Six In The Morning

In statement, spy chief’s office defends evolving accounts of Benghazi attack, cites shifting intelligence


By Greg Miller, Saturday, September 29, 8:14 AM
The office of the nation’s spy chief issued a statement Friday defending the Obama administration’s accounts of the siege on a U.S. mission in Libya, saying it became clear only in the aftermath that it was “a deliberate and organized terrorist attack.” The statement appeared aimed at quieting criticism, mostly from Republicans, of the administration’s shifting characterizations of a Sept. 11 assault that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. Officials initially described the attack as spontaneous but in recent days have said it was an act of terrorism with links to al-Qaeda. The release from the office of Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. came as lawmakers sought more details about the siege in Benghazi. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent a letter to the State Department on Thursday posing questions about intelligence in the period leading up to the attack and the adequacy of the security at U.S. compounds.

Shabaab abandon Kismayu stronghold
Residents in the city confirm the Islamist fighters seemed to have moved outside city lines and that their radio station, Radio Andalus, was off the air.

Posted Saturday, September 29 2012 at 09:15
Al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab rebels said on Saturday that they have abandoned the southern Somali port city of Kismayu, their last bastion in the country, a day after an assault by African Union troops. "The military command of Shabaab mujahedeen ordered a tactical retreat at midnight," spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage told AFP. The announcement came a day after an assault on the city by African Union troops, who had been trying to dislodge the insurgents from the key coastal city for days. Residents in the city confirmed that the Islamist fighters seemed to have moved outside city lines and that their radio station, Radio Andalus, was off the air.

Irish gun thefts spark fears of new Ulster sniper campaign
Security forces trying to trace up to 30 high-powered rifles with telescopic sights stolen from shop by Republican dissidents

Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent The Guardian, Saturday 29 September 2012
Anti-ceasefire republicans have stolen up to 30 high-powered rifles with telescopic sights that can be used in sniper attacks against the security forces in Northern Ireland, the Guardian has learned. The theft of the long-range rifles has raised the spectre of a new lethal sniper campaign similar to the one the South Armagh Provisional IRA conducted that resulted in the deaths of several soldiers and policemen in the 1990s.

Return to autocracy feared as Yudhoyono era peters out
September 29, 2012

Hamish McDonald Asia-Pacific editor, Sydney Morning Herald
There comes a point in the curve of political authority for a limited-term leader where it turns inexorably downwards and he or she becomes more and more of a lame duck. Indonesia's national language has no direct translation of that term, although the country's traditional statecraft was obsessed with the appearance and disappearance of ''wahyu'', the mystical right to rule. The President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, or SBY, as he is widely known, is now well into the second-last year of the second of the two five-year terms allowed under the constitution.

Syria between Hama 1982 and Lebanon
Middle East

By Victor Kotsev
Recent talks between the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels appear to have hit a hard spot. The Egyptian peace initiative is on the rocks after the failure of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to show up; various other efforts continue but the Emir of Qatar conveyed his pessimism poignantly on Tuesday by calling for an Arab military intervention in the country at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York. Though it is also remotely possible that this is the proverbial darkest moment before dawn breaks - the latest developments can also be interpreted as tough bargaining - what is happening on the ground is far from encouraging.

Nobody's safe: an insider's view of Mexico's drug-fuelled strife
In 2006, the Mexican government declared war on its country's drug gangs. The result? Mexico has become a battleground, with 60,000 civilians, police and drug lords already dead. Photographer Jerome Sessini recalls the two years he spent on the narcotics frontline

JEROME SESSINI SATURDAY 29 SEPTEMBER 2012
These photographs were taken between November 2008 and December 2011, against a background of unprecedented violence in Mexico. Narco-insurrection, low-intensity civil war, drug war: the terms – some more simplistic than others – to define the Mexican crisis are many but often inaccurate. What defines a war? Why do certain conflicts attract more attention? Certain deaths sway public opinion, others don't. History is written everywhere, but who decides on a hierarchy of evil and of memories? In Mexico, the issues are blurred.