U.S. ambassador puts brakes on plan to utilize Afghan militias against Taliban – washingtonpost.com
Afghan officials and Eikenberry have also expressed concern that unless there is a detailed plan to connect these village security forces to Ministry of Interior oversight, they could fuel the rise of warlords and undermine the already fragile government in Kabul. Another [...]

FBI agents seeking phone records used ’startling’ methods – washingtonpost.com
FBI agents seeking telephone records demanded information from phone companies in a variety of “startling” and illicit methods, including e-mail and post-it notes, in an “egregious breakdown” of safeguards and oversight, the Justice Department’s inspector general reported Wednesday.
The long-awaited investigative report describes numerous lapses by FBI [...]

From Justin Logan:
I don’t really have much to add, so I’ll reproduce post entirely:
Bad Intelligence–But in Which Direction? | Cato @ Liberty
Since the topic of the day seems to be right-wing anger at insufficiently panicky intelligence assessments on Iran, it might be worth looking at how bad U.S. intelligence on Iran is–and in which direction [...]

From Max Boot:
Commentary » Blog Archive » The Need for Getting Good at Nation Building
Problem is, the U.S. government still lacks the right resources and structures to tackle effectively the difficult task of state-building (or, as it is popularly known, “nation building”) in the Third World.
I find this sort of essay tremendously disheartening. Boot [...]

Matt Yglesias links to the following piece from Spencer Ackerman:
Analysts Question Al-Qaeda Efforts at Counterterrorism Center « The Washington Independent
Only half of NCTC’s roughly 300 analysts focus directly on al-Qaeda — with some analyzing terror groups that do not threaten the United States, like the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka or the Hamas radicals of [...]

U.N. Blames Taliban for Afghan Toll – NYTimes.com
But the most striking aspect of the report was the shift in responsibility for the deaths of Afghan civilians. The survey found that the Taliban and other insurgents killed three times more civilians than the American-led coalition and Afghan government forces last year.
This should be the main message [...]

From Bruce Hoffman:
Al-Qaeda has a new strategy. Obama needs one, too. – washingtonpost.com
Remarkably, more than eight years after Sept. 11, we still don’t fully understand our dynamic and evolutionary enemy. We claim success when it is regrouping and tally killed leaders while more devious plots are being hatched. Al-Qaeda needs to be utterly destroyed. This [...]

In a recent report, Major General Michael T. Flynn, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence in Afghanistan levels a damning indictment against the U.S. conduct of the war in Afghanistan.  He argues,
Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy. Having focused the overwhelming majority [...]

Afghanistan: General Stanley McChrystal Tells Diane Sawyer Surge Blunted Taliban – ABC News
“We’ve been at this for about seven months now and I believe we’ve made progress. It’s not a completed mission yet,” he said.
McChrystal cited as evidence a meeting he recently held in a river valley in Helmand province, an area where the Taliban [...]

The Cable | FOREIGN POLICY
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is planning to double its ranks as it takes over a host of missions for the military there, according to America’s No. 2 diplomat in Iraq.
“If Congress gives us the money we are asking for, this embassy is going to be twice the size it is [...]