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Last spring, we launched the first version of Just Security’s guide to the 2016 presidential candidates’ positions on national security matters. We’re relaunching that guide below with interactive features designed to make it easier use. For this version of the guide, we’re focusing on candidates who, according to Five Thirty-Eight’s forecasts, have a better than 10 percent chance of winning a primary. As a result, this version includes Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. As the field shifts over the coming weeks, we may add or remove candidates from this list. We’ll also be periodically updating the information about the candidates’ positions as they wind their way through primary season and move into the general election. This guide features sources for each summary and, whenever possible, cites official government websites or the candidates’ websites. In our research, we relied on their own statements and records rather than commentary on the candidates’ positions.

The Syrian Arab Army and the YPG troops of the Syrian Kurds are making good progress in the Azaz pocket. The pocket formed after the Syrian army cut through the "rebel" corridor between Aleppo city and the Turkish border. The aim now is to push all foreign proxy forces who are still in that pocket (green) back north into Turkey and to get full control of the border.

The Syrian-Russian command decided to let the YPG (yellow) have the fun of cleaning the pocket only to taunt the Turkish President Erdogan. Erdogan has a serious domestic policy problems when the Kurdish forces gain control in parts of Syria that the wannabe Sultan Erdogan regarded as sacred neo-Ottoman ground. His court jester, the Prime Minister Davutoglu, announced that his country would not allow the town of Azaz to fall to Kurdish fighters. He will have to eat a flock of craws over that. The Turks are firing artillery from Turkish ground in the north onto Kurdish position in the pocket. Turkish special forces are likely near the front line to control that fire. But artillery alone can not make the difference. The Kurds have air support from the Russian airforce which Turkey no longer dares to attack. The Russians will not attack the Turkish artillery as such an attack could widen the war. The Kurdish troops will have to suffer through that barrage as they push out the Turkish and CIA paid proxies. Some reinforcement for the CIA proxies arrived from Idleb. These passed from Idleb into Turkey and from Turkey into the pocket. The destruction of these forces in the Azaz pocket will make the further fights  of the Syrian army in Idleb and elsewhere a lot easier.

Who are the professionals that are helping the YPG to take the Azaz pocket? My first thought was of course Russian Spetsnaz. But I asked around and none of my usual sources would confirm this. The sources acknowledged that the YPG in west Syria has special force support but there was some quite unexpected silence over who these forces were. It is clear to me that these are not Syrian special forces. The YPG does not want to be seen as a adjunct to the Syrian government. No one would confirm to me that these are Russian forces even as that would be of no great surprise to anyone. This leads me to speculate that some U.S. special forces are directing the YPG in the Azaz pocket. This in coordination with the Syrian army and the Russians. Is that a crazy thought? Consider: The Syrian YPG Kurds are supported by the U.S. military. They received weapons and ammunition from the U.S. military and, at least in the east, have some U.S. military special forces embedded with them. These Pentagon supported YPG troops currently fight foreign proxy forces in the Azaz pocket which are supported, equipped and paid by the CIA, the Saudis, the Turks and other Arab U.S. "allies". The CIA is running the show. The Turkish NATO member is shelling the Pentagon supported YPG to protect the CIA supported "moderate rebels". The current CIA director was once the CIA Chief of Station in Riyadh and has intimate connection to the Saudi rulers (and their pockets?). It was the military's Defense Intelligence Agency that warned in 2012 of the emergence of a "Salafist Principality" - the Islamic State - in Syria and Iraq. It warned against continuing the CIA support for the "rebels". It was the Pentagon that sabotaged the White House intent to create another "moderate rebel" force to attack the Islamic State:

Photo: Alex Brandon/APFormer President Bill Clinton on Monday met in secret (no press allowed) with roughly 100 leaders of South Florida’s Jewish community, and, as the Times of Israel reports, “He vowed that, if elected, Hillary Clinton would make it one of her top priorities to strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance.” He also “stressed the close bond that he and his wife have with the State of Israel.” It may be tempting to dismiss this as standard, vapid Clintonian politicking: adeptly telling everyone what they want to hear and making them believe it. After all, is it even physically possible to “strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance” beyond what it already entails: billions of dollars in American taxpayer money transferred every year, sophisticated weapons fed to Israel as it bombs its defenseless neighbors, blindly loyal diplomatic support and protection for everything it does? But Bill Clinton’s vow of even greater support for Israel is completely consistent with what Hillary Clinton herself has been telling American Jewish audiences for months. In November, she published an op-ed in The Forward in which she vowed to strengthen relations not only with Israel, but also with its extremist prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Her comments on Israel have similarly contained implicit criticisms of Obama’s foreign policy: namely, that he has created or at least allowed too much animosity with Netanyahu. In her Forward op-ed, she wrote that the Israeli prime minister’s “upcoming visit to Washington is an opportunity to reaffirm the unbreakable bonds of friendship and unity between the people and governments of the United States and Israel.” She pointedly added: “The alliance between our two nations transcends politics. It is and should always be a commitment that unites us, not a wedge that divides us.” And in case her message is unclear, she added this campaign promise: “I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office.” Last month, Clinton wrote an even more extreme op-ed in the Jewish Journal, one that made even clearer that she intends to change Obama’s policy to make it even more “pro-Israel.” It begins: “In this time of terrorism and turmoil, the alliance between the United States and Israel is more important than ever. To meet the many challenges we face, we have to take our relationship to the next level.”

“With every passing year, we must tie the bonds tighter,” she wrote. Tie those bonds tighter. Thus: As part of this effort, we need to ensure that Israel continues to maintain its qualitative military edge. The United States should further bolster Israeli air defenses and help develop better tunnel detection technology to prevent arms smuggling and kidnapping. We should also expand high-level U.S.-Israel strategic consultations. As always, there is not a word about the oppression and brutality imposed on Palestinians as part of Israel’s decadeslong occupation. She does not even acknowledge, let alone express opposition to, Israel’s repeated, civilian-slaughtering bombing of the open-air prison in Gaza. That’s because for Clinton — like the progressive establishment that supports her — the suffering and violence imposed on Palestinians literally do not exist. None of this is mentioned, even in passing, in the endless parade of pro-Clinton articles pouring forth from progressive media outlets.

The results of the very detailed Pew poll of Israeli citizens tends to confirm that the country is going in a very negative direction, particularly with respect to Arab-Jewish relations. The entire report, “Israel’s Religiously Divided Society,” bears close reading. Based on interviews with nearly 6,000 Israeli adults—Jews, Christians, Muslims, Arabs, and Druze—the poll was conducted between mid-October 2014, and last May, well before the Arab-Jewish violence that began last fall. The headline is the finding that a 48% plurality of Israeli Jews agreed with the statement, “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.” One in five (21%) said they agreed “strongly.” Only 46 percent disagreed with the proposition. More religious and less-educated Jews tended to agree in higher percentages than secular Jews. Most troubling for the future, respondents under the age of 50 tended to agree somewhat more (49-44%) than those 50 and older. (However, there has been some criticism of the vagueness of the question.) A no less disturbing finding was that 79% of Israeli Jews agreed with the proposition that Jews “deserve preferential treatment” in Israel. Although religious Jews supported that notion overwhelmingly, nearly seven out of ten self-described secular Jews also backed that notion. As Shibley Telhami (one of the many consultants who helped design the survey) pointed out after citing this result, “so much for the notion of democracy with full equal rights for all its citizens.” Indeed, if this is what Netanyahu means when he demands that Israel be recognized as “the nation state of the Jewish people,” it would be very difficult to square it with conventional notions of democratic governance or equality before the law.

More than three-quarters of Israeli Jews seem to be blind to this contradiction for they see democracy as compatible with the idea of a “Jewish state.” Unsurprisingly, however, nearly two-thirds of Israel’s Arab and Druse citizens disagree.

The poll also found a rather dramatic plunge in optimism among Arab citizens that peaceful coexistence between Israel and an independent Palestinian state is possible. In 2013, Pew found that 74% of Israeli Arabs agreed that such a possibility was real. The most recent finding (which is almost one year old now) found that only 50% of Arab citizens share that belief. That is much closer to the 43% of Jewish Israelis who believe that coexistence is possible.

This is delicious. Donald Trump’s anti-interventionist foreign policy ideas are causing panic among the neoconservatives. Clearly this branch of the Republican establishment will leave the party over Trump. Neoconservative Washington Post writer Jennifer Rubin is outraged that Chris Christie would endorse Donald Trump despite “months and months of careful coaching” in foreign policy by “outside… experts.” That’s how the Israel lobby works, by coaching politicians. This is what the neocons have successfully done with Marco Rubio: gotten him to be a robot on the Israel issue.

And then this. Neoconservative Robert Kagan, also in the Washington Post, is endorsing Hillary Clinton because of Trump’s xenophobia and demagoguery and racism, but also the foreign policy

Kagan is the man who brought us the Project for New American Century letters that helped get the country into the Iraq War.

Anyone who submits a mandatory declassification review request to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence seeking release of classified records “shall be responsible for paying all fees” resulting from the request, according to a new ODNI regulation. And those fees are considerable. A search for a requested document costs from $20-$72 per hour. Document review runs $40-$72 per hour. And photocopying costs fifty cents per page, the new ODNI regulation said. It was published in the Federal Register on Friday, with a request for public comments. The mandatory declassification review (MDR) process was established by executive order 13526 to permit requests for declassification of information that no longer meets the standards for national security classification. The executive order’s implementing directive states that fees may be charged for responding to MDR requests for classified records. But the proposed ODNI fees seem extravagant on their face. No commercial enterprise charges anything close to fifty cents to photocopy a single page. Neither do most of ODNI’s peer agencies.

The Department of Defense permits (though it does not require) DoD agencies to charge fees for search, review and reproduction (pursuant to DoD Manual 5230.30-M). But the DoD schedule of fees is well below the proposed ODNI rate. Instead of fifty cents per page, DoD charges thirteen cents. Instead of up to $72 per hour for search and review, DoD charges no more than $52.60 per hour. ODNI wants $10 for a CD, but DoD asks only $1.25. (See DoD 7000.14-R, Volume 11A, Chapter 4, Appendix 2, Schedule of Fees and Rates, at page 4-13). And while ODNI would make requesters liable for “all fees,” DoD says that “Fees will not be charged if the total amount to process your request is $30.00 or less.” Similarly, at the Department of State, “Records shall be duplicated at a rate of $.15 per page.” In a 2011 rule, the Central Intelligence Agency did mandate a fifty cent per page photocopy fee for MDR requests, as well as a $15 minimum charge. But the CIA policy was suspended in response to public criticism and a legal challenge from the non-profit National Security Counselors. That challenge is still pending.

“There is nothing unusual about these [search and review] fees,” CIA told a court in 2014 in response to the legal challenge. “And the reproduction costs are similar to those employed by other agencies.” CIA noted that a National Archives regulation sets reproduction costs as high as 75 cents per page. (Last year it reached 80 cents, although a self-service copier is sometimes available for 25 cents per page.) Furthermore, CIA said in 2014, “neither set of costs reimburses the CIA for the full cost of providing the declassification review service to the requester.”

In addition to withdrawing from districts in Helmand province in mid-February, the Afghan Army has begun to leave areas in Uruzgan. On March 1, troops abandoned areas of the district of Shahidi Hassas in the neighboring Uruzgan province. A provincial spokesman indicated that troops will likely leave other districts in order to create a “a reserve battalion.” From Reuters: Provincial government spokesman Dost Mohammad Nayab said about 100 troops and police had been pulled from checkpoints in two areas in Shahidi Hassas district and sent to the neighbouring district of Deh Rawud. The Afghan Taliban, seeking to topple the Western-backed government in Kabul and reimpose Islamic rule 15 years after they were ousted from power, said the move, which came after heavy fighting late Monday, had left the area around the village of Yakhdan under their control. The decision to leave the posts follows months of heavy fighting with the Taliban, who have put government forces under heavy pressure across southern Afghanistan. “We want to create a reserve battalion in Deh Rawud, and we may ask our soldiers and policemen from other districts also to leave their checkpoints,” Nayab said. Nayab said the withdrawal was prompted by a shortage of troops and police, worn down by combat losses and desertions. He said troop numbers in the province were about 1,000 short of their assigned strength while police were hundreds short.

The Belgian OCAM Crisis Center and the government raised the country’s “terror alert” to the highest level, warning about the imminent risk for a terrorist attack. The measure comes one week after the attacks in Paris that claimed 129 lives and injured hundreds. Experts warn about the possible use of a chemical weapon.

The OCAM and the Belgian government announced a “red alert” for Brussels and the region around Brussels, warning that a serious terrorist attack may be imminent. The Belgian Interior Ministry issued a statement, saying: “The analysis shows a serious and imminent threat requiring specific security measures as well as detailed recommendations to the population.” The Belgian capital resembles a city under siege with police and military deployed while a large number of citizens have been scared into staying at home and avoiding public places as much as possible. The OCAM, in fact, called on residents in Brussels and the region around the city to avoid crowded places including transport hubs.

Several Belgian security analysts warned about the risk of the possible use of an improvised chemical weapon. Within this context it is noteworthy that chemical weapons attacks in Syria, especially that in the Damascus suburb East Ghouta, has been proven to have been carried out by the Saudi Arabian intelligence asset Liwa-al-Islam. The attack implicated the highest levels of Saudi and US governments, military and intelligence services. Belgium hosts the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO / OTAN) as well as the European Union (EU). Belgian officials declined to provide additional information about the alleged imminent threat, stating that there was a need for time to allow for the ongoing police and judicial investigation to take its course. Hours before the announcement of the “red alert” authorities charged a third “unnamed” suspect who had been arrested the day before for involvement in the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday, November 13.

Using doublespeak – supporting an organization while pointing at it as the enemy and calling terrorists people who were previously hailed as ‘freedom fighters’, is not some prerogative of the French government. Producing one’s own enemy has become a pivotal process in Western strategy, one that comforts an imperial structure in which there is no separation any more between inside and outside, between law and sheer violence, between citizens and enemies. In Belgium the muslim preacher Jean-Louis Denis is tried in court for having promoted the jihad in Syria among young people because he is suspected of being acquainted with Sharia4Belgium, a group that is labelled as terrorist. His lawyer exposed the equivocation in the prosecution when he reminds the court that kids were indeed sent to fight for the Islamic State in Syria but by the Belgian intelligence service. He was referring to the part played by an undercover agent of the Belgian federal police. The signifier’s comeback It seems that in Paris too a major concern for the terrorists was to make it easy for them to be identified. Yet this paradox is no longer really a surprise. The miraculous find of ID papers has now become a classic feature in such circumstances. It is a recurring event, a repetitive compulsion that points again and again at people who belong to some jihadist movement. In the official version for 9/11 the FBI claimed that they found the unscathed passport of one of the pilots near one of the towers that were reduced to ashes by explosions whose heat melted even the steel columns in the buildings’ structure. The fourth plane’s crash near Shanksville also yielded a passport which, though scorched, still made it possible to read the person’s first name and surname and to see his ID photo. This is all the more disturbing as nothing at all was left in the crater, no part of the plane or of the people travelling in it, only this partly scorched passport.

In the case of the attack at Charlie Hebdo, investigators found the ID papers of the elder Kouachi brothers in a car they had abandoned in the north-east of Paris. This document allows them to conclude that the authors of the attack were known to the anti-terror department as ‘pioneers of the French Jihad.’ The ‘hunt’ could begin. How can killers who operate with such professional skill make such blunder? It is an elementary caution known to any burglar that you do not to take ID papers along. Since 9/11 unlikelihood has become part of our lives. It has become the basis on which  truth is assessed. Reason is banished. We must not believe what is said but the speaking voice, whatever nonsense it may utter. The more patently absurd, the more unwavering our belief in what is stated must be. Unlikelihood has turned into the measure of truth.

In response to the tragic Paris events of November 13, Central Intelligence Agency director  John Brennan  warned that “ISIL is planning additional attacks… It is clear to me that ISIL has an external agenda, that they are determined to carry out these types of attacks.” (Quoted in Daily Telegraph, November 16, 2015) Five days later following the CIA Chief’s  premonition, the Bamako Radisson Hotel Blu in Mali’s capital was the object of a terrorist attack, resulting in  21 people dead. Following the attack and the taking of hostages by the terrorists, French and Malian special forces raided the hotel. US. Africa Command (AFRICOM) also confirmed that US special forces were involved.

The Bamako terror operation was allegedly coordinated by Mokhtar Belmokhtar (aka Khaled Abu al-Abbas), leader of an affiliate of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Islamist al-Mulathameen (Masked) Brigade, or “Those who Sign with Blood.” Belmokhtar’s group was created in 2012 in the wake of the war on Libya. His organization has also allegedly been involved in the drug trade, smuggling as well kidnapping operations of foreigners in North Africa.  While his whereabouts are said to be known, French intelligence has dubbed Belmokhtar “the uncatchable”. In June he was reported dead  as a result in a U.S. air strike in Libya. His death was subsequently denied. Based on shaky evidence, The New York Times report below (November 20) concludes that Belmokhtar’s group (together with AQIM) is unequivocally behind the Bamako attacks:

A member of Al Qaeda in Africa confirmed Saturday that the attack Friday on a hotel in Bamako, Mali, had been carried out by a jihadist group loyal to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian operative for Al Qaeda. The Qaeda member, who spoke via an online chat, said that an audio message and a similar written statement in which the group claimed responsibility for the attack were authentic. The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist groups, also confirmed the authenticity of the statement. The Qaeda member, who refused to be named for his protection, said that Mr. Belmokhtar’s men had collaborated with the Saharan Emirate of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, … In the audio recording, the group, known as Al Mourabitoun, says it carried out the operation in conjunction with Al Qaeda’s branch in the Islamic Maghreb. The recording was released to the Al Jazeera network and simultaneously to Al Akhbar, … The recording states: “We, in the group of the Mourabitoun [Arabic Rebel Group], in cooperation with our brothers in Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, the great desert area, claim responsibility for the hostage-taking operation in the Radisson hotel in Bamako.” (emphasis added)

Baghdad may use all the available options, including an address to the UN Security Council, if Turkey fails to withdraw its troops from northern Iraq within 48 hours, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi said Sunday. Numerous reports suggest that on Friday Turkey sent approximately 130-150 soldiers to northern Iraq. Turkish forces, deployed near the city of Mosul, are allegedly tasked with training Peshmerga, which has been involved in the fight against Daesh, also known as ISIL. "Iraq has the right to use all available options, including resorting to the UN Security Council in the absence of the withdrawal of these forces within 48 hours," Abadi said in a statement following the National Security Council meeting. According to the prime minister, the deployment of hundreds of Turkish servicemen on the Iraqi territory without the consent and knowledge of the Iraqi authorities is a violation of sovereignty and a breach of the principles of good neighborliness. Earlier on Sunday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkish troops were deployed in Iraq on the country’s Defense Ministry invitation.

The head of Iraq's parliamentary committee on security and defense, Hakim al-Zamili, in an interview with Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, said that Baghdad could turn to Moscow for help after Turkey had allegedly breached Iraq’s sovereignty.

Numerous reports suggest that on Friday Turkey sent approximately 130 soldiers to norther Iraq. Turkish forces, deployed near the city of Mosul, are allegedly tasked with training Peshmerga, which has been involved in the fight against Daesh, also known as ISIL. On Saturday, Baghdad described the move as "a serious violation of Iraqi sovereignty," since it had not been authorized by Iraqi authorities. "We may soon ask Russia for direct military intervention in Iraq in response to the Turkish invasion and the violation of Iraqi sovereignty," Iraqi lawmaker al-Zamili said.

Finland's government is drawing up plans to give every one of its citizens a basic income of 800 euros (£576) a month and scrap benefits altogether. A poll commissioned by the agency planning the proposal, the Finnish Social Insurance Institute, showed 69% supported the basic income plan.

Prime Minister Juha Sipila was quote by QZ as backing the idea. “For me, a basic income means simplifying the social security system,” she said. The proposal would entitle each Finn to 800 euros tax free each month, which according to Bloomberg, would cost the government 52.2 billion euros a year.

The country's government will make a final decision on the plan in November 2016. The Netherlands has already been trialling a similar proposal, with Utrecht set to undergo a pilot project next year.

A top Army commander on Monday ordered that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion and endangering troops stemming from his decision to leave his outpost in 2009, a move that prompted a huge manhunt in the wilds of eastern Afghanistan and landed him in nearly five years of harsh Taliban captivity. The decision by Gen. Robert B. Abrams, head of Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., means that Sergeant Bergdahl, 29, faces a possible life sentence. That is a far more serious penalty than had been recommended by the Army’s investigating officer, who testified at the sergeant’s preliminary hearing in September that prison would be “inappropriate.”

According to Sergeant Bergdahl’s defense lawyers, the Army lawyer who presided over the preliminary hearing also recommended that he face neither jail time nor a punitive discharge and that he go before an intermediate tribunal known as a “special court-martial,” where the most severe penalty possible would be a year of confinement.

Monday’s decision rejecting that recommendation means that Sergeant Bergdahl now faces a maximum five-year penalty if ultimately convicted by a military jury of desertion, as well as potential life imprisonment on the more serious charge of misbehavior before the enemy, which in this case means endangering the troops who were sent to search for him after he disappeared.Sergeant Bergdahl has been the focus of attacks by Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign, and it is far from clear that General Abrams’s decision will temper their criticisms.Donald J. Trump, for one, has called the sergeant a “traitor” who should be executed, while Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has vowed to hold hearings if the sergeant is not punished.

The Obama administration has overseen an unprecedented expansion of American military might on the African continent, with dozens of bases and outposts opening there since he took office. A Nov. 17 investigation by Nick Turse, a journalist and American military scholar, found that the United States maintains at least 60 bases or military outposts throughout Africa, although not all are actively used at all times: “Some are currently being utilized, some are held in reserve, and some may be shuttered. These bases, camps, compounds, port facilities, fuel bunkers, and other sites can be found in at least 34 countries — more than 60% of the nations on the continent — many of them corrupt, repressive states with poor human rights records.” Even that figure does not fully encompass America’s reach in Africa. According to Turse’s sources, the U.S. military operates “Offices of Security Cooperation and Defense Attaché Offices” in 38 African countries, while 30 others have agreed to allow U.S. forces to use their international airports as refueling centers.

Overall, Turse noted “that the U.S. military has created a network of bases that goes far beyond what AFRICOM has disclosed to the American public, let alone to Africans.” The military is slowly lifting the veil of secrecy over its actions in Africa. Turse reported: “For years, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) gave a stock response: one. Camp Lemonnier in the tiny, sun-bleached nation of Djibouti was America’s only acknowledged “base” on the continent.” Richard Reeve, the director of the Sustainable Security Programme at the Oxford Research Group, a London-based security think tank, told Turse that the U.S. is using AFRICOM as a “laboratory” where it can experiment with “a different kind of warfare and a different way of posturing forces”:

The recession may have officially ended in mid-2009, but millions of working Americans have seen their income remain frustratingly stagnant since the economy collapsed. New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau confirm that the median household income in the U.S. was $53,482 between 2010 and 2014, down from $56,568 between 2005 and 2009 when adjusted for inflation—a drop of 5%. By the same metric, just 1,038 of 3,142 counties have a higher median income than they did five years ago. The following map shades every county by its growth or decline in median income since 2009.

Data for 2009 comes from the American Community Survey’s five-year sample from 2005-2009 in 2009 dollars, while data for 2014 is from the ACS five-year survey for 2010-2014. (Five-year samples are necessary to get data for every county.) The 2009 figures in these maps and charts are adjusted up by 10% using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.

For almost a decade and a half, the people behind the Bush administration's shameful treatment of terrorism suspects have avoided punishment for their crimes, but that may be about to change. The courts have had their say and have ruled that former Bush administration officials can, in fact, be sued for how they conducted the "war on terror." The Second Circuit Court of Appeals made that pretty much official on Friday when it refused to hear a challenge to its earlier ruling in the case of Turkmen v. Ashcroft. That case involves hundreds of Arab, Muslim or South Asian men who were detained and then abused by our government in the weeks following 9/11.

Some of them were beaten by security guards and kept in solitary confinement, which the United Nations considers a form of torture. After they were released, these men sued the people they say authorized their detentions - people like former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former FBI director Robert Mueller. A district court initially blocked their claims, but in June, the Second Circuit Court allowed them, saying that Ashcroft, Mueller and company could be sued. The government then made one more last ditch push to protect the Bush administration, but that effort failed last Friday when the Second Circuit rejected it. Everyone else who authorized and participated in the illegal roundup of hundreds of innocent men after 9/11, from high-up government officials on down, is now fair game for a lawsuit.

Republican skeptics may not have enough power to overturn Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s order to open all combat positions to women. But some are delivering a more subtle warning: it could lead to registering all young women in America for the draft. The Pentagon’s move on Thursday did not include any requirement that women register with the Selective Service when they turn 18, as their male counterparts are required to do — and Carter demurred when a reporter asked about it.Story Continued Below But congressional Republicans already are raising that prospect, in what appears to be an effort to point out that the Pentagon hasn’t fully grappled with the implications of its historic decision to allow women into all front-line combat jobs. It is a delicate political gamble for lawmakers who don't want to appear sexist but also insist that some misgivings about the decision within the ranks deserve more attention. “If this goes through, it’s going to be mandated that women be drafted,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan — and who maintains that women should still be barred from some combat roles. “If you’re going to have women in infantry units, if a draft ever occurred, America needs to realize that its daughters and sisters would be included." “The reason you draft people,” he added, “is because you have infantrymen dying.”

The US is to send some 10,000 troops to Iraq to provide support for a 90,000-strong force from the Gulf states, a leading Iraqi opposition MP has warned. The politician said the plan was announced to the Iraqi government during a visit by US Senator John McCain. During a meeting in Baghdad on November 27, McCain told Prime Minister Haider Abadi and a number of senior Iraqi cabinet and military officials that the decision was ‘non-negotiable’, claimed Hanan Fatlawi, the head of the opposition Irada Movement.“A hundred thousand foreign troops, including 90,000 from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Jordan, and 10,000 troops from America will be deployed in western regions of Iraq,” she wrote on her Facebook page.She added that the Iraqi prime minister protested the plan, but was told that “the decision has already been taken.”

McCain and fellow hawk Senator Lindsey Graham have both been calling for a tripling in the current number of US troops deployed in Iraq to 10,000, and also advocate sending an equal number of troops to Syria to fight against the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Americans would prop up a 90,000-strong international ground force provided by Sunni Arab countries like Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.“The region is ready to fight. The region hates ISIL – they are coming for Sunni Arab nations. Turkey hates ISIL. The entire region wants Assad gone. So there is an opportunity here with some American leadership to do two things: to hit ISIL before we get hit at home and to push Assad out,” Graham argued during the joint visit to Baghdad in November.“Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey – they have regional armies and they would go into the fight if we put [the removal of] Assad on the table. Most of the fight will be done by the region. They will pay for this war,” he added.

The US currently has about 3,600 troops in Iraq, including 100 special operations troops deployed last month to take part in combat missions involving hostage rescue and the assassination of IS leaders. The White House is reluctant to commit a large ground force, citing the cost in human lives and money and the possible political ramifications of what will be portrayed by America’s opponents as yet another Western invasion of the Arab world.The McCain-Graham plan also poses the risk of direct confrontation between the proposed coalition force and Russia and Iraq, which are both militarily assisting the Assad government and may not stay out of the fight – something which the hawkish duo have not factored into their plan.This is especially true after Turkey’s downing of a Russian bomber plane on the Turkish-Syrian border, which Moscow considered a stab in the back and which sent relations with Ankara to a low not seen for decades.Baghdad has its own concerns about a Turkish presence on its territory after Ankara sent troops into western Iraq and refused to withdraw them, despite Iraqi protests. Ankara claimed the incursion was made under a 2014 invitation from Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi.

On December 8, the IMF’s Chief Spokesman Gerry Rice sent a note saying: “The IMF’s Executive Board met today and agreed to change the current policy on non-toleration of arrears to official creditors. We will provide details on the scope and rationale for this policy change in the next day or so.” Since 1947 when it really started operations, the World Bank has acted as a branch of the U.S. Defense Department, from its first major chairman John J. McCloy through Robert McNamara to Robert Zoellick and neocon Paul Wolfowitz. From the outset, it has promoted U.S. exports – especially farm exports – by steering Third World countries to produce plantation crops rather than feeding their own populations. (They are to import U.S. grain.) But it has felt obliged to wrap its U.S. export promotion and support for the dollar area in an ostensibly internationalist rhetoric, as if what’s good for the United States is good for the world. The IMF has now been drawn into the U.S. Cold War orbit. On Tuesday it made a radical decision to dismantle the condition that had integrated the global financial system for the past half century. In the past, it has been able to take the lead in organizing bailout packages for governments by getting other creditor nations – headed by the United States, Germany and Japan – to participate. The creditor leverage that the IMF has used is that if a nation is in financial arrears to any government, it cannot qualify for an IMF loan – and hence, for packages involving other governments. This has been the system by which the dollarized global financial system has worked for half a century. The beneficiaries have been creditors in US dollars.

But on Tuesday, the IMF joined the New Cold War. It has been lending money to Ukraine despite the Fund’s rules blocking it from lending to countries with no visible chance of paying (the “No More Argentinas” rule from 2001). With IMF head Christine Lagarde made the last IMF loan to Ukraine in the spring, she expressed the hope that there would be peace. But President Porochenko immediately announced that he would use the proceeds to step up his nation’s civil war with the Russian-speaking population in the East – the Donbass. That is the region where most IMF exports have been made – mainly to Russia. This market is now lost for the foreseeable future. It may be a long break, because the country is run by the U.S.-backed junta put in place after the right-wing coup of winter 2014. Ukraine has refused to pay not only private-sector bondholders, but the Russian Government as well. This should have blocked Ukraine from receiving further IMF aid. Refusal to pay for Ukrainian military belligerence in its New Cold War against Russia would have been a major step forcing peace, and also forcing a clean-up of the country’s endemic corruption. Instead, the IMF is backing Ukrainian policy, its kleptocracy and its Right Sector leading the attacks that recently cut off Crimea’s electricity. The only condition on which the IMF insists is continued austerity. Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, has fallen by a third this years, pensions have been slashed (largely as a result of being inflated away), while corruption continues unabated.

Despite this the IMF announced its intention to extend new loans to finance Ukraine’s dependency and payoffs to the oligarchs who are in control of its parliament and justice departments to block any real cleanup of corruption. For over half a year there was a semi-public discussion with U.S. Treasury advisors and Cold Warriors about how to stiff Russia on the $3 billion owed by Ukraine to Russia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. There was some talk of declaring this an “odious debt,” but it was decided that this ploy might backfire against U.S. supported dictatorships. In the end, the IMF simply lent Ukraine the money. By doing so, it announced its new policy: “We only enforce debts owed in US dollars to US allies.” This means that what was simmering as a Cold War against Russia has now turned into a full-blown division of the world into the Dollar Bloc (with its satellite Euro and other pro-U.S. currencies) and the BRICS or other countries not in the U.S. financial and military orbit. What should Russia do? For that matter, what should China and other BRICS countries do? The IMF and U.S. neocons have sent the world a message: you don’t have to honor debts to countries outside of the dollar area and its satellites. Why then should these non-dollarized countries remain in the IMF – or the World Bank, for that matter. The IMF move effectively splits the global system in half,between the BRICS and the US-European neoliberalized financial system.