International Affairs: August 2013 Archives
The Atlantic has an exhaustive and engaging article that touches on every aspect of drone warfare. It's well worth reading, even if you know a lot about the subject.
The attorney for one of the Benghazi whistleblowers claims that 400 surface-to-air missiles were stolen from Libya and are now in the hands of terrorists.
Former U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova, who now represents one of the Benghazi whistleblowers, told a Washington radio station Monday that the real scandal in Benghazi is the theft of 400 surface-to-air missiles by some "very ugly people."The Obama administration fears those missiles will be used to shoot down an airplane or blow up one of our embassies, he said.
DiGenova said he learned about this from his client Mark Thompson, who served as Deputy Coordinator for Operations in the Bureau of Counterterrorism at the U.S. Department of State;
Think 400 is a lot? Back in 2011, after the fall of the Gadhafi regime, DefenseTech estimated there were20,000 SAMs in Libya ripe for the picking.
These missing missiles could be very easily smuggled into the United States and are a huge threat to people, our infrastructure, and our economy. If this information is true, it seems more a matter of "when" than "if" they'll be used.
Remember when President Obama "reset" our relationship with Russia? Well, he's setting it back it again.
White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Russia's decision last week to defy the U.S. and grant Snowden temporary asylum only exacerbated an already troubled relationship. And with few signs that progress would be made during the Moscow summit on other agenda items, Rhodes said the president decided to cancel the talks."We'll still work with Russia on issues where we can find common ground, but it was the unanimous view of the president and his national security team that a summit did not make sense in the current environment," Rhodes said.
Obama's decision to scrap talks with Putin is likely to deepen the chill in the already frosty relationship between the two leaders. They have frequently found themselves at odds on pressing international issues, most recently in Syria, where the U.S. accuses Putin of helping President Bashar Assad fund a civil war. The U.S. has also been a vocal critic of Russia's crackdown on Kremlin critics and recently sanctioned 18 Russians for human rights violations.
The problem isn't the "frosty relations" -- those are completely justified based on Russia's adversarial stance towards America. The problem is that Obama was naive enough to have thought that he could have talked his way into genuine friendship with Putin.
