Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Afghanistan Exit Is Seen as Peril to C.I.A. Drone Mission - NYTimes

Afghanistan Exit Is Seen as Peril to C.I.A. Drone Mission

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WASHINGTON — The risk that President Obama may be forced to pull all American troops out ofAfghanistan by the end of the year has set off concerns inside the American intelligence agencies that they could lose their air bases used for drone strikes against Al Qaeda in Pakistan and for responding to a nuclear crisis in the region.
Until now, the debate here and in Kabul about the size and duration of an American-led allied force in Afghanistan after 2014 had focused on that country’s long-term security. But these new concerns also reflect how troop levels in Afghanistan directly affect long-term American security interests in neighboring Pakistan, according to administration, military and intelligence officials.
The concern has become serious enough that the Obama administration has organized a team of intelligence, military and policy specialists to devise alternatives to mitigate the damage if a final security deal cannot be struck with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who has declined to enact an agreement that American officials thought was completed last year.
If Mr. Obama ultimately withdrew all American troops from Afghanistan, the C.I.A.’s drone bases in the country would have to be closed, according to administration officials, because it could no longer be protected.
Their concern is that the nearest alternative bases are too far away for drones to reach the mountainous territory in Pakistan where the remnants of Al Qaeda’s central command are hiding. Those bases would also be too distant to monitor and respond as quickly as American forces can today if there were a crisis in the region, such as missing nuclear material or weapons in Pakistan and India.
A senior administration official, asked about the preparations, responded by email on Sunday that as the possibility of a pullout “has grown in Afghanistan, we have been undertaking a methodical review of any U.S. capabilities that may be affected and developing strategies to mitigate impacts.”
The official added that the administration was determined to find alternatives, if necessary. “We will be forced to adapt,” the official said, “and while perhaps less than most efficient, the United States will find ways necessary to protect our interests.”
The issue is coming to the fore after the Pentagon recently presented Mr. Obama with two options for the end of the year. One option calls for a presence through the end of Mr. Obama’s term of 10,000 American troops who could train Afghan troops, conduct counterterrorism raids and protect the American facilities, including those in eastern Afghanistan where drones and nuclear monitoring are based.
Under the other, so-called zero option, no American troops would remain. The United States has said that if it is unable to reach a final security arrangement with Mr. Karzai, it is prepared, reluctantly, to pull out completely, as it did in Iraq in 2011.
Mr. Obama has made “no decisions” on troop levels, said Caitlin M. Hayden, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council. “We will be weighing inputs from our military commanders, as well as the intelligence community, our diplomats and development experts, as we make decisions about our-post 2014 presence in Afghanistan,” she said.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, however, Mr. Obama is expected to say that by the end of this year the Afghan war will be over — at least for Americans — slightly more than 13 years after it began, making it the longest in American history.
Mr. Obama’s hope is to keep 8,000 to 12,000 troops — most of them Americans, some from allies — in Afghanistan after the NATO combat mission ends this year. The resurgence of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, combining with insurgents in Syria, has offered a sobering reminder of the consequences of the American decision to withdraw all its troops from Iraq. Mr. Karzai seems to be betting that the damage that a withdrawal would do to American intelligence operations is so great that he may be able to strike a better deal.
Even though the zero option has few supporters in the administration, the idea has gained renewed credence with each day that Mr. Karzai delays signing the security accord and poses new demands to the United States. “Karzai has believed for some time that he has this leverage — that we need him and his bases more than he needs us,” said Daniel Markey, a former State Department official and the author of “No Exit From Pakistan,” published last year.
Secretary of State John Kerry is to meet Pakistan’s foreign and national security policy adviser, Sartaj Aziz, here on Monday, and counterterrorism operations are to be a major subject of discussion, a senior State Department official said Sunday. Talking with Pakistan about its nuclear program is especially delicate.
In recent years the country has accelerated its drive to build small tactical nuclear weapons — similar to what the United States placed in Europe during the Cold War — that could be used to repel an invasion from India. But those weapons are considered more vulnerable to theft or use by a rogue commander, and they are one reason that American intelligence agencies have invested so heavily in monitoring the Pakistani arsenal.
A scare in 2009, when the United States feared that nuclear materials or a weapon was missing in Pakistan, led Mr. Obama to order the basing of a permanent monitoring and search capability in the region.
But the complexities of bringing those capabilities to an end are forcing the intelligence agencies, which run the covert strikes into Pakistan and monitor nuclear events around the world, to scramble. Their base inside Pakistan was closed after a shooting involving a C.I.A. security contractor, Raymond Davis, and the raid into Pakistani territory that killed Osama bin Laden, both in 2011.
Crucial to the surveillance of Bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad was the use of an RQ-170 drone. Pakistani officials talked openly in the weeks after that raid about their fear that the unmanned aircraft was also being used to monitor their nuclear arsenal, now believed to be the fastest growing in the world. The raid, and those drones, came out of American facilities just over the Afghan border.
“You hear about the president’s decision of the ‘zero option’ in the context of the future of Afghanistan, but this is really more about Pakistan,” said one former senior intelligence official who has consulted with the Pentagon and intelligence agencies about the problem. “That’s where the biggest problem is.”
The C.I.A.’s drone bases in Afghanistan, including one in the eastern part of the country, allow operators to respond quickly to fresh intelligence. The proximity to Pakistan’s tribal areas also allows the Predator drones and their larger, faster cousin, the Reaper, to fly longer missions without having to return to base.
“There certainly is an interdependence between the military and the intelligence community in Afghanistan,” one senior administration official said.
The Reapers, the newest, largest and most capable of the unmanned armed vehicles, have a range of up to 1,100 miles. That puts Pakistan’s tribal areas within range of some bases the American military has flown from, especially in Kyrgyzstan, where for more than a decade the Pentagon has conducted air operations, include cargo and troop flights, out of a base at Manas. But the United States said last fall that it would pull out of that base in July.
Other allied countries are within the Reaper’s range — in the Persian Gulf, for example. But the distances would be too great to carry out drone operations effectively, officials said, and it is very unlikely that any of those nations would approve launching the diplomatically sensitive strikes missions from their soil.
“There’s no easy alternative to Afghanistan,” one former senior American counterterrorism official said. 

Many Questions Still Surround Columbia Mall Shooting | The proprietor of the Rockville gun shop where Aguilar, 19, bought his Mossberg 500 shotgun told The Washington Post the nutjob raised no red flags on Dec. 10 | Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks Review - 28/01/14 13:53

3TP EUO

HANDOUT/REUTERS 


Cops have identified Darion Marcus Aguilar, 19, of College Park, Md., as the gunman who killed two in a Columbia mall before shooting himself.

A month before he would kill two people at a Maryland mall before shooting himself, Darion mARCUS Aguilar was an “ideal customer” interested in buying a shotgun.
The proprietor of the Rockville gun shop where Aguilar, 19, bought his Mossberg 500 shotgun told The Washington Post the nutjob raised no red flags on Dec. 10
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/maryland-mall-gunman-darion-aguilar-ideal-customer-purchasing-shotgun-article-1.1593900#ixzz2riVpsIcE

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Mass shootings at a Connecticut elementary school, a Colorado movie theater, and other venues have prompted a fair number of proposals for change.

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"Mass shootings aren’t on the rise" - ?! ?! ?!

A mall shooting rips away our collective security blanket

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It feels as if the spree shootings are coming more and more frequently. Unless it’s in our neighborhood, we may not even click on the news alert that comes to our smartphones anymore.
The latest one was about 25 miles from the nation’s capital, in the Maryland suburb of Columbia, where Darion Marcus Aguilar, 19, took a taxi to the Mall in Columbia, grabbed a shotgun out of his backpack and killed two people, then himself.
But it could’ve been anywhere.
The cookie-cutter suburban mall — the Gaps, the Victoria’s Secrets, the improbably resilient Yankee Candle Companies — is a kind of American security blanket. It’s familiar, clean and smells of Cinnabon and L’Occitane lavender. From every window, beckons the eternal hope of a chic look or organized life. The chain restaurants are all safe and predictable.
Even amid a stalled economy and an uncertain future, the mall remains a place where middle-class America exhales. A stylized retail Disneyland with no big surprises and no conflict more harrowing than fighting off the Dead Sea salts or chicken-sample people.
“It’s where we come to let the kids play,” said Heather Aiolupotea, as her toddler climbed a bunch of foam grapes at the Columbia mall’s kiddie playground. “It’s the center of our community here, and it’s usually packed this time of day.”
Her husband, Koko, had taken the day off from his financial-planning job to take the kids to the mall, let them ride on the merry-go-round and support the community.
They were eager to take back the old normal.
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) had a fro-yo in the food court. A grandfather loudly Skyped with his grandkids from a coffee shop. The workers at Abercrombie & Fitch wrestled the jeans onto mannequins.
“I grew up here, all the stages of my life,” said Jennifer Molinari, 38, who got her prom dresses, first-day-of-school clothes and friend’s phone numbers at the mall.
“I got my wedding tuxedo right around the corner,” her husband, Steven, 49, told me.
They took the day off to be at the mall when it reopened Monday afternoon, after the shootings, and took a quiet moment to reflect on the white carnations floating in the fountain as a memorial.
“We were shocked” when we heard about the shooting Saturday, she said. “But at the same time, we weren’t.”
Every time they eat at the food court, Molinari scopes out the best hiding place for her two boys, ages 5 and 10, in case of an attack. “It’s like we’re sitting ducks out there. And I always said it was a matter of time before something happened here.”
Seriously?
They are not crazy conspiracy theorists. She’s a therapist, he’s a financial analyst. They’re just Americans who watch the news.
And their children? Like mine and probably yours, the children here have intruder drills at school — hiding inside the janitor’s closet while the teacher turns the lights off and tells them to hush.
When I was a kid, I was absolutely certain that I would die in a fire because of the annual fire drill at school, the stop-drop-and-roll PSAs and all the Smokey Bear ads. By that logic, we are probably raising a generation of children who think that it’s perfectly normal to be dodging bullets at school.
The management of the Mall at Columbia praised the retail employees for their actions, doing “exactly what they were trained to do” in the shooting. Even baristas and sales-teens are trained for an attack.
Yes, this is the new normal: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Newtown, the Navy Yard. Or is it?
Last month two criminologists published a myth-busting article, 
which argued that mass shootings aren’t on the rise.
James Alan Fox and Monica J. DeLateur analyzed all kinds of multiple shootings — not just the ones in prominent, public spaces — and said that America has kept a steady pace of about 20 mass shooting a year since 1976.
This doesn’t make it feel any better. Or any safer.
To feel better, we Americans try to be problem-solvers. We press for stricter gun control laws, we look for better mental health initiatives. We wonder about violent video games.
Molinari, the therapist, said she thinks we are raising a generation of people who simply don’t know how to deal with their emotions. “In my work, I see younger people who don’t have coping skills for anger, for sadness, who aren’t resilient,” she said.
Add to that an existing stigma around getting mental health care. “People always come to me and tell me: ‘I hope you don’t think I’m crazy,’ ” she said.
That’s crazy.
There was a string of stories over the past two weeks about the hastening death of American brick-and-mortar retail. We are starting to do more of our shopping online, and malls are struggling.
The kids are ahead of us on that. America’s teens don’t need to socialize at the mall. Today they’re on FaceTime and Skype. Who needs food courts?
Will this shooting — and others like it — be what brings about the death of our public spaces?
We’re safer ordering online and Skyping, hunkering down and avoiding danger. But we’re losing our freedom in the process.
For previous columns, go to washingtonpost.com/dvorak.
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Tragedy at the Mall in Columbia leaves too many questions