(Credit: AP)

Amid a growing hunger strike among Gitmo detainees that gained national attention after one described the harrowing process of being force-fed, Obama said last month that he would renew his administration’s efforts to close Guantanamo.

“I once again call on Congress to lift the restrictions on detainee transfers from Gitmo,” Obama said in his speech today. And while some media outlets previously reported that part of Obama’s plan would involved authorizing the transfer of Yemeni detainees that have been cleared for release, the president expounded on some of the initial details of his plan:

OBAMA: I have asked the Department of Defense to designate a site in the United States where we can hold military commissions. I am appointing a new, senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries. I am lifting the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen, so we can review them on a case by case basis. To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries. Where appropriate, we will bring terrorists to justice in our courts and military justice system. And we will insist that judicial review be available for every detainee.

“I know the politics are hard,” Obama said of closing Gitmo. Indeed, the president is already facing fierce resistance from Republicans in Congress. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said Obama’s plan amounted to a “victory” for terrorists. “GITMO must stay open for business,” he said. Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in a press conference after Obama’s speech said they want Guantanamo closed but said they wanted a plan (and didn’t appear eager to offer one themselves). House and Senate Democrats, however, are sounding a more supportive.

“Imagine a future – ten years from now, or twenty years from now – when the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not a part of our country,” Obama said, seemingly pre-empting those who will resist his plan. “Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are? Is that something that our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children?”

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). (Credit: Politico)

Obama’s major speech outlining the Administration’s counter-terrorism policy on Thursday marked a win for al-Qaeda, according to Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA).

Chambliss’ comments referred to the president’s proposed changes to detention policy, which included asking the Department of Defense to find a place to conduct trials of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay inside the United States, lifting a moratorium on transferring Gitmo detainees to Yemen, and attempting to transfer all of the prison’s detainees that’ve been cleared for departure back to their home countries as part of an ultimate plan to shut down the Cuban site.

The senator suggested these measures constituted capitulation to terrorists:

The President’s speech today will be viewed by terrorists as a victory. Rather than continuing successful counterterrorism activities, we are changing course with no clear operational benefit. We knew five years ago that closing Guantanamo was a bad idea and would not work. Yet, today’s speech sends the message to Guantanamo detainees that if they harass the dedicated military personnel there enough, we will give in and send them home, even to Yemen. With the recidivism rate now at 28% and the increased threat from al Qaeda and its affiliates, including in Yemen, GITMO must stay open for business.

There is clear evidence that the military prison makes for an effective recruiting tactic for al-Qaeda, even in 2013. As former Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander puts it, “the longer it stays open the more cost it will have in U.S. lives.”

Chambliss’ reference to “harassment” likely referrs to recent hunger strikes over conditions in the military prison. So far, the military’s response to the hunger strikes has been force-feeding the prisoners; detainees describe “the experience of having the [force-feeding] tube snaked down your throat as being like having a razor blade pulled down.” The detainees are striking in responses to searches of cells that they say involved guards mishandling Qu’rans.

The DNI’s office has only “confirmed” that 16.1 percent of released detainees (97 people) have engaged in terrorist activities after release, while it “suspects” another 11.9 percent have. The New America Foundation’s independent estimate finds, by contrast, that the confirmed number is only four percent, and the suspected number a scant 4.7 percent. Most of these transfers occurred during during the Bush Administration, with Congess’ consent.

The label “recidivism” is also somewhat misleading, as it implies that all released inmates were definitively engaged in some form of terrorist activity before being thrown in Guantanamo. Former Bush Administration official Lawrence Wilkerson estimates that 50-60 percent of Guantanamo inmates were innocent of any crime before being detained indefinitely without charge.

(Credit: AP)

Most importantly, Obama announced that he intends to work closely with Congress to “refine, and ultimately repeal” the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). Passed in the aftermath of 9/11, the AUMF gave the president broad authority to carry out military action against “those nations, organizations, or persons” who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 2001 attack.

“Groups like [Al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula] must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States,” Obama said. “Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states.”

Congress recently began its first set of hearings into possible revisions of the AUMF, which is about to enter its twelfth year in force. Currently, there are competing proposals in the Senate and House to either repeal the authorization in its entirety or revise it to allow for the use of force beyond the perpetrators of 9/11. Obama, however, refused to go along with any broadening of the AUMF, saying he “will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further.”

CAP expert Ken Gude hailed Obama’s commitment to repealing the AUMF as the “beginning of the end” of the war against al Qaeda. While remnants of al Qaeda and new groups remain threats, “the extraordinary military response that followed the attacks of 9/11 embodied in the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force can now be wound down, the permanent war footing retired, and we can rebalance our efforts to fight terrorism to rely more on our effective and efficient law enforcement and intelligence agencies,” Gude told ThinkProgress.

In his speech today, Obama continued: “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.” The clear declaration builds upon previous statements from former members of Obama’s administration that the battle against al Qaeda cannot go on indefinitely.

That desire to eventually repeal the AUMF makes up the cornerstone of the counterterrorism strategy Obama laid out today. The current Obama administration approach to conducting targeting killing and other portions that strategy were only just recently codified, as Obama acknowledged in his remarks. In it, the use of drone strikes and other applications of force will be streamlined to a more limited set of targets, with a higher level of scrutiny applied when determining those targets, while a renewed focus on the other elements of preventing terrorism will be implemented.

“We cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root.” Obama expalined, laying out an argument for the expansion of U.S. efforts to “[address] the underlying grievances and conflicts that feed extremism.” To drive home the point, Obama noted that the cost of a month during the Iraq War could pay for “training security forces in Libya, maintaining peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors, feeding the hungry in Yemen, building schools in Pakistan, and creating reservoirs of goodwill that marginalize extremists.”

The closure of Guantanamo Bay also remains part of Obama’s overall end to operations against Al Qaeda. “Given my Administration’s relentless pursuit of al Qaeda’s leadership, there is no justification beyond politics for Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should never have been opened,” the president said. Prior to the speech, a senior White House official noted that while it was not the primary factor for the renewed push to close the base, “part of the context of that is people taking the drastic steps of hunger strikes in Guantanamo.”

“While the hunger strike continues to increase in scope and severity, there is much you can do, right now, to improve the quality of life for all the prisoners,” the lawyers said in their letter to Hagel, Reuters reports.

Conditions at the camp have reportedly deteriorated since detainees started their hunger strike in February. Now, the military says 103 detainees are refusing food and 31 are being force-fed. Gitmo authorities have restricted communal living and taken away amenities in a effort to break the hunger strike.

“[I]t’s very clear that individual isolation is to break the hunger strike,” said Army Captain Jason Wright in a recent interview with ThinkProgress, adding that moving the detainees back to communal living might help end the mass fast. Indeed, Guantanamo’s Standard Operating Procedure on dealing with hunger strikes says “in the event of a mass strike, isolating hunger striking patients from each other is vital to prevent them from achieving solidarity.”

While Obama is expected to announce in a major national security speech on Thursday that his administration will begin transferring some detainees out of Gitmo, lawmakers are also increasing pressure to close the prison. Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Obama urging him to appoint a special envoy to close Gitmo, and Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) is circulating a letter for signatures demanding Guantanamo’s closure.

Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (Credit: Emptywheel.net)

On Wednesday afternoon, Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to members of Congress for the first time publicly acknowledging that U.S. drones had killed four American citizens. One of those citizens was Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16 year-old son of radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who on Wednesday the government also for the first time admitted was killed in a U.S. drone strike for his role in al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula and alleged participation in attempted terror attacks on the United States.

Jeh Johson, who served as the Department of Defense’s general counsel during President Obama’s first term, appeared on MSNBC last night to discuss Holder’s letter, speaking with host Rachel Maddow. In Holder’s letter, Abdulrahman and two other U.S. citizens are described as not “specifically targeted” in the strikes that took their lives — suggesting that perhaps they were killed in a so-called “signature strike” that targets behavior. But Johnson said he thought Holder’s letter could have been more explicit:

JOHNSON: I think you could remove the word specifically from that sentence.

MADDOW: Not targeted at all?

JOHNSON: Not targeted.

MADDOW: They are effectively saying it was an accident.

JOHNSON: We are effectively saying that they were not targeted as part of those specific operations.

MADDOW: But killed anyway.

JOHNSON: But they were, obviously, killed.

Maddow wondered whether Johnson believed that U.S. culpability meant the family of those killed deserved recourse. “That is a very good question,” Johnson said, “I think you should put that to the Department of Justice.”

Nassar al-Awlaki, the father of Anwar and grandfather Abdulrahman, is in the midst of a lawsuit against the U.S. government, alleging that the killing of his son and grandson was unconstitutional. After yesterday’s revelation, a federal judge asked that government lawyers within the next week file a memo on how Holder’s acknowledgement affects the lawsuit.

Prior to Johnson’s statement, the assumption was that Abdulrahman and his friends were killed in what is known as a “signature strike” or “profile strike.” Under the practice, groups of men between 16-55 who meet a certain profile are often considered legitimate targets, often with the U.S. having no concrete knowledge of their identities. There are indications that the practice will be sharply curtailed moving forward, however, as it seems that the same standards applied to the targeted killing of American citizens will be applied to suspected terrorists writ large.

(Credit: BBC)

“While he isn’t planning to detail how to speed up transfers from the prison,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, “officials said the president in coming weeks plans to lift the administration’s prohibition on sending detainees to Yemen.”

Also on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder, in a letter to Congress, said the administration has finished its counterterrorism “playbook” and the New York Times reports that based on that policy guidance, Obama “will sharply curtail the instances when unmanned aircraft can be used to attack in places that are not overt war zones, countries like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The rules will impose the same standard for strikes on foreign enemies now used only for American citizens deemed to be terrorists.”

Holder said that lethal force will now only be used in cases where the suspect poses “a continuing, imminent threat to Americans” and cannot feasibly be captured, suggesting an end to so-called “signature strikes” that target behavior rather than a specific person for a specific purpose.

In other news:

The Senate passed bipartisan measure on Wednesday to put more sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, while a new sanctions bill passed a House committee. The measure has 338 co-sponsors, “a clear sign of bipartisan impatience on Capitol Hill with Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”

The Washington Post reports: The United States and its partners will widen support for Syrian rebels, potentially by sending more weapons or taking other measures short of sending American forces, if diplomacy fails to end a civil war that has killed “upwards of 100,000” people, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Wednesday.

The AP reports: Members of a House panel angry over the growing epidemic of sexual assaults in the military took a key step toward tackling the problem by passing legislation Wednesday that would strip commanding officers of their long-standing authority to unilaterally change or dismiss court-martial convictions in rape and assault cases. Lawmakers believe the revision will lead to a cultural shift and encourage victims to step forward.

(Credit: Getty)

The letter also confirms for the first time that the United States killed four American citizens in drone strikes since President Obama took office in 2009.

But the completion of the Obama administration’s codification of how it conducts targeted killings and other counterterrorism policies — or the “playbook” as it has been called — has much further reaching implications for future U.S. policy. Begun as a project of then-White House Counterterrorism Director John Brennan, and accelerated due to fears of Obama not serving a second term, the playbook was meant to put into writing many of the ad hoc processes the administration had developed to facilitate the targeted killing of suspected terrorists.

A Washington Post article on Brennan from 2012 revealed that the playbook is meant to “cover the selection and approval of targets from the ‘disposition matrix,’ the designation of who should pull the trigger when a killing is warranted, and the legal authorities the administration thinks sanction its actions in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond.” The “disposition matrix” is the benign-sounding name for the process used to approve targets for strikes. Far from being limited to drones, these strikes include the use of missiles fired from Naval warships and manned aircraft, and special operations forces.

According to Holder’s letter to Congressional leaders, the playbook has been completed, though it won’t be available to the public anytime soon:

This week the President approved and relevant congressional committees will be notified and briefed on a document that institutionalizes the Administration’s exacting standards and processes for reviewing and approving operations to capture or use lethal force against terrorist targets outside the United States and areas of active hostilities; these standards and processes are already in place or are to be transitioned into place. While that document remains classified, it makes clear that a cornerstone of the Administration’s policy is one of the principles I noted in my speech at Northwester: that lethal force should not be used when it is feasible to capture a terrorist suspect.

Among the changes rumored to be put into place in the playbook is the shifting of authority for agencies to use drones in carrying out lethal strikes. Reports indicate that while the CIA will retain control of the drone program in Pakistan, other theaters will see drones placed under the sole purview of the Department of Defense.

Despite the increased attention they’ve received, the number of drone strikes has reportedly dropped in recent years. President Obama is due to deliver a speech on Thursday at the National Defense University laying out his vision for how counterterrorism goals will be pursued in the second term, including the use of drones and the closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano (Credit: AP)

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, since its last report Iran has continued to disregard demands that it halt enrichment of uranium at its nuclear facilities, instead processing another 689 kilograms of the nuclear fuel to the 5 percent level. Of greater concern to the international community is the uranium Iran has processed to 20 percent, compromising an additional 44 kilograms since February.

Iran’s known enriched uranium stockpile is not currently usable in a nuclear weapon — for that it would need to be enriched to 90 percent level, making it highly-enriched. However, the technology required to produce 90 percent enriched uranium is a small step from that required to reach the 20 percent threshold. Approximately 250 kilograms of 90 percent uranium is required to create one nuclear weapon, and Tehran seems to have been careful not to reach 250 kilograms worth of 20 percent enriched uranium in its stockpile.

To keep it below that level, Iran has continued its efforts to convert some of its 20 percent stockpile into uranium gas, which are then used in constructing fuel plates. These plates are extremely difficult to process further, making them effectively out of the running for being considered part of any possible weaponization. In the latest IAEA update, Iran reported converting 58 kilograms worth of 20 percent enriched uranium into uranium oxide between the end of September and May. Thus, the IAEA reported 182 kilograms of declared material still in the form of uranium hexafloride.

The report also indicates that Iran continues its efforts to install new centrifuges into its facilities, with nearly 700 installed since the start of the year.

There are also troubling portions of the report dealing with the Agency’s concerns over the Parchin military base. To date, the IAEA has been denied access to the facility, which is suspected to have been involved with earlier regime efforts to design a trigger for a nuclear weapon. Since first requesting access, it appears a cover-up of the facility’s work has been taking place:

55. Since the Director General’s previous report, Iran has conducted further spreading, levelling and compacting of material over most of the site, a significant proportion of which it has also asphalted. There have also been indications of activity within the chamber building.

56. As previously reported, Iran has stated that the allegation of nuclear activities at the Parchin site is “baseless” and that “the recent activities claimed to be conducted in the vicinity of the location of interest to the Agency, has nothing to do with specified location by the Agency”. Iran’s explanation for the soil displacement by trucks is that it was “due to constructing the Parchin new road”.

Iran’s lack of cooperation over Parchin proved a stumbling block in Iran’s ongoing talks with the U.N. over its nuclear program. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano warned back in December that the site could soon be cleared of any evidence that could have been uncovered. The IAEA, which has been issuing quarterly reports on Iran’s nuclear activities since 2003, still concludes though that none of Iran’s declared nuclear material has been diverted towards producing a nuclear weapon.

Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies also still believe that Iran has not made a decision to pursue a nuclear weapon at this time. This has not precluded Congress from beginning to pursue a slew of new action against Iran in recent weeks, with bills in both the House and Senate to increase sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Several experts have questioned the wisdom of ratcheting up sanctions on Iran without end, given the still ongoing pursuit of a diplomatic solution to the stand-off.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA)

“I write to add my strong support to your efforts to re-engage with Congress on this issue,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) said. “I will do everything I can to aid those efforts.”

The State Department in January reassigned Daniel Fried, the special envoy for closing Gitmo, and did not replace him. Attorney General Eric Holder said this month that the administration is “in the process now” to fill the position, and Smith is urging action:

I ask you to appoint a senior official, either to your White House staff or to a senior position within the Department of State, charged with leading the renewed efforts to transfer those detainees held at GTMO who have been cleared for transfer by the Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force. The appointment of a senior leader to negotiate and effectuate international detainee transfers is fundamental to a renewed effort to close GTMO.

Obama can order Defense Secretary Hagel to start transferring detainees out of Guantanamo, particularly 59 Yemenis who have been cleared for release. Not only would that begin the process of closing Gitmo — and perhaps even end the ongoing hunger strike there — but it’s relatively non-controversial because, as the Los Angeles Times reported last week, the Yemenis’ “new government wants them back.”

Smith agrees:

I also ask you to make several efforts to expedite the transfer of detainees whose transfer from GTMO will not hurt the security of the United States. First, request Secretary of Defense Hagel to study the feasibility of using the national security waiver to transfer low-risk detainees. Second, implement a limited waiver of your ban on transfers to Yemen.

While the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), has also written Obama offering support for closing Gitmo, getting the rest of Congress, particularly Republicans, to sign on is going to be a tough sell. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he wants the prison closed but has so-far just complained that Obama has “never come up with a viable plan.”

“Congress has blocked it, so he’s going to have to find a way to remove the blockages of Congress, and hopefully he’ll let us know how he’ll do that,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) said Tuesday, according to the Hill.

More than 100 detainees are officially on hunger strike at Gitmo, and 31 are being force-fed — a practice rights groups have condemned as a violation of international law and possibly torture. “It’s getting uglier and uglier at Gitmo,” Smith told the Hill.

“The level of embarrassment is growing and the cost is growing, so is that enough to persuade [Members of Congress] that it’s time to change positions?” Smith added. “We’re going to have that debate.” (HT: Carol Rosenberg)

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) (Credit: AP)

The measure, introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and added to the bill with the support of at least two Democrats, would require additional review for undocumented immigrants applying for legal status who are from “a region or country known to pose a threat, or that contains groups or organizations that pose a threat, to the national security of the United States.” Under the underlining bill, all undocumented immigrations are required to undergo three separate background checks before obtaining legal status. In defending his amendment during the Senate Judiciary Committee mark-up on Monday, Graham argued for an additional screening from regions of the world “where terrorists operate.”

“I mean, it’s pretty clear what I’m trying to do,” Graham said. “I’m trying to make sure that in addition to looking at your criminal background, when you adjust status, that if there are certain parts of the world or countries — like Yemen — that you’re adjusting from, I want to know a little more about you, given the world we live in.”

Under the provisions of the amendment, the Secretary of Homeland Security would have the broad authority to target any “alien or alien dependent spouse or child” from any region or country that they deem, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to house threats to the United States for additional scrutiny before becoming citizens. “I’m not dictating that [the Secretaries of Homeland Security and State] have to pick any region or country over the other,” Graham said, attempting to deflect criticisms that the amendment focuses specifically on the Middle East.

But a coalition of civil rights groups disagreed with Graham’s approach, arguing that the measure was similar to the now-defunct National Security Entry-Exit System (NSEERS), a largely ineffective program set up under the the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9/11. As part of the program, immigrants from twenty-four Muslim majority countries were forced to register into the system, which tracked their entry and exit from the country. The coalition — including the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, Arab American Institute, and National Council of La Raza — signed onto a letter addressed to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to condemn the amendment as being the NSEERS reborn:

Graham amendment #3 seems to do little more than revive the failed approach taken by the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), in which nonimmigrants from countries designated as national security concerns were subject to special screening. NSEERS was widely discredited, as it resulted in unjust racial and ethnic profiling of individuals from mainly Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern and South Asian communities. While NSEERS resulted in the detention and deportation of thousands of people, it cost $10 million annually and failed to result in any successful counter-terrorism prosecutions. The Department’s Inspector General reported that the program was inefficient and burdensome. There is no reason to believe that the approach in Graham amendment #3 would be any more successful in rooting out national security threats.

The Obama administration shuttered most of the NSEER’s functions in 2011, leaving the program indefinitely suspended. Graham’s amendment is less explicit than the NSEERS was, but would still place into law the ability for the government to racially profile potential citizens. During debate, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) suggested that a better system should be based on intelligence and law enforcement concerns rather than nation of origin, a suggestion Graham denied was necessary.

Graham’s amendment passed by voice vote and was inserted into the overarching bill with support from Sens. Al Franken (D-MN) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who announced they would back the measure. The overarching bill itself was voted out of committee last night, propelling it to the Senate floor where an effort to remove Graham’s language is likely to take shape.

[L]ost in the contentious debate over the legality, morality and effectiveness of a novel weapon is the fact that the number of strikes has actually been in decline. Strikes in Pakistan peaked in 2010 and have fallen sharply since then; their pace in Yemen has slowed to half of last year’s rate; and no strike has been reported in Somalia for more than a year.

President Obama will address his counterterrorism policy on Thursday and is expected to discuss drones and targeted killing. Reports surfaced this week ahead of the speech that the White House is looking to move some of CIA’s covert drone operations over to the Defense Department in an effort to increase transparency and accountability.

In other news:

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll foundhttp://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/300921-poll-majority-suspicious-of-benghazi-cover-up that a majority of Americans believe that the Obama administration is trying to cover up facts about the Benghazi attacks last year and the administration’s response to it. Republicans have been making these claims for months but there is no evidence to support them.

The Washington Post dug into former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus’s role in the talking points the Obama administration generated for the Benghazi attacks. “A close reading of recently released government e-mails that were sent during the editing process, and interviews with senior officials from several government agencies,” the Post reports, “reveal Petraeus’s early role and ambitions in going well beyond the [House Permanent Select Committee's] request [for unclassified talking points], apparently to produce a set of talking points favorable to his image and his agency.”

Politico reports: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is exempting around 500 civilian sexual assault prevention personnel from this year’s mandatory furloughs, a senior defense official told POLITICO, in a bid to show the Pentagon is serious about cracking down on sexual assault in the ranks

Former dictator Gen. Efrain Rios Montt (Credit: AP/Moises Castillo)

Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt was just less than two weeks ago convicted of committing genocide against his own people during his time in power. According to the charges against him, Rios Montt was aware of the slaughter of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayans during the country’s lengthy civil war, and did nothing to stop it. As punishment, the 86-year old former dictator was sentenced to eighty years in prison, the first time a national court had convicted a former head of state for committing genocide.

Instead of sitting in a cell for the rest of his life, however, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court has overturned the conviction and ordered that the trial jump back down to the tribunal that originally tried the case. Additionally, the trial has to rewind to where it stood back on April 19, to cover what Rios Montt claimed were violations of due process. As a result, it seems that Rios Montt will likely be released from custody in the near future, while many involved with the prosecution have already fled the country for fear of reprisals from those who sought to have the conviction reversed.

When it was first announced, Human Rights Watch called Rios Montt’s guilty verdict an “unprecedented step toward establishing accountability for atrocities.”

“The conviction of Rios Montt sends a powerful message to Guatemala and the world that nobody, not even a former head of state, is above the law when it comes to committing genocide,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, at the time.

The overturning of the ruling should be particularly disappointing for Americans, given the role that the United States played in enabling Rios Montt’s rule and subsequent abuse of power at the height of the Cold War:

When General Ríos Montt was installed in a coup in March 1982, Reagan administration officials were eager to embrace him as an ally. Embassy officials trekked up to the scene of massacres and reported back the army’s line that the guerrillas were doing the killing, according to documents uncovered by [Kate Doyle, a Guatemala expert at the National Security Archive].

Over the next two years, about $15 million in spare parts and vehicles from the United States reached the Guatemalan military, said Prof. Michael E. Allison, a political scientist at the University of Scranton who studies Central America. More aid came from American allies like Israel, Taiwan, Argentina and Chile. In the 1990s, the American government revealed that the C.I.A. had been paying top military officers throughout the period.

President Bill Clinton in 1999 traveled to Guatemala to apologize for the U.S.’ support for the dictator, saying that “support for military forces or intelligence units which engage in violent and widespread repression of the kind described in the [Commission for Historical Clarification] report was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake.”

(Credit: AFP//Getty Images)

“The mess hall, the barracks for my military personnel down there are just ramshackle,” Southern Command commander Gen. John Kelly told Foreign Policy this week. “No one thought [Gitmo] would be open this long, so they didn’t build any accommodations for the troops.”

That $200 million is on top of the $150 million it costs each year — setting aside the moral, tactical and strategic costs — to operate the prison and military court system — that’s around $900,000 per detainee. To put that number into perspective, the Federal government pays around $60,000 per inmate, per year in a maximum security prison and an average of $30,000 across all federal prisons.

“That … may be what finally gets us to actually close the prison. I mean the costs are astronomical, when you compare them to what it would cost to detain somebody in the United States,” CAP’s Ken Gude recently told Reuters.

Or perhaps what might move Congress and the President is what the U.S. government could spend that money on otherwise, Reuters has some examples:

Just one inmate from Guantanamo, for example, is equivalent to the cost of 12 weeks of White House tours for the public — a treasured tradition that the Secret Service says costs $74,000 a week and that has been axed under sequestration.

A single inmate is also the equivalent of keeping open the control tower at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport for 45 months. That control tower, another victim of cuts, costs $20,000 per month to run.

The $900,000 also matches the funding for nearly seven states to help serve home delivered meals to the elderly. Sequestration has cost Meals on Wheels a median shortfall of $129,497 per state, the organization says.

Or measured in terms of military spending and national security, the cost of four inmates represents the cost of training an Air Force fighter pilot – based on the Department of Defense’s figure of $3.6 million per pilot.

President Obama agrees. As the hunger strike and force-feeding crises at Gitmo were heating up, the President announced last month that he would renew his administration’s long-stalled efforts to close the prison. “I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,” he said, adding: “It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”

While Republicans in Congress aren’t exactly lining up behind the president on this issue, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) last week tried to push his colleagues in right direction. “Wouldn’t it be an act of courage to find a place to put [the Gitmo detainees] and designate it? It’s not that it’s rocket science,” McCain said.

“In addition to the rule of law implications, Members of Congress must take a serious look at the economic consequences of maintaining GTMO,” said Mason Clutter, National Security and Privacy Counsel to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, in a statement to ThinkProgress. “It is time for Congress to accept that GTMO has damaged the United States — both legally and economically — and work towards responsible closure of the facility.”

The President is expected to address Guantanamo in a wider speech on his counterterrorism policies on Thursday but press secretary Jay Carney said on Tuesday that the White House will not have any specifics on closing Gitmo ahead of the speech.

Of the 166 detainees at Gitmo, the military says 103 are on hunger strike and 30 are being force-fed. Nearly 90 detainees — including some currently on hunger strike — have been cleared for release and Obama currently has the power to order dozens of them to be transferred immediately. Nine have been charged or convicted of crimes, 24 are eligible for possible prosecution and another 47 haven’t been charged but are reportedly considered “too dangerous for release.”

(Credit: AP)

The International Crisis Group (ICG) on Tuesday published a new report “Drones: Myths And Reality In Pakistan,” examining the ongoing war against militant groups located in Pakistan. The report calls on both the United States and Pakistan to come clean about the ongoing use of drones against suspected terrorists, saying that more than strikes are needed to end Pakistan’s ongoing problem with militants.

Since 2004, according to the ICG, at least 350 U.S. drone strikes have taken place on Pakistani soil, within the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). Complicating operations against militant groups based in the area, the vast majority of Pakistan’s laws simply do not apply to the FATA, with the region instead following its own set of tribal laws and codes. Given the lack of control Islamabad exerts, the FATA has long been a haven for armed groups, including those who strike across the border in Afghanistan, including Mullah Omar’s Taliban and the Haqqani Network, as well as the Pakistani Taliban, which strikes against Pakistan itself.

One of the major issues ICG raises regarding drone strikes in the area is the lack of firm intelligence about precisely who is being targeted. In place of firm data, the U.S. often utilizes what are known as “signature strikes” or “personality strikes.” Groups of men between 16-55 who meet a certain profile are often considered legitimate targets, based on “pattern of life” data including where they’ve traveled while under surveillance and whether or not they were in the vicinity of known targets when the strike occurred.

As the report details, Pakistan and U.S. are locked in delicate dance over the actual use of drones within Pakistan, each concealing the full truth from the public. The U.S. still won’t officially confirm that the CIA-run targeted killing program within Pakistan even exists. The IGC says Pakistan often displays behavior that “borders on the schizophrenic” when it comes to the drone program. The Pakistani government often claims to have no forewarning about the use of drones and publicly denounces many of the strikes, even with ample evidence that they provide permission for the operations to occur, especially when carried out against its enemies.

ICG suggests both Washington and Islamabad become more transparent about the relationship the two have on drone strikes, while shifting their policies away from relying solely on military options, and instead taking a more comprehensive approach to combating militancy:

The U.S. policy should be two-fold: pressuring the Pakistan military to abandon any logistical or other support to violent extremists, including by more rigorously applying existing conditions on security assistance; and encouraging and supporting efforts by the elected leadership in Islamabad to extend the state’s writ to FATA.

Similarly, if Pakistan is genuinely committed to ending strikes on its territory, it should realise that its strongest case against the U.S. drone program lies in overhauling an anachronistic governance system so as to establish fundamental constitutional rights and genuine political enfranchisement in FATA, along with a state apparatus capable of upholding the rule of law and bringing violent extremists to justice.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister-elect Nawiz Sharif seems keen on holding talks with the Pakistani Taliban. “All options should be tried, and guns are not a solution to all problems,” Sharif said in a speech to newly elected members of his party on Monday. “Why shouldn’t we sit and talk, engage in dialogue?” While Pakistan did last year name militants an even greater threat to the country than arch-rival India, it’s less certain how the Pakistani Army, often considered the true seat of power in the country, will act in response to Sharif’s call for talks. “We sincerely desire that all those who have strayed and have picked up arms against the nation return to the national fold,” Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said on Saturday. “However, this is only possible once they unconditionally submit to the state, its constitution and the rule of law.”

For the United States’ part, it appears the CIA’s drone program will continue flying in Pakistan, according to a report from Reuters, even as other segments of the targeted killing program move more firmly into the Pentagon’s control. More broadly, President Obama is set to give a speech on Thursday laying out his counterterrorism strategy moving forward, including presumably how and when drones are used.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is leading the GOP's Benghazi witch-hunt (Credit: Reuters)

Roll Call reports that Republican aides are saying staffers are getting bogged down chasing bogus accusations.

“We have got to get past that and figure out what are we going to do going forward,” a GOP aide told Roll Call. “Some of the accusations, I mean you wouldn’t believe some of this stuff. It’s just — I mean, you’ve got to be on Mars to come up with some of this stuff.” Another aide expressed frustration at accusations that military assets weren’t properly deployed during the night of the attacks and that a team from Tripoli could have been flown in to fight off the attackers:

“There are some real issues there and then there is just some crazy stuff,” the senior House GOP aide said. “The crazy stuff is, you know, the airman in Ramstein [Air Base, Germany,] that knew that the Predator [drone] was armed. There are no armed Predators in the region there. The [status of forces agreement] does not allow us to fly them armed, and everybody knows it.” [...]

GOP aides described another criticism aired at a recent House Oversight Committee hearing that there were four security officers at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli who were ordered to remain in the capital for several hours after the first reports of an attack, rather than being scrambled to assist the consulate in Benghazi.

“The stand-down order was for four guys,” the GOP aide said. “When you step back and say how were the people killed at the annex, they were killed by an indirect fire mortar round. Four more M-4s [rifles] inside the annex doesn’t change that outcome. In fact, they might have just created more casualties. We have got to get down to what really happened on the DoD side and for us the DoD side was not properly postured, why?”

It appears that some Republicans are also beginning to see that the GOP’s Benghazi affair isn’t paying dividends. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell backed away from some Republicans’ baseless claims of an Obama White House cover-up. And Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) in an interview on Fox News on Monday warned his colleagues about taking the issue too far:

BLUNT: I think the real challenge here for Republicans, frankly, is to be patient and methodical when you’re outraged. It’s hard to do when you’re outraged. But the right thing to do here is let the facts come out, don’t try to prejudge what they are.

Rep. John Mica (R-FL) recently dropped his support for a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks. Republicans have been calling for creating the committee, but House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) hasn’t been supportive. “I think Mr. Boehner made the right decision,” Mica said.

Behind the scenes in the House, a GOP aide told Roll Call that staffers will push to address lessons learned from Benghazi. “We’re trying to stay on the substance of it,” one senior GOP aide said. “There has got to be some good that comes out of those fatalities.”

The State Department thinks so too. On Monday it released a fact sheet detailing its implementation of the Benghazi Accountability Review Board’s 24 unclassified recommendations, which include “plans to send dozens of additional diplomatic security agents to high-threat embassies, install millions of dollars of advanced fire-survival gear and surveillance cameras in those diplomatic posts, and improve training for employees headed to the riskiest missions.”

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) introduced a bill last week to provide funding to increase embassy security. The focus “should not be to score political points at the expense of the families of the four victims,” he said. “It should be on doing all we can to protect our personnel serving overseas.”

(Credit: CBS News)

It’s unclear at this point what that shift will look like. The Daily Beast reported in March that “the CIA is close to taking a major step toward getting out of the targeted killing business” but Reuters reported on Tuesday that the CIA will keep control of its secret drone program in Pakistan.

The draft document outlining the plans, the Wall Street Journal reports, “reflects a growing consensus within the Obama administration that the long-term future of the program lies with the military, where U.S. officials say it will be on firmer legal footing and be more transparent.”

President Obama is expected to deliver a major speech on Thursday outlining his administration’s counterterrorism policies, including, one White House official said, “our military, diplomatic, intelligence and legal efforts.”

“Barack Obama has got to be concerned about his legacy,” a “former adviser” told the Daily Beast back in March. “He doesn’t want drones to become his Guantánamo.”

In other news:

The Washington Post reports: Chinese hackers who breached Google’s servers several years ago gained access to a sensitive database with years’ worth of information about U.S. surveillance targets, according to current and former government officials.

The New York Times reports: By late this summer, the State Department plans to send dozens of additional diplomatic security agents to high-threat embassies, install millions of dollars of advanced fire-survival gear and surveillance cameras in those diplomatic posts, and improve training for employees headed to the riskiest missions.

The Times also reports: Lebanon reeled Monday from the twin realizations that Hezbollah, the nation’s most powerful military and political organization, was plunging deeper into a war the country has tried to stay out of, and that the group was taking unaccustomed losses.

(Credit: Getty Images)

Sadly, Mary’s story echoed other reports that have been coming out of Pibor over the last days and weeks. And they all speak to the growing humanitarian crisis in this war-torn part of the world.

For several weeks, residents of Pibor have been terrorized by the government forces known as the SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army). We’ve heard reports of shops and homes being looted, civilians being killed, and dwellings being burned (sometimes with people still inside of them). Thousands of people sought shelter in the bush, making forays into town to get whatever food was still available in the local market.

The breaking point for many came a couple of weeks ago, when a woman was killed along with her teenage daughter and infant child, while a toddler was left barely alive after being stabbed multiple times. After this, the idea of even short trips into Pibor became untenable for some. We heard of two separate incidents of people who had stepped on landmines but chose to stay in the bush rather than seek medical help for fear of being attacked.

Compounding the problem has been the activities of a local rebel leader named David Yau Yau, who launched an uprising in Jonglei after failing to win a local election in 2010. He recently captured the town of Boma, not far from Pibor. As he threatened to march on Pibor, the last of the civilians fled the town, along with the few remaining humanitarian agencies. The SPLA took advantage of the departures by looting those agencies’ compounds.

Now there are thousands of people hiding in the bush, with no food, shelter, or access to medical services. And it is May, which means the beginning of the rainy season. In a few weeks, their pathetic “refuge” will be underwater. With Pibor and the rest of the county basically cut-off for the next eight months, aid workers fear that a humanitarian catastrophe is about to unfold. Although the situation in Pibor is extreme, it is not isolated. There are reports of SPLA abuses throughout Jonglei state. Time and again, humanitarian actors working in the state have told us that the biggest threat to civilians is the SPLA. There is a U.N. peacekeeping mission operating in the state with a mandate to protect civilians. But after one of its helicopters was shot down last December, the mission has been forced to rely on the SPLA to grant it access to many areas — permission that is often denied.

The SPLA is also blocking humanitarian workers’ access to entire sections of Pibor County, leaving a population of almost 140,000 with no services.

It needs to be made clear to the government of South Sudan that this cannot continue. Not only is the government not living up to its obligations to protect its own citizens, but its forces are actively preventing others from making any attempt to do so. Most people in Pibor County have been displaced multiple times because of the activities of the SPLA. Nothing is being done to stop this.

The international community is not blameless either. Donor nations need to take responsibility and push for humanitarian access in Jonglei state. The United States is the biggest bilateral donor to security sector reform in South Sudan. It should use the influence that comes with this to demand a crackdown on SPLA abuses and a reinforced chain-of-command that would help end this culture of impunity.

For the people of Pibor, time is running out.

AFDI ad at the U St/Cardoza Metrorail station

In the newest poster, a Saudi Arabian highway sign is pictured, which instructs drivers travelling to Mecca to keep to the left, while non-Muslims must stay to the right to travel to the nearby city of Jeddah instead. “This is Islamic Apartheid,” the ad declares, imploring that the government “Stop U.S. Aid to Islamic Countries.”

It is unclear what the ad means when it suggests that Saudi Arabia is carrying out “apartheid” against non-Muslims. In apartheid South Africa, the ruling class carried out a series of policies that stripped black Africans of their citizenship, segregated their education, medical care, and other government services, and denied them of the right to assemble or own property. Riyadh’s ban on non-Muslims entering Mecca is definitely a form of segregation, but is a one-off rule, given the city’s unique role in Islamic theology, and one that does not hold true in even the second-most holy city, Medina.

It is true that many other troubling instances of segregation occur throughout Saudi society, particularly when it relates to the treatment of women. It can even be argued that a form of “gender apartheid” exists within the Kingdom, where women are systematically denied legal rights and status. But the example Geller puts forward in her ad does not address that inequality, and fails to reach the same level as seen in the white dominance in Apartheid South Africa. Instead, it seems far more likely that Geller is looking to raise baseless fears of similar policies taking hold in the United States.

It’s also unclear what the ad means in calling on the U.S. to stop sending aid to “Islamic countries.” Without defining what “Islamic countries” means, it could refer to one of two things: either states that have a majority Muslim population or countries that incorporate some degree of Islamic law into their legal system. If the former, Geller could be calling for an end to humanitarian aid to Syria and Somalia, military aid to NATO-ally Turkey, or disaster relief to Indonesia. If the latter, that would mean ending ties between many key U.S. allies in combating terrorism including Pakistan and Yemen, and ceasing assistance to Afghanistan after U.S. combat forces leave in 2014.

The ad is the latest in a series from the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), a group headed by Geller and whose sole purpose is to trumpet the supposed threat that all Muslims pose to the United States. The AFDI has placed the posters in public transit systems around the country for almost a year now, including in San Francisco, New York City, and DC so far. The posters have sparked a massive backlash wherever they’ve been placed, inspiring response ads from interfaith leaders, Muslim advocacy groups, and grassroots campaigns.

Unlike San Francisco, however, a DC transport press official confirmed to ThinkProgress that DC’s public transit system does not donate the proceeds from Geller’s ads to charity. Instead, WMATA has instituted a policy of placing a disclaimer at the bottom of the ads, disavowing themselves of anything resembling agreement with the content.

(Credit: AP/Aleppo Media Center)

“Taking the town of Qusayr, southwest of the city of Homs,” the Journal notes, “would bolster recent gains by regime forces in central Syria and around the capital, Damascus” and could also “further embolden Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”

Meanwhile, in an interview with an Argentinian newspaper, Assad appeared to downplay the utility of any U.S.-Russian-backed peace process. “We support and applaud the efforts, but we must be realistic,” he said. “There cannot be a unilateral solution in Syria; two parties are needed at least.”

In other news:

Reuters reports: Iran’s electoral watchdog said on Monday it would bar physically feeble candidates from running for president, in an apparent hint that it could disqualify 78-year-old former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from the race.

The Washington Post reports: President Obama will deliver a speech Thursday at the National Defense University in which he will address how he intends to bring his counterterrorism policies, including the drone program and the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in line with the legal framework he promised after taking office.

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. is seeing a spike in al Qaeda-related terror plots and threats against its embassies in Libya, Yemen and Egypt, say current and former U.S. officials citing domestic and foreign intelligence reports.

(Photo: Amb. Chris Stevens, left, in Tripoli, Libya in Aug. 2012, Credit: AP)

I didn’t know Chris Stevens. I admit that the first I’d heard of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya was the morning of Sept. 12, when I woke up and, along with the rest of the country, learned that he and three others had died in an attack on a diplomatic mission in Benghazi. By all accounts, Stevens was well-respected among his peers and adored by his family and friends. I didn’t know Ambassador Stevens, but I do know one thing: he deserved better from his government all in these weeks and months after his death, from the Republican party that chose to place him center ring in an embarrassing circus to the Obama administration that failed in its responsibility to keep him safe.

In retrospect, the original Republican attempt to co-opt his death and turn it into something political, a weapon to use against President Obama’s reelection, is almost to be expected. The Obama administration’s troubling lack of transparency when it comes to national security matters certainly didn’t help debunk the inchoate sense that something was being hidden from the public.

Since the election, however, the furor over Benghazi hasn’t settled into sober examination of just went wrong. Instead, the sniping and bickering has seemed to escalate, keeping the tone surrounding the tragedy somewhere in the range of the level of discourse during the Whitewater scandal. By allowing the conversation to stay firmly on the questions that don’t matter, such as “Who changed the talking points?”, we manage to avoid the questions that do, such as “What do we do to keep this from happening again?”

Republicans in Congress have sought to play up the former for all its worth, resulting in a waxing and waning faux scandal that reemerges to the headlines every few months. In the months after the election, Republican senators threatened to filibuster any number of President Obama’s potential nominees unless they learned “the truth” about what happened. In the process, they and their House colleagues relentlessly attacked U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice for her presentation of what the administration initial knew about the tragedy, calling her “incompetent” and eventually forcing her to remove herself from the running to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. As the release this week of emails surrounding the drafting of the talking points Rice used revealed, those attacks were misplaced.

The very real role that the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee has in policing the Executive Branch has likewise devolved into a witch-hunt, searching for someone, anyone to burn at the stake, despite learning nothing new in many of them. Four dead Americans, is the repeated refrain from Republican congressmen, without seeming to care how or why they wound up that way or preventing more from reaching a similar fate. To aid their pursuit, the House Republicans have developed their own report on Benghazi, one filled with misleading evidence twisted to reveal a mythical cover-up.

It’s not as though the Republicans have been forced to hunt for legitimate things to criticize the Obama administration for in the wake of Benghazi. The State Department convened what’s known as an Accountability Review Board to examine just went wrong in the lead-up to the attack and how to fix them in the future. The final report from the Board, co-chaired by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen and former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, revealed real issues with the State Department’s execution of diplomatic security. The unclassified version of the report names twenty-four recommendations for preventing further loss of life at missions in high-risk areas, with the classified version putting forward another five recommendations.

Among the more damning findings of the Board for the Obama administration is that the security posture at Special Mission in Benghazi was “inadequate,” to put it mildly, due both to failures at State to provide the requisite tools needed and funding that was lacking. To prevent future State Department facilities from experiencing the latter, the Board recommended that State “work with Congress to restore the Capital Security Cost Sharing Program at its full capacity,” boosting the program’s funding to about $2.2 billion in fiscal year 2015, “prioritized for construction of new facilities in high risk, high threat areas.” It also suggested working with Congress to use Overseas Contingency Operations funding — the money set aside to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — to help meet the needs of high risk, high threat posts.

And it isn’t as if there hasn’t been opportunity for Republicans to work together with Democrats to implement these recommendations. In February, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) authored a bill that would transfer $1.3 billion in unused funding bookmarked for Iraq to the Department of State to bolster embassy security as the Board suggested. To his credit, Sen. Graham co-sponsored that bill, which passed the Senate by unanimous consent. It still sits in the House of Representatives, however, having not been referred to any committee for deliberation.

March’s continuing resolution to keep the government funded did include a boost in funding for embassy security that brought it back in line with the President’s request. In the face of sequestration’s across the board cuts, however, its uncertain whether embassy security funding will be able to remain at that level. And given that part of the problem that led to that lack of security at the mission in Benghazi was the poor decision making regarding the prioritization of funds, its not clear how sustainable this band-aid really is. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) on Thursday introduced the Embassy Security and Personnel Protection Act to more permanently enact the increase in funding to the Capital Security Cost-Sharing Program the Board suggested. No Republicans have thus far chosen to serve as co-sponsors of the bill.

A search of the Library of Congress’ repository of legislation also reveals that of the most vocal critics of the administration in the House, only House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce has cosponsored a bill related to diplomatic security. None have introduced their own legislation related to this topic, and neither House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa nor Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) have signed on to support the only Republican-drafted bills that seek to improve the way the State Department handles personnel failures discovered in the course of internal reviews and procures contractors to aid in providing security to its facilities. Instead, Chaffetz in November once proudly declared on Fox News that he had in fact voted to cut funding for embassy security.

The real reason this is such a shame is that Amb. Stevens not only deserved better from the GOP in Congress, he deserved better from the administration he served. It’s certainly true that Stevens was an experienced diplomat, who knew the risks diplomatic officers in a dangerous country assume. But that’s not an excuse for poor diplomatic security. Yet Republican scandalmongering has given the administration a free pass on having a serious conversation with the public about whether or not we’re doing enough to protect our diplomats, though it has recently stepped up its efforts to actually prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

But it’s not yet enough. The Center for American Progress’ own Brian Katulis and Peter Juul recently laid out the possible repercussions of the executive and legislative branches putting Benghazi flash over substance:

The effort to turn the Benghazi attack into a political albatross for current and former Obama administration officials has done and will do significant damage to American diplomatic efforts in hostile environments. Policymakers may become even more reluctant to take risks with diplomatic personnel in these situations for fear of a political boomerang if something goes wrong.

As a result, the default policy may be to retrench behind the walls of so-called fortress embassies, take few if any risks with nonmilitary personnel, and surrender potential American influence on the ground in dangerous parts of the world. By flogging the phantom scandal of Benghazi, Obama administration critics who demand more direct intervention in Syria ironically are undermining their own argument. And if something goes wrong and Americans die, the administration will likely be rewarded with scandalmongering by advocates of the very policy that put American personnel at risk in the first place.

In the absence of strong action, the government could soon find itself relying more heavily on private security groups — like Acedemi, the artist formerly known as Blackwater — to provide protection to its diplomats, something many progressives, and host peoples, might blanch at. As Rachel Maddow pointed out in her book Drift, the trend over the past three decades towards the use of private military companies and contractors in place of government assets has resulted in a shadowy world of security with little oversight and less transparency. For that solution to be shoddily slapped onto the problem diplomatic security poses would be a disservice to both the public and those the government is meant to protect.

Unfortunately, it’s looking like the Republican probe into Benghazi could last until 2014, dragging it into yet another election cycle. Despite the fact that non-Republican voters see Benghazi as a non-scandal, GOP members of Congress will keep hammering away at it, continuing to suck the air out of legislative efforts to improve diplomatic security.

Republicans have held up Ambassador Stevens’ death for months as a symbol of everything that’s wrong in Washington. And, in a way, they’re right.

“You’re talking about others who may have said various things about this, let me tell you what I think about it. It’s clear there was inadequate security out there and it’s very clear that it was inconvenient within six weeks of the election, for the administration to in effect announce, that it was a terrorist attack,” McConnell said. “I think that’s worth examining, it is going to be examined.”

But asked repeatedly if Republicans should tone down their attacks against the administration, McConnell demurred, saying only that Obama should allow for an investigation. He also couldn’t identify specific evidence of an administration cover-up:

DAVID GREGORY (HOST): But you have specific evidence that they made up a tale, or was it based on information they had at the time?

MCCONNELL: Well, the talking points clearly were not accurate. I think getting to the bottom of this is an important investigation.

Watch it:

E-mails between the White House, CIA, State Department, Justice Department, and the FBI show that Rice’s remarks reflect the early view of the intelligence community and were produced with few changes from the White House. On Thursday, CBS’ Major Garrett reported that Republican sources misquoted or significantly embellished the emails officials used to draft Rice’s remarks in order to implicate the administration in a conspiracy to mislead the public about Benghazi.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) have both argued that Obama could be impeached for his handling of the attacks in Benghazi.

On February 6, a number of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison started a hunger strike after guards there allegedly searched their Qurans, an act the detainees viewed as mistreating Islam’s holy book and saw as violating a long-standing agreement with authorities at Gitmo. But now the hunger strike is 100 days old with no end in sight. Dozens more prisoners have joined the protest (102 of the 166 detainees by the military’s count, but detainee lawyers say the number is closer to 130) and the military says 30 hunger strikers are being force-fed, mostly against their will.

While the hunger strike has had the benefit of sparking wider media attention to the detainees’ predicament and renewing interest in closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, particularly from President Obama, the situation in and of itself is looking more like a lose-lose proposition for all sides involved: a public relations disaster for the U.S. military and the Obama administration and, for the detainees, many of whom have been cleared for release, malnutrition, the possibility of being force-fed — which experts and rights groups say violates international law and could be viewed as torture — or perhaps even death.

Ultimately, the problems at Guantanamo Bay won’t end until the prison is closed. But lawyers for hunger striking detainees have said that, at the very least, there are seemingly non-complicated ways to end this hunger strike. Listed below are some ways, they said, to achieve that result. And indeed, one possible prescription for beginning to end the hunger strike could also serve as one step in the process of closing the Gitmo prison all together:

1. Begin A Dialogue With The Detainees And Detainee Lawyers.

Gitmo authorities appear to have taken a more forceful approach to trying to end the hunger strike. A Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay Standard Operation Procedure for medical management of detainees on hunger strike obtained by Al-Jazeera says “in the event of a mass strike, isolating hunger striking patients from each other is vital to prevent them from achieving solidarity.”

“The military is under a command now that is determined not to compromise — determined not to blink first, so to speak, and it’s not going to do anything about the men’s demands, not even talk to them until the men break their hunger strike,” David Remes, a lawyer representing some detainees on hunger strike, said last week on CBC’s As It Happens.

U.S. Army Captain Jason Wright, a Pentagon lawyer representing Gitmo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, said that approach is making the situation worse and that those in command so far refuse to work for a negotiated settlement. “They can engage in a constructive dialogue with the detainees and the lawyers for the detainees about how to end the hunger strike,” he said in an interview with ThinkProgress. “That hasn’t happened.”

Remes said dialogue has proved successful to mitigate previous hunger strikes. Before the new command took over last summer, he says, “whenever there was an issue of importance to the men, the detention operations people would sit down with them and work out some kind of solution that satisfied everybody.” But now, he added, the new command is “determined to show who’s boss … by doing things that provoke the men.”

Wright added, “We have reached out to the administration and to the camp administration and they are not interested in speaking with us.”

2. Deal With The Quran Issue.

Detainee lawyers said that Gitmo command could reduce those on hunger strike by either ending the practice of searching detainee Qurans or, alternatively, allowing the detainees to give them up. Detainee lawyer Carlos Warner explained in an interview with ThinkProgress:

WARNER: [Detainees could] voluntary surrender them. The first time this happened was in 2006 during that hunger strike which was pretty massive in its own right, I think 140 people reported by the military, and that strike was sparked because of these alleged suicides and a Quran search. And the accommodation that was made was that the military agreed to allow the men by their own volition to voluntarily surrender the Qurans to them. And they could obviously ask for them back at any point but the men would rather provide the Quran than have it searched by the military in the manner that it was being searched.

“They hadn’t searched the Qurans in this manner in four or five years,” Warner added, “They started searching it again in the same way they did in 2006 and the demand was, again, allow us to voluntarily surrender the Qurans. So I took this to the military and I said this is the demand that you have to resolve the strike and they said, ‘we would never ever do this.’”

3. Start Releasing Detainees.

“What I know from talking to the people down there,” Carol Rosenberg, a Miami Herald reporter covering Guantanamo, said on NPR earlier this month, is the hunger strikers “need somebody to leave, for the prisoners to regain the hope of the possibility of departure. And that could be — I’m not saying it will be — but it could be the mechanism that ends this hunger strike.”

In his interview with ThinkProgress, Wright agreed. “I think a more strategic way to end the hunger strike could possibly be for the administration to take immediate steps to start releasing some of the detainees,” he said, “I think that would bring an added element of hope to their plight.”

Warner said that while some hunger strikers will still hold out because they may be concerned about different issues, he added that “they ultimately could be resolved too in pretty short order just by starting to release the men.”

But how? CAP expert Ken Gude recently explained. “The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act made important changes to previous restrictions granting the Secretary of Defense more discretion in making determinations to transfer Guantanamo detainees,” Gude says, adding: “President Obama should instruct Secretary of Defense Hagel to use that authority.”

Who should the U.S. release? “Of the 86 prisoners approved by a presidential task force four years ago for transfer out of Gitmo,” the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday, “59 are Yemenis — and their new government wants them back.”

Sparked by this most recent hunger strike, and perhaps by some internal bureaucratic wrangling, President Obama announced last month that he’ll restart efforts to close Gitmo.

“I am more optimistic this time around, because he’s no longer naive about the politics,” David Cole, a professor of constitutional law and national security at Georgetown, told the Daily Beast in a piece published this week. “He’s lived through four years of stalemate on this, so the fact that he was nonetheless as strong and passionate about his concerns suggests to me that he really has made a renewed commitment to take it on.”

Indeed, and by exercising his authority to transfer detainees cleared for release, particularly the Yemenis, the President could help end the hunger strike and begin the long process of finally closing Gitmo for good.

CBS News’ Major Garrett confirmed that it was a GOP source who leaked the altered emails.

The miscast quotes affect at least two emails that include a State Department spokesperson and a White House deputy adviser — the two parties GOP lawmakers insist were trying to engage a cover-up on behalf of the Obama administration to protect the president’s chances of re-election.

A leaked email adds new language to State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland’s email, including a specific reference to al-Qaeda:

“The penultimate point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by the Agency (CIA) about al-Qaeda’s presence and activities of al-Qaeda.“

The actual email read:

“The penultimate point could be abused by members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings.“

A leaked email written by deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes suggests that he asked for the final draft to remove references to warnings about specific attacks, a demand made by the State Department:

“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation.”

But the actual email did not mention the State Department:

“We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.”

Since the congressional hearings last week, the White House on Wednesday released a hundred pages of emails from after the consulate attack. The full version undermines already-thin accusations that this is a White House scandal.

(Credit: AP)

The military’s sexual assault crisis has been in the headlines consistently for the past two weeks, leading two members of Congress to call on President Obama to take executive action and fix it.

Sen. John Tester (D-MT) and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) introduced the Ruth Moore Act of 2013 earlier this year to help the victims of sexual assault receive benefits once they leave the military. At present, the burden of proof for victims of rape and sexual assault to qualify for disability benefits for conditions related to their trauma, including treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, is shockingly high, leaving many men and women unable to receive the care they need. A scheduled hearing on the bill was meant to take place on Wednesday, but has instead been delayed until June 3.

Rather than waiting for the Ruth Moore Act to pass, the bill’s sponsors sent Obama a letter on Thursday calling on him to use his authority as president to act now:

We commend your willingness to work with Congress to address the prevalence of sexual assault in the military. However, given the increasing rate of these assaults and the dramatic implications they are having on our service members, veterans, and their families, we strongly urge you to take further action to confront this crisis. In particular, you have the ability to provide justice for thousands of survivors of service-related sexual trauma by calling for more fairness in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) disability claims process, and increasing their ability to access the benefits they desperately need. [...]

Our legislation continues to garner support in Congress and has been endorsed by every major veterans’ service organization. Legislation, however, is not necessary to keep faith with these veterans. In 2010, the VA relaxed evidentiary standards to make it easier for combat veterans suffering from PTSD to get the disability benefits they need. It is past time the VA make a similar regulatory change for MST survivors. And you can direct them to do so.

Sexual assault and rape culture in the military has reached a tipping point in the last two weeks, with multiple stories about officials in positions to prevent assaults being charged or investigated for sexual assault themselves. “We’re losing the confidence of the women who serve that we can solve this problem,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said on Thursday. “That’s a crisis.”

Obama invited Dempsey, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and several other military officials to the White House on Thursday to discuss the crisis. “The issue of sexual assault in our armed forces undermines that trust,” Obama said following the meeting. “So not only is it a crime, not only is it shameful and disgraceful, but it also is going to make and has made the military less effective than it can be. And as such, it is dangerous to our national security.” However, Obama warned, “there’s no silver bullet to solving this problem.”

Along with the Ruth More Act, several other pieces of legislation meant to address sexual assault in the armed services are pending on the Hill. Members of both parties and from both Houses of Congress signed on to co-sponsor the Military Justice Improvement Act, a bill seeking to revise the convening authority that officers previously used to overturn juries’ sexual assault convictions against their subordinates. The likewise bipartisan Combating Military Sexual Assault (MSA) Act of 2013 would reorganize the military’s support system for sexual assault victims, providing Special Victims Counsel to all victims.

In its most recent report, the Pentagon estimated 26,000 instances of sexual assault occurred against servicemembers last year, a twenty-seven percent increase over the previous year. Several polling experts, however, recently warned that the estimate may be off, as in their view it may be, as Bloomberg reported, “based on scanty response rates, questionable data and broad definitions of what constitutes abuse.”

“The fact that more than 1.5 million have registered or have appointments with UNHCR sadly means the actual number is much higher,” the agency said in a statement.

“Refugees tell us the increased fighting and changing of control of towns and villages, in particular in conflict areas, results in more and more civilians deciding to leave. Over the past four months we have seen a rapid deterioration when compared to the previous 20 months of this conflict,” UNHCR spokesman Dan McNorton said at a press conference.

Reuters notes that “[m]ost of the refugees have fled to neighboring Lebanon and Jordan where UNHCR said it had counted 470,457 and 473,587 respectively this week.”

The president of the U.N. General Assembly said on Wednesday that at least 80,000 have died so far in Syria’s two-year long civil war, 20,000 more since January.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that the “Syrian opposition is demanding access to arms before planned peace talks next month, amid a growing consensus that it may take a shift in the balance of power on the battlefield before any meaningful negotiations can take place.”

In other news:

USA Today reports: The Pentagon has cyberattack capabilities that allow the U.S. military to help blind Syrian air defenses without firing a shot, according to military analysts.

The Los Angeles Times reports: Disclosure of a highly classified intelligence operation in Yemen last year compromised an exceedingly rare and valuable espionage achievement: an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists, according to U.S. officials.

Reuters reports: U.S. military instructors in Niger will train African forces participating in a U.N.-backed offensive against al Qaeda-linked Islamist militants in neighboring Mali, senior military officers said on Thursday.