanders to give "dynamic interpretations" of international humanitarian law during combat. That means they need to get as close as possible to commanders, but to also take care not to get in their way too much. It's a delicate but crucial balance. The final decisions are still in the hands of the commanders, sources said.

"The best way to deal with the legal onslaught is to check every complaint and investigate every accusation. There is no need to be afraid of the truth. If someone did commit a crime, he will pay for it, and it's best he pays for it here in Israel rather than abroad, where he could be at the mercy of legal systems hijacked by political activists," the official said.

This week, Spain's highest court rejected a petition by a local judge to investigate senior Israeli officials involved in the targeted killing of Salah Shehadeh, the commander of Hamas's military wing, in 2002. The court found that the Israeli probe into the attack, which killed Shehadeh, his deputy and 13 civilians, was sufficiently serious - planners had been given intelligence that only Shehadeh and his wife were at home - and that there was no need for the Spanish legal system to get involved.

The ruling is seen in Israel as first and foremost a victory for Spain, which has been increasingly embarrassed by the activism of some of its judges. It is also, however, being seen here as a warning that pro-Palestinian groups across the EU are finding attentive ears among the judiciaries of certain European countries. Furthermore, because of the makeup of the EU, there is now the possibility of issuing a continent-wide arrest warrant. So it is quite possible that someone on a private trip in Czechoslovakia may be picked up for an arrest warrant issued in Spain. There is the potential of widespread abuse of universal jurisdiction by anti-Israeli activists, the defense official warned.

The IDF has faced a barrage of war crimes allegations and potential charges this week. Former Hague court judge Richard Goldstone started off the week by collecting evidence in Gaza against Israel for the UN Human Rights Council. Next, a Gisha report slammed Israel's policy of not allowing Palestinians to exit the Gaza Strip. Then the Red Cross criticized Israel for the continued blockade of Gaza.

The next day, a Free Gaza ship tried to run the blockade and was apprehended by Israel Navy commandos. The activists onboard the Spirit of Humanity said that Israel was violating international humanitarian law by not allowing them to deliver medicine and toys to Gazans. That same day, Human Rights Watch slammed Israel for the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Gaza through the use of airborne drones.

And finally, on Thursday, Amnesty International released a mammoth 117-page report accusing Israel of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead.

The problem with these and other reports, according to defense officials, is that they group all of the IDF's actions in Gaza into one bundle, which paints a grim picture of alleged disproportionate use of force, instead of investigating alleged incidents one by one.

"There was absolutely no policy to break international law during the fighting in Gaza. There was a policy to operate within the boundaries of the law," the official said.

There are dozens of internal IDF probes into Cast Lead that are still to be completed, but the sense in the defense establishment is that even if there were individuals who acted in unlawful ways, there are no recorded or proven instances of war crimes.

"This approach puts all of the IDF's actions together in one picture and argues that there are 1,400 people killed on the other side, with just under one third being civilians, a few hundred people [figures that Israel vehemently disputes, insisting that most of the dead were combatants] while Israel lost in total 13 people, most of them soldiers in friendly-fire incidents, so this is not proportional. In addition, look at all the devastation you left there. This approach has many proponents.

"This approach also says that because Israelis are in trauma over seeing soldiers return in body bags, the IDF exaggerates its use of force in order to protect its soldiers. This is what we're fighting against. We think it is more fair to check individual instances to see whether or not we behaved according to the rules," the official said.

"It is untenable, in this day and age, to be ostracized, to be like al-Qaida, to have no alliances and no friends. In the past it was harder to explain this to officers in the field. Since the Second Lebanon War, and especially since Operation Cast Lead, the penny has dropped.

"In legal terms, nothing has changed. The IDF has always operated according to international law. What has changed is that now even a company commander is aware of the legal implications of his actions. Officers are sent to the school for military law where they are taught the dos and don'ts of war.

"Just as officers are taught to navigate, to attack, to use weapons, they are also taught to fight within the bounds of international law. This is part of modern warfare, a language that the whole world speaks in, except for certain groups in the Arab world," the senior official said.

"For Hamas and Hizbullah, who fight within their civilian populations, it's a win-win situation: Either you don't attack them and they win, or you do attack them, their civilians are killed, they reap the dividends in the realm of public opinion, your legitimacy is eroded, and that makes it harder for you to continue fighting. After Kafr Kana II [when Israel killed civilians in an errant strike in south Lebanon in 2006], US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice effectively grounded the IAF for 48 hours," the official said.

GE: Smart Grid Yields Net Zero Energy Home by Martin LaMonica

General Electric unveiled a project at its research labs that will let homeowners cut annual energy consumption to zero by 2015.

These "net-zero energy homes" will combine on-site power generation through solar panels or wind turbines with energy-efficient appliances and on-site storage. Consumers will get detailed energy data and potentially control appliances with Home Energy Manager, a device that is expected to cost between $200 and $250, according to GE executives at a smart grid media day.

GE is piloting the in-home products this year and expects to have the appliances and energy display available next year. The premium for the more efficient, networked appliances will be about $10 more, GE executives said. A net-zero energy home would cost about 10 percent more by 2015, executives said.

Kevin Nolan, vice president of technology at GE's Consumer & Industrial unit, shows off GE's demand response appliances and Home Energy Manager at GE's smart grid symposium at its Global Research Center in upstate New York.

Studies show that when consumers have more detailed information on their energy use, they can find ways to reduce consumption by 5 to 10 percent. When utilities have variable, or time-of-use, pricing, consumers could cut electricity use by 15 percent at on-peak times, typically in the morning and early evening.

GE appliances have been converted to have electronic controls and will have a small module in the back that will allow it to communicate with a home's smart meter. With that communication link in place, consumers can find out how much electricity individual appliances use and program them to take advantage of off-peak rates.

"I don't think any of us look forward to the day when we are monitoring hour to hour the cost of electricity. But I think all of us look forward to the day when we can set it and forget it," said Bob Gilligan, GE's vice president of transmission and distribution. "That's the future we look forward to."

For example, a consumer can set up the system so that the temperature in a water heater or thermostat can drop down to a certain level when nobody is at home.

Consumers can turn off features that will enable appliances to communicate with utilities to participate in utility-run demand-response programs, where a utility can adjust thermostats or appliances to shave peak-time consumption, according to Michael Beyerle, a marketing manager at GE's Consumer & Industrial appliance division.

Consumer incentive strong?

The idea behind the smart grid, which encompasses a range of technologies, is to make the electricity grid more efficient and reliable by applying information technologies and controls to the existing grid.

In addition to networked appliances, GE's Net Zero Home Project calls for on-site power generation through solar panels or wind turbines. GE produces solar panels and has invested in residential wind turbine maker Southwest Windpower. A 3,000-watt solar panel array, which costs roughly $30,000 to install, would be enough to supply all of a home's consumption, according to GE executives.

The major components of a net-zero energy home as part of its Net Zero Energy Home project.

Plug-in electric vehicles and home batteries could be used to store electricity for peak-time power or back-up. Plug-in vehicles could also be charged during the middle of the night to take advantage of off-peak rates.

GE's Home Energy Manager control unit, which consumers access through a dedicated display, provides information to consumers but also is designed to optimize one-site energy generation and consumption.

For example, the control unit could evaluate electricity rates and see that running a dishwasher when the solar panels are producing is cheaper than running the load at off-peak times, explained Beyerle. Or a clothes drier can go into "conservation" mode during peak times where it will operate at a lower temperature and take longer to run.

During the media day, GE hosted a panel on challenges to the smart grid with Mark Brian, a consumer (and GE employee) using a suite of GE appliances at his home in Louisville, Ky.

He found that his monthly electricity consumption and his energy bills have gone down by 20 percent compared to last year. Because his home now has time-of-use pricing, his bills would have gone up if he hadn't been using the networked appliances. He added the system has given him ideas on how to take advantage of cheaper rates. "We still do the same stuff. We just do it at different times," Brian said.

GE executives said that the information-management tools need to be very easy to use. Also, policies need to be in place to address data privacy and to create financial incentives, namely variable pricing.

"There's a lot consumers are willing to do if they are properly informed and properly incented," said Gilligan.