Using Mitt Romney's speech last week at Virginia Military Institute on US foreign and military policy, we explain how you too can become Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America (one hint --- say "Al Qa'eda" a lot):
Insurgents at a funeral in Aleppo Province with Islamic flag, 16 September 2012 (Photo: Zain Karam/Reuters)
The regime’s insistence that jihadist radicals and terrorists instigated and perpetuated the Syrian conflict is indefensible. The Syrian uprising began as a popular resistance against autocracy. Yet as the conflict drags on, a radical Islamist dynamic has emerged within the opposition, and it warrants further scrutiny. The vast majority of syrians opposing the regime are local revolutionaries who espouse varying degrees of personal religious fervor. However, there is a small but growing Salafi-jihadist presence inside Syria. The Syrian Salafi-jihadists have been aided by foreign fighters, some with significant capabilities and connections to al-Qaeda and other international jihadist networks. Their presence among the opposition galvanizes Assad’s support base and complicates U.S. involvement in the conflict.
Thursday, September 13, 2012 at 6:28 | Scott Lucas in EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran Most importantly, we do not know --- but I fear --- what comes next. In his White House statement on Wednesday, President Obama was careful to point to the majority of Libyans --- Libyans who had fought alongside the besieged Americans, Libyans who had rescued Stevens and took him to hospital, Libyans who tried to save his life --- as people who had overthrown a dictatoral regime and were trying to build their country.
But this, as well as the emphasis of Obama and Clinton on respect for all religions --- religions tarnished and undermined in the name of religion by extremists and schemers in the US and in Libya --- appears to have been put on the margins this morning. Instead, the headline is "Obama Vows Justice for Libya Killers".
That way, a year after Libyans gathered to celebrate the fall of Muammar Qaddafi and to hope for a country beyond violence and the authoritarian, does not lead to reconciliation and progress. That way leads to force to meet force, to death to counter death. That way does not lead to security but to insecurity.
Claimed footage of insurgents in Deir Ez Zor, 2 July 2012
As they stood outside the commandeered government building in the town of Mohassen, it was hard to distinguish Abu Khuder's men from any other brigade in the Syrian civil war, in their combat fatigues, T-shirts and beards.
But these were not average members of the Free Syrian Army. Abu Khuder and his men fight for al-Qaida. They call themselves the ghuraba'a, or "strangers", after a famous jihadi poem celebrating Osama bin Laden's time with his followers in the Afghan mountains, and they are one of a number of jihadi organisations establishing a foothold in the east of the country now that the conflict in Syria has stretched well into its second bloody year.
Thursday, July 19, 2012 at 7:23 | Scott Lucas in EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran, US Foreign Policy
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warns of the presence of Al Qa'eda in Syria
Like all of us, the CIA has been caught off-guard by the pace of events in Syria. The advance of insurgents in parts of the country might have been expected, but suddenly the battle was in Damascus. Then came Wednesday's surprise: the bomb that decimated the top ranks of the Assad regime.
So what does a responsible intelligence service do? It launches a public-relations campaign.
The CIA got in touch with its long-time if unofficial Press Secretary, David Ignatius of The Washington Post, and the Obama Administration also fed lines to Helene Cooper of The New York Times. The message? Ignatius declares, "President Obama is seeking a 'managed transition' in Syria with the twin goals of removing President Bashar al-Assad as soon as possible and doing so without the evaporation of the authority of the Syrian state."
Using Ignatius and Cooper's transcripts, what are the CIA's priorities in that managed transition?
Rizwaan Sabir with University of Nottingham Security, May 2011Four years ago, University of Nottingham postgraduate candidate Rizwaan Sabir was held for seven days without charge. The reason for suspicion? As part of his dissertation research on tactics and discourse of "terrorism", he had downloaded a publicly-available training manual from Al Qa'eda.
Sabir was never charged and eventually moved to Ph.D. study at the University of Bath, with the police paying him $20,000 compensation in September 2011. However, his friend Hicham Yezza, an administrator at Nottingham, was also interrogated and then held for months, under threat of deportation, on an immigration charge.
Now the results of the internal investigation over the police's handling of the case indicates officers "created" details of an interview with Dr Rod Thornton, the University of Nottingham's speciaist on terrorism.
In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.
They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”
Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 10:33 | James Miller in Africa, EA Global, EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran 1910 GMT: Syria. Away from Aleppo, the news was as ugly as ever in some places. Activists report that several shells fell on Douma, an important suburb of Damascus. According to the LCCS, at least one man was killed by sniper fire, and at least 5 people were killed when shells fell on several homes. A graphic and disturbing video claims to show an entire family dead or dying, being evacuated on a truck after a shell reportedly fell on their home.
1905 GMT: Syria. An amazing picture, from a day to remember, at Aleppo University:
Aleppo University today #Syria twitter.com/KareemLailah/s…
— Ḱ@яℯℯм ℒαḯł@н (@KareemLailah) May 17, 2012
Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 21:48 | Scott Lucas in EA Global, EA USA, Global, US Foreign Policy, US Politics 
Amidst the flutter today about the release of 17 of 6000 documents seized by US forces when they killed Osama bin Laden, I spoke with BBC television and radio about the information in the documents and --- far more importantly for me --- the politics behind their release.
Although the documents have juicy details such as Bin Laden's worry about the fraying influence of Al Qa'eda and his close attention to media strategy --- to the point of considering which US outlets would be useful (clue: not Fox) --- they only confirm a conclusion which could have been made years ago. Al Qa'eda, as a central organisation with global impact, was long gone; instead, there was a decentralised network of movements who were more often motivated by local concerns.
Meanwhile, the politics:
1. President Obama's domestic opponents will no doubt claim that the release is meant to burnish, in an election year, the polish of a Commander-in-Chief who killed The World's Most Wanted Terrorist;
2. I'm more interested, however, in how the gloss of the document supports Obama's presentation yesterday of a Mission Accomplished --- even if that is far from the truth --- in Afghanistan;
3. And I'm most interested in how the spin on the documents of success in covert and special operations comes only days after the White House authorised an expansion of target killings by drones --- from Pakistan to Yemen to possibly Somalia.
The BBC Radio 5 Live item starts at the 9:30 mark; my contribution is from about 16:35.
The BBC Radio Wales discussion begins at the 8:00 mark.
The CIA is seeking authority to expand its covert drone campaign in Yemen by launching strikes against terrorism suspects even when it does not know the identities of those who could be killed, U.S. officials said.
Securing permission to use these “signature strikes” would allow the agency to hit targets based solely on intelligence indicating patterns of suspicious behavior, such as imagery showing militants gathering at known al-Qaeda compounds or unloading explosives.
The practice has been a core element of the CIA’s drone program in Pakistan for several years. CIA Director David H. Petraeus has requested permission to use the tactic against the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, which has emerged as the most pressing terrorism threat to the United States, officials said.
If approved, the change would probably accelerate a campaign of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen that is already on a record pace, with at least eight attacks in the past four months.
