[Felix The Assassin]

GCOM Summary 2010 Sep 08
U.S. Joint Forces Command
Global Current Operations Media Summary
Operations Enduring Freedom/New Dawn/Noble Eagle
Current as of September 8, 2010

New Developments
•2 U.S. Soldiers Killed In Iraq. Two American soldiers were killed and nine were injured Tuesday when a man wearing an Iraqi army uniform opened fire on them in an Iraqi commando compound in the province of Salahuddin, an attack that highlighted the danger U.S. troops continue to face in Iraq despite the formal end of combat operations announced by President Obama last week. The soldiers were members of a security detail guarding a U.S. company commander who was meeting with Iraqi security forces, according to a statement issued by the U.S. military. The military said it wasn't clear whether the assailant was an Iraqi soldier, but Iraqi and Kurdish officials said the shooting occurred after an altercation between the American soldiers and a Kurdish Iraqi soldier. The attacker was shot and killed by an American soldier, the U.S. military said. (Los Angeles Times – see attached)

•Petraeus Expects Sustained Violence. Gen. David Petraeus, anticipating sustained violence in Afghanistan in the coming months, said in an interview that he wants to overhaul how the U.S. measures progress there leading to a crucial Obama administration war-strategy review in December. The counterinsurgency campaign being waged by NATO forces in Afghanistan is focused on lessening violence and restoring confidence in President Hamid Karzai's government. Such progress is harder to quantify than in wars in which progress is measured by territory taken and the number of enemy killed. That leaves Gen. Petraeus, who took over in July as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, in a predicament: Levels of violence, one of the few clear measures of progress, are likely to remain high until the Afghan fighting season concludes toward the end of the year. But he faces a strategy review by the Obama administration in December. (Wall Street Journal – see attached)

•NATO Chief: Karzai Must Crack Down On Graft. Reports about endemic corruption in Afghanistan are undermining public support for the war among NATO allies, the military alliance's leader warned Tuesday. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he has told Afghan President Hamid Karzai several times that he needs to crack down on graft. Karzai has irritated allies in Washington and in European capitals by blocking corruption investigations of members of his palace staff. Meantime, U.S. officials have raised concerns that billions of dollars in foreign aid to Afghanistan are being siphoned off or diverted. (Washington Post – see attached)

•Karzai Family Political Ties Shielded Bank In Afghanistan. In early 2009, as President Hamid Karzai scanned the landscape for potential partners to run in his re-election bid, he was approached from an unusual corner: a bank. The president’s brother, Mahmoud, and another Afghan businessman, Haseen Fahim, were shareholders in Kabul Bank, one of the freewheeling financial institutions that had sprung up over the past decade since the Taliban’s fall. According to Afghan officials and businessmen in Kabul, Mahmoud Karzai and Mr. Fahim recommended Mr. Fahim’s brother, Gen. Muhammad Qasim Fahim, to become the president’s running mate. President Karzai agreed, and in a stroke co-opted his ethnic Tajik opposition and placated an old political foe with a checkered record on human rights and corruption. Now, Kabul Bank sits at the center of a financial crisis that has exposed the shadowy workings of the country’s business and political elite, and how such connections shielded the bank from scrutiny. (New York Times – see attached)

Military Coverage
•U.S. Says Not Considering NATO Afghan Troop Request. The United States does not plan to contribute to a NATO request for 2,000 troops for the Afghan war, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, even as NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen held out the possibility of U.S. participation. The NATO commander in Afghanistan submitted a request last week that alliance officials said called for another 2,000 soldiers, including 750 trainers. Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the request referred to a long-standing NATO requirement focusing on training Afghan forces. Last year, NATO allies failed to meet all NATO requests for trainers and Washington temporarily deployed 850 troops to help fill the gap. Those soldiers are due back in the United States this fall and no more were being considered, Lapan said. (Reuters)

Homeland Security
•ACLU Sues Homeland Security Over Search Policies. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been sued over its policies that allegedly authorize the search and seizure of laptops, cellphones and other electronic devices without a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday. The ACLU claims the policies place no limit on how long Homeland Security can keep a traveler's devices or on the scope of private information that can be searched, copied or detained. There is no provision for judicial approval or supervision, the ACLU said. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Brooklyn on behalf of the National Press Photographers Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Pascal Abidor, a 26-year-old Brooklyn resident. (Wall Street Journal – see attached)

•Pressure Mounts In U.S. Against Koran-Burning Plan. Civil and military leaders stepped up calls on Tuesday for an obscure U.S. pastor to drop his plans to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, as fears grew it would fan religious hatred. Pastor Terry Jones of the small Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center church, which has announced the Koran-burning for Saturday, said he was praying about the event but showed no immediate signs of backing down from his plan. The planned public torching of the Muslim holy book on U.S. soil already has triggered angry protests in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are fighting Taliban militants, and U.S. military commanders said the event could endanger Americans' lives. It comes at a time of heated debate in the United States over a proposal to build an Islamic cultural center and mosque close to the site in New York of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. (Reuters)

World Developments
•Chinese Officials Call For Less Friction With U.S. Top Chinese officials called Tuesday for quiet discussions instead of open friction with the United States, after a summer marked by bilateral disagreements over the value of China’s currency, American military exercises off the Korean Peninsula and American efforts to resolve territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Two White House officials – Lawrence H. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, and Thomas E. Donilon, the deputy national security adviser – held meetings in Beijing on Monday and Tuesday that were aimed not at fashioning new pacts, but at maintaining a dialogue that had been strained at times in recent months. (New York Times – see attached)

•Spain's PM Says ETA Must Lay Down Arms. Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said on Tuesday ETA had to lay down its arms forever, after the Basque separatist group declared a ceasefire. ETA's announcement on Sunday of another truce, without announcing its permanent disarmament, has disappointed all Spain's democratic political parties, he said at a news conference. "(ETA's) announcements are worth nothing, only their decisions -- and only one decision ... to lay down their arms forever," Zapatero said. ETA, which has killed more than 850 people in its struggle to carve out an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southwest France, announced a ceasefire on Sunday, but gave no details of its duration or plans to disarm. The armed group's political wing Batasuna will not be legalized and allowed to participate in elections in Spain unless they completely abandon their support for violence, Zapatero said. (Reuters)

•Palestinians Arrest Israeli Settler Attackers. The Palestinian Authority has arrested several Hamas members for organizing and carrying out two recent attacks on Israeli settlers, a senior official said on Tuesday. The Palestinian security official said that two groups had been arrested but did not specify exactly how many members of the Islamist movement were under arrest. The first attack on August 31 claimed the lives of four settlers and the second on September 1 wounded two people east of Ramallah, the official said. Hamas had claimed responsibility for gunning down four Israelis on the West Bank and the September 1 attack came the day before the first direct Israeli-Palestinian talks for 20 months began in Washington. Hamas later claimed to have made between 150 and 550 arrests over the killings but the Palestinian Authority said this was an exaggerated figure. (Google/AFP)