Unanswered Questions on COIN in Afghanistan

I just got done listening to the President's speech on Afghanistan this morning. Unfortunately, I didn't get what I was looking for out of it.

To me, the big questions on Afghanistan are (1) What are our strategic goals in the Afghanistan conflict and (2) what strategy will we use to achieve those goals, and (3) why is this strategy superior to our other alternatives? What I got out of the speech did more or less answer (1) and (2), but the answer to (2) was lacking and (3) was non-existent.

The President does seem to think that preventing another attack is the primary strategic goal, and I think that's appropriately narrow. In theory, we could go for a "integrating the gap" goal as well, although that's probably too ambitious at this time. But, that leads us to the deficiency in the second answer. A COIN strategy will be pursued--much like in Iraq--perhaps too much like Iraq. But a COIN strategy is very likely above and beyond the level of commitment necessary to achieve the stated strategic goal, and is more in line with a grander objectives of bringing Afghanistan into the community of nations and improving regional stability--objectives which are not on the table.

I would like to hear from the President (or the Pentagon) why alternative approaches wouldn't be better. Why is it vital to our security interests that Afghanistan's current government retain power (or perhaps it would be better to say, gain control of the "nation")? Sure, we don't want the country to become a haven for terrorists again. But it's not like the "nation" of Afghanistan (without our help) will have the military might necessary to keep us out. So where is the "safe haven?" We can have ISR assets there at any time, operators on the ground at any time, bomb a training camp at any time, arrest suspected terrorists at any time, etc. etc. Obviously, from a legal perspective, that wouldn't involve treating Afghanistan as a co-equal Westphalian nation-state--which makes perfect sense, because it is not.

Hence the problem with a COIN strategy. Missing completely from the President's speech was any statement suggesting any consideration of the differences between Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq has been a relatively stable united nation-state with a well-developed national government and an educated middle-class. Success of COIN in Iraq comes largely from providing security to allow the political process to run its course so that the new government can do its job. Afghanistan is entirely different. It isn't a nation-state at all, but a collection of tribes, none of whom care about the non existent "nation" of Afghanistan. There very little civil society or government institutions to build on. A COIN strategy in Afghanistan isn't just about providing security, it is attempting to fundamentally transform the Afghan society in an incredibly radical way. It is an enormous task that is going to take an incredibly long time to achieve, assuming that it can be achieved at all.

And for the President to insist that we can achieve this, with short-term timetables about creating a domestic security force, like Iraq, and benchmarks for political progress, like Iraq, just seems disingenuous. There is no way an Iraq-style surge is going to work as well in Afghanistan. So what we have here is a strategy that is going to require a massive, open-ended, long term commitment, but we are obviously not committed to the level of effort it's going to take.

This administration needs to take a long look at what we need to accomplish, what we can accomplish, and what we're willing to accomplish, and fit our strategy to those parameters. Funny, but I thought that's what we were supposed to be doing with our review of the Afghanistan strategy.

Morality of Interrogation: A Thought Experiment

I have always been a person who believes that the United States should always hold the moral high ground, and I didn't change my mind about that after 9/11. If there is anything revealed by the debate sparked by the "torture memos," though, it is that it is hard to see where that moral high ground is. In this post, I'm going to try to work through this and see if I can arrive at a conclusion.

I watched a great debate between FNC anchor (and attorney) Megan Kelly and Sr. Legal Correspondent Judge Andrew Napolitano on Beck yesterday. As interesting as it was, it also demonstrated the limits of using legal thought to work through this issue. The debate came down to an argument about the definition of torture. Kelly relied on a definition created by Congress that is used for interpretation of the Torture Convention, a standard which the Judge correctly pointed out is so narrow that it wouldn't include medieval torture devices. The Judge offered up a universal standard, “Any intentionally inflicted cruel or inhumane or degrading treatment, unauthorized by a court of law, perpetrated for the punishment of the victim, to extract statements from the victim, or to gratify the perpetrator,” which IMO makes a lot more sense intuitively. So I think in terms of definitions, the Judge has it right (although in legal terms, the "universal" definition doesn't have the weight that Congress' definition has, so Kelly won on the law).

Unfortunately, I don't really care that much about the law or the definition for their own sakes. I care about knowing where to draw the line, and that isn't necessarily determined by a definition. And the law should be based on that line, not the other way around.

I think the Judge's definition of torture makes sense linguistically, but morally, I cannot say that it is categorically wrong to "inflict cruel or inhumane or degrading treatment to extract statements" from a terrorist. (I can say that it is categorically wrong to do so for the purpose of punishment--without authorization by a court, or for the gratification of the perpetrator). Which means this definition isn't the last word for the purpose of drawing any lines. I think we need another principle.

What principles should be in effect for the boundaries of interrogation? Well, going back to the definition for what it is good for, I think it should be a principle that we do not punish a person without sanction of a court. This is the same principle that forbids vigilantism and is one of the pillars of the Rule of Law. A second useful principle we can take from the Judge's definition is that we should never inflict harm/cruelty/inhumanity/degradation/whatever on a person for sadistic purposes. Again, this should be obvious, the interrogator is an agent of the state and must act in the interests of the state, not his/her own. These two principles are easy because they both involve purposes which are illegitimate.

But the other purpose--extracting information--is a legitimate purpose because it is a necessary part of the executive's responsibility to protect the lives of its citizens. Knowing that the state has the power to do this, we must use the rights of the individual to define the boundaries of this power. The rights I think applicable here are life, and what I'll call a freedom of bodily integrity (which would be violated by, e.g., a battery). Liberty might be applicable in some cases, but since this issue is based on detainees being terrorist suspects or enemy combatants, the confinement of both are questions settled epochs ago. Life might be easy enough because of its magnitude. Or is it?

I do see a balancing relationship at work here, involving the weighing of the state's duty to save innocents (indeed, we could even weigh the lives of those innocents themselves) and the rights (including the lives) of the suspects/detainees. And I feel it necessary to point out that it is universally accepted in civilized countries that it is NOT wrong to kill when it is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to an innocent, or sometimes even to prevent a forcible felony. So, although I feel a natural urge to categorically say it is wrong to kill a suspect/combatant under any circumstances short of a capital conviction, the aforementioned principle gives me pause. Of course, this principle usually applies to a criminal being killed while attempting a crime, while what we are considering involves a suspect/combatant that is in custody, while his/her comrades are attempting an attack. Is that an important distinction?

Perhaps it is. In the case of a criminal in the middle of a crime, there is no doubt. Whoever is using deadly force to stop the criminal knows the person he/she is about to shoot is the the criminal and knows what harm is being threatened if he/she does not act. When a person is in custody, there is always the question of whether we have the right person. We also cannot always be sure what the person knows, and whether obtaining that knowledge will be sufficient/timely enough to prevent an attack. We may not even know that there is an attack planned to begin with. There is an enormous difference between killing someone knowing it will save an innocent and killing someone hoping that it will. Also, when a person kills a criminal to prevent a crime, the criminal being killed and the person threatening the harm are one and the same person. A terrorist/combatant in custody is not the person threatening the harm; his/her comrades are. The issue here is one of (potential) innocence. So, we have at least two useful principles here.

One principle involves third parties. As mentioned above, the suspect/combatant in custody is not the one who will carry out the attack. In other words, the person who might be killed to prevent the attack may be innocent of the planned attack, while in the justifiable homicide example the person killed is not innocent. The third party issue also comes up on the issue of death, and perhaps harms less than death as well, because death would have to be inflicted on a person other than the person who has the information if the interrogators had any hope of getting it. (Threatening death unless the person talks doesn't work, because killing the person with the information will not result in getting the information, therefore, the purpose of killing must have been punitive, sadistic, or some other illegitimate purpose). I see a bright moral line against harming innocents in order to extract information from another. Doing so would be to become the very evil we are fighting against. However, it should be noted that co-conspirators are NOT innocent. So threatening to kill a suspect's/combatant's family is out-of-bounds, while threatening to kill another member of the plot may not be.

The other principle we can derive from the homicide justification is that that one of the key lines in this issue is formed by what we know. When we know that there is an attack planned, when we know that the attack would kill a large number of people, when we know that a suspect/combatant in custody has knowledge of the attack, and when we know that we could prevent the attack if we obtained that information, it is morally justified to kill to obtain that information. A fortiori, (and for the sake of avoiding the logical absurdity of a dead person giving up information), harms less than death are also morally justified. But, as our knowledge decreases, then so does our justification.

I can think of a few key points on the scale that would effect the balance and determine the level of coercion that would be justified. Permanent injury would be a big one. Like death, permanent injury is an extreme violation, where the rights of the suspect/combatant are at their highest ebb. Arguably, some sorts of permanent injury may be worse than death. So this has to be off the table in all but the most extreme circumstances; i.e., cannot be done unless the interrogators know for sure that inflicting the harm will save many innocent lives.

If the interrogators know for sure that a suspect/combatant has knowledge of an attack, but do not know enough about the attack to know whether the information the suspect/combatant has will enable them to prevent it, the government's interest is still at a very high ebb. Some level of coercion is therefore justified in these circumstances. Death and permanent injury are not. But I cannot say it is wrong to inflict pain, discomfort, humiliation, etc. upon a person who has information about an attack and refuses to disclose it otherwise.

In the vast majority of cases of individuals being detained, we will not know what information they might possess. The will of course still be interrogated. But without knowing for sure, or at least having probable cause to believe that they have information, inflicting any sort of harm upon them cannot be morally justified. In these cases--the vast majority of cases--the lines that Judge Napolitano described are appropriate. Whether criminal suspects or enemy combatants, they should simply be detained and questioned prior to being charged or detained for the duration of the conflict, respectively.

Summary

• The debate about interrogation should be on moral, not legal terms. The law should be written such that it tracks the moral boundaries at issue.
• The moral boundaries of this issue are defined by a balancing of the duty of the government to protect innocent lives (and the value of those lives themselves) vs. the rights of the suspect/combatant in his/her own life and bodily integrity.
• Purposes such as punishment and sadism are illegitimate in the context of interrogation. Punishment may be inflicted only upon sanction by a duly authorized tribunal. Sadistic purposes are never legitimate.
• The principle of justifiable homicide, widely accepted in the civilized world, is assumed to be morally correct and is used as a benchmark. It is morally justified to kill when doing so is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm to innocents, and when the person to be killed is involved in bringing that threat of harm upon the innocents.
• Therefore, it is morally justified to harm or even kill a terrorist/combatant when doing so will prevent the death of innocents. This assumes (1) actual, certain knowledge of the interrogators that the knowledge obtained will in fact prevent an attack, and (2) the person the harm will be inflicted upon is culpable in a meaningful way for the planned attack (i.e., a co-conspirator). This combination will almost never be occur in reality.
  
• The balancing of interests and rights tips in favor of the suspect/combatant as the interrogators' knowledge becomes less certain. "Enhanced interrogation techniques" that do not cause permanent injury can be justified when the interrogators know that the suspect/combatant has information that, if obtained, might lead to innocents being saved.
• Any infliction of harm, pain, cruelty, degradation, etc. is inappropriate in the majority of cases where interrogators have no knowledge that the suspect/combatant has information about a planned attack and is simply being subject to routine questioning.

Closing Remarks
I think the tactics revealed in the "torture memos" are consistent with what I've concluded can be justified when the interrogators have specific knowledge that the suspect/combatant has information about an attack. According to the memos, the interrogators did in fact have such knowledge. I therefore do not morally condemn what was done, but rather applaud the use of these techniques, within the boundaries described in the memo, as being quite reasonable and appropriate, especially if they prevented planned attacks. I do worry, however, that there is a danger that these techniques might be used more routinely, which would be a problem.

When I started this, I thought I would end up condemning waterboarding and the "caterpillar treatment." The justifiable homicide benchmark was not something I had thought about until I was halfway through this, and it's changed my mind about the issue. I think I had an association in my mind between "torture" and our enemies--our enemies use torture, therefore torture is wrong and we should not do it. This is faulty reasoning, as our enemies also do things like punish murderers and enforce contracts, but those are obviously not wrong. By analyzing this issue on purely moral terms, I was able to dispense with this association.

I don't think "enhanced interrogation techniques" makes us evil or more like our enemies. I don't feel any moral outrage over the idea that someone in the DPRK, for example, harmed a domestic terrorist to prevent a bombing that would have killed hundreds--that is not evil. I feel outrage over the idea that someone in the DPRK was mutilated to get a family member to confess to a thoughtcrime against Dear Leader--that IS evil. The moral boundaries I've outlined prevent us from crossing the lines that our enemies cross. We will still hold the moral high ground.

I'll close with a quote I read about the piracy issue that is equally poignant here:

Piracy, of course, is hardly the only form of barbarism at work today: There are the suicide bombers on Israeli buses, the stonings of Iranian women, and so on. But piracy is certainly the most primordial of them, and our collective inability to deal with it says much about how far we've regressed in the pursuit of what is mistakenly thought of as a more humane policy. A society that erases the memory of how it overcame barbarism in the past inevitably loses sight of the meaning of civilization, and the means of sustaining it.
--BRET STEPHENS

Blame Canada! (Counter-terror edition)

When I heard that our DHS head said that the 9/11 terrorists were among those who supposedly crossed into the US, the South Park song "Blame Canada" came to mind.

So, I thought I'd share my version of the song. Disclaimer: It's about as PC as the original, so if you thought the original was insensitive, just skip this post.

Times have changed
Terrorists are pouring in
We won't kill them overseas anymore
So how do we hope to win?
Should we blame the government?
For our lack of security?
Or should we blame our open society?

Frack no! Blame Canada!
Blame Canada!
With all their Mounties getting high
Letting terrorists drive right by
Blame Canada! Blame Canada!
It's not a baseless insult
It's Canada's fault!

Don't blame me
For my son Stan
He met someone from Canada
Then left for Afghanistan

And my boy Eric once
Only made fun of Jews
But now he's paying Hamas and Hezbollah dues!

Well, blame Canada!
Blame Canada!
It seems that everything's gone to shit
Since the Pentagon took a hit
Blame Canada!
Blame Canada!
They're too polite to get angry anyways.

My son could have a doctor or a lawyer straight and true
Instead his name is coming up on the suicide bomber cue
Should we blame bad intelligence?
Should we blame the Koran?
Or should we blame the troglodyte running Iran?

Fuck no!
Blame Canada!
Blame Canada!
With all their pacifist hullabaloo
And that bastard Bertuzzi too!
Blame Canada!
Shame on Canada!

We'll make up the facts
About 9/11 attacks
Drug smuggling and guns
Terror Infiltration
So the real problem border won't be closed
Whatever it takes to win the hispanic vote!

Never Waste a Good Crisis

Now that the USN has successfully rescued Captain Phillips and eliminated or captured all four pirates, we should be using the increased public awareness of the piracy problem to improve our anti-piracy policy. A few remarks:

Implications of Somali Piracy
1. Piracy in and of itself represents a threat to the economic interests of the United States. In addition to shipping companies paying out ransoms, insurance rates are going through the roof, and in some cases shipments are being re-routed, making the voyages longer and more expensive. Quite simply, piracy is an intolerable drain on commerce.

2. Although it is my opinion that the Somali piracy is organized crime, not terrorism, the success of the pirates thus far highlights weaknesses of the sort that terrorists can exploit. We should anticipate that terrorists will hijack vessels in the future, but with much more sinister intentions than holding the ship and crew for ransom. Possible terrorist missions could include threatening execution of hostages in exchange for political demands being met, causing a massive oil spill, sinking a ship in a narrow channel to block it, exploding a liquefied natural gas carrier, or attempting to collide with other vessels. It should therefore be a high priority to develop effective anti-hijacking tactics, as well as deploying technologies appropriate to this mission.

3. The limitations of the USN in dealing with piracy was demonstrated by this situation and others. Pirates are well-aware that they can succeed provided they are able to stay in possession of the captured ship and crew, allowing them to get to land.

4. The lethal violence used by the French Navy and USN may have second-order effects. On one hand, it may deter pirates into finding another line of work (this would surely happen if enough pirates met their demise that they could could count on being killed or captured). On the other hand, the pirates have already vowed revenge against US and French mariners. The gauntlet has been thrown, and over the short term, we should be prepared for an escalation of violence against US and French targets.

Developing Anti-Piracy Policies
1. Current ROE: CTF-151 will come to the aid of ships in distress and attempt to capture pirates caught in the act. This represents an evolution from previous ROE where pursuit was not authorized. Captured pirates are usually handed over to Somali authorities in Puntland, or to Kenya.

2. I agree with other commenters that the protection of US-flagged ships should be a priority for the US Navy. I am all in favor of our warships continuing to act to protect international trade in general, but, when a US-flagged ship is transiting this area, US assets should be allocated to them first, and to other traffic second. The vow of the pirates to take revenge upon US mariners should underscore this imperitive.

3. Merchant ships are generally unamred. This is not due to any international law prohibiting the carrying of arms, but rather because of legal difficulties that would arise in various destination ports. The use of small/mounted arms has been successful in preventing successful boardings, as the attempted attacks against the USNS John Lenthal and a German supply ship. The pirates use small, open skiffs to approach their targets, often having to chase them and overtake them slowly. They are relatively easy targets and will usually turn and run if fired upon. The lack of defensive arms on merchant ships is one of the principal factors enabling piracy, and is likely the lowest-cost solution (not considering legal difficulties or increases in insurance rates---i.e. legal BS).

In my opinion, arming merchant crews is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, foreign laws will likely make that impossible, and little can be done about that. It is a shame, because the purpose of law is to protect the lives and rights of people, and to facilitate efficient business. In the case of piracy, these laws are making people vulnerable while making business more difficult. These laws ought to be changed, but there is no way to "reach into" the domestic sphere of foreign states to change these laws.

Perhaps, alternatives could be considered. For example, private security firms could embark teams on merchants at one side of the transit, and disembark them on the other side. Cost, of course, would be a major factor, because this would require substantial logistical support. Another option may be to embark a small craft on which the weapons could be disembarked when the merchant makes a port call. The downside of this would be that some crew would not be available for loading/unloading operations while they "babysit" the weapons.

4. The current "area patrol" defensive tactics are clearly inadequate to deal with piracy. More effective tactics are needed. However, it must also be observed that the area is simply too large and too populated to completely lock down with any defensive tactics. Our goal should not be to stop every instance of piracy, but to deter it. Deterence will be acheived by killing and capturing enough pirates that the risk is not something that can be ignored. Therefore, our defensive tactics should be oriented towards apprehending as many pirates as possible.

5. Rather than responding to distress calls as the primary means of attempting to prevent hijackings/capture pirates, I propose a more pro-active approach. Merchant traffic should be corralled into designated corridors, chosen for their distance from heavily-fished areas. This should not be terribly difficult, because they already more or less use known shipping lanes. Those lanes might just need to be moved a little. CTF-151 and other anti-piracy vessels will then actively scout those sea lanes. Using ISR assets such as P-3 Orions, UAVs, and shipborne helicopters, vessels in those lanes should be identified. Those craft will then be subject to search, prior to the merchants arriving. If any craft is found with weapons, or especially ladders and grappling hooks, the occupants would be arrested. The motherships and skiffs should be seized, and, after checking to make sure any motherships aren't themselved captured craft, burned.

This approach poses two problems: logistical and legal. Legally, a navy cannot board a ship without consent, unless that ship flies the flag of its navy or is inside the territorial waters of that navy. So, a UN Security Council resolution will be necessary to carry out this strategy. Although, frankly, I think we'd be better off carrying out the boardings anyways. The consequences for illegally boarding some fishing boats is far less than the cost of allowing hijackings to continue.

Second, there is the logistical problem of getting out the boarding teams to the site. It will not be possible to saturate the sea lanes such that all potential pirate craft can be searched. But this is no reason not to do it. CTF-151 ships should patrol in the designated lanes, casting dragnet as they go, sprinting from craft to craft and sending out RHIBs to inspect them. Additionally, helicopter carriers like the Boxer can be used to transport small boats and crews greater distances than can be done with a frigate or destroyer. US ships should prioritize sanitizing the area ahead of US-flagged merchants.

Going forward, the DoD should take note of the kinds of platforms that are useful for sanitizing these sea lanes. As remarked earlier, we may need to develop these operations for counterterrorism at some point, as well as maritime security operations, or perhaps even protecting an amphibious operation from irregular or hybrid warfare. The more boarding teams and helicopters, and the better protected our people are, the better. And all the antiship missiles in the world aren't as useful as a well-trained sniper team.

6. A legal framework for trying pirates needs to be developed. Is this something the ICC could handle? The best option would be an international tribunal of some sort. Alternatively, I don't see any reason why Congress couldn't amend our own antipiracy statute to confer universal jurisdiction to the Federal courts as against pirates (edit: it would appear that the statute as written already does confer universal jurisdiction). I'd also be in favor of nonjudicial punishment at sea of pirates, but somehow I doubt that would happen in this day an age.

What not to do
While an ultimate solution to piracy must be on land, now is not the time to carpet-bomb Eyl or anything else we're hearing from the hawks along those lines. One thing to consider is that the pirates currently hold more than 200 hostages. There would also be a lot of collateral damage, which is bad enough on its own, but in addition, laying waste to pirate strongholds would have the 3rd-order effect of strengthening the fundamentalist terrorist insurgents to the south, possibly allowing them to sieze control of Somalia. A more responsible approach would involve an all-out nation building strategy, which no one has the resources or the stomach to follow through on.

I think our best bet is to reduce piracy through deterrence, and that the pirates will then turn to other ways to eke out a living, such as fishing and trade. If that transition is gradual, then soft-power techniques might be useful in slowly civilizing the area.

Possible Escalation of the Pirate Situation

Some disturbing news:

The pirate, speaking to Reuters from Haradheere port, also said other pirates were taking a hijacked German ship, with foreign crew on board, toward the scene in the Indian Ocean where the lifeboat is floating, watched by U.S. warships.

"Knowing that the Americans will not destroy this German ship and its foreign crew, they (the approaching pirates) hope they can meet their friends on the lifeboat," said the pirate, who has given reliable information in the past but asked for his name not to be used.

{snip}

The 20,000-tonne German container vessel, Hansa Stavanger, was hijacked a week ago, about 400 miles off south Somalia, between Kenya and the Seychelles. It is thought to have 24 crew, of whom five are German.

This is a rather clever approach. Pirates know they have the advantage when they have people on a captured ship. They didn't have the luxury of that situation here, and it looked like the USN had a very strong hand to play, with the lifeboat out of fuel (or running out of fuel, depending on the report). The pirates, hundreds of miles out to sea, are in every bit as much need of rescue now as Captain Phillips. A fishing boat or skiff would never make it past the Bainbridge and USN air assets, but how do you stop a 20,000 ton ship, short of sinking it?

The Tom Clancy in me wants a SEAL team to come up underneath the ship and sabotage the shafts, stopping it dead in the water, but I have no knowledge whether we have the capability to sabotage a ship while it is underway.

Physically blocking a ship that size is not an option. Could naval gunfire disable the engines? Probably, but flooding or even fire would likely result as well. Can the crew perform damage control? Would the pirates execute a hostage if the ship was fired upon?

And that's what bothers me the most here--the implication that this may be an escalation by the pirates. Previously, hostages were simply detained for ransom. There was never any demand other than money, and there was no threat of execution if that demand for money wasn't met. The hostages would simply continue to be detained. If it is the case that the pirates have a new demand--to be allowed to rescue their comrades adrift at sea--and if this demand is not met, hostages will be executed, then the pirates will have crossed a very, very important line that so far they've stayed away from. They will have crossed from organized crime into terrorism.

I hope they understand the implications of crossing that line and fear its consequences.

Then again, with the current administration no longer describing our situation vis-a-vis terrorists as a "war," I'm not really sure what those consequences are anymore.

Well, at least somebody stopped it...

It turns out that not only did we not scuttle the Iranian arms shipment (yes, I know that's a pipe dream), but we let it go, lacking legal authority to detain it.

Fortunately, the Cypriots were not lacking as well:

JERUSALEM, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Cypriot authorities have detained an Iranian ship en route to Syria with a cargo of weapons, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday.

Quoting a European Union diplomatic source, it said Cyprus had acted after Israel and the United States requested that the Cypriot-flagged vessel be stopped.

Authorities contacted the ship and demanded that it dock in Limassol for inspection. Customs officials had unloaded part of the cargo and a large amount of weaponry, including artillery rounds and rockets, the paper said.

Cypriot authorities declined comment.

Israel believes the weapons were destined for the Lebanese Islamist guerrilla group Hezbollah or for Islamist Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, Haaretz quoted Israeli sources as saying.

On Wednesday, U.S. military officials said personnel from the U.S. Navy vessel San Antonio last week boarded the Cypriot-flagged "Monchegorsk", a cargo vessel travelling from Iran to Syria, and found a weapons shipment but for legal reasons did not confiscate the cargo.

The officials declined to say what kind of weapons were found or how many. They also would not be specific about where or when the incident occurred.

It was unclear whether this was the same ship which Haaretz reported had been apprehended by the Cypriot authorities.

Officials in Washington said the search was conducted as part of the U.S. Navy's normal maritime security role in regional waters that stretch from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean.

The U.S. officials said the arms could not be shown to violate U.N. weapons sanctions against Iran and the vessel was allowed to continue on to Syria.

The incident came to light amid media reports that the U.S. navy has been ordered to intercept suspected Iranian shipments to rearm Hamas following Israel's 22-day Gaza offensive against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. (Additional reporting by Michele Kambas in Nicosia, writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Speaking of Intermeddlers...

I really wish we would scuttle ships caught red handed like this. When there are no consequences, we come out looking like fools, even when we do pull off a minor tactical victory like this.

U.S. Navy stopped Iran ship carrying weapons and headed to Gaza

TEL AVIV — U.S. defense sources said the U.S. Navy tracked and intercepted an Iranian ship in the Red Sea that was headed for the Gaza Strip.

The sources said U.S. marines found ammunition, including artillery shells, concealed in crates aboard the cargo ship.

"There was a huge amount of crates on board and we called for help," a defense source said.

The U.S. television network CBS News reported that the ship was intercepted by the U.S. Navy near Egypt's Suez Canal. CBS said the U.S. Navy vessel requested that Egyptian authorities direct the Iranian ship to port for a thorough search.

Off To a Great Start, Aren't We?

Wow. What a great first week.

First, we got a glimpse of the new politics of civility.


Then, the new President decides to close the Gitmo detention facility. Without having any idea what else to do with them. Great plan! You know someone isn't serious about putting good governance before ideology when they take the ideological action and save the difficult questions for later. Strange.... that reminds me about a certain heavily criticized ex-President who invaded a country without any plan for handling the occupation and insurgency to follow. But, this is what passes for "CHANGE" these days.

Oh, news flash to the new administration: released detainees are popping up again fighting against US troops. Just recently, one was identified as a new AQ leader in Yemen. So you might want to figure this one out, you know, before people start getting killed for your cause.

The pledge for transparency in government lasted all of two days. I can give the snubbing of press reporters/photographers a pass for now--that was likely just a n00b gaffe that will sort itself out (although, between the retaliatory curtailing of access to some networks during the election, the pay-to-play angle to that story has additional credence). But, the new SECSTATE concealing donors is unforgivable. The only way she received any serious consideration was by promising transparency. But no, the Clintons had to renege on their promise and a cloud of corruption already hangs over the executive branch.

Not even a week in.