Early Bird summary
Monday’s Early Bird leads with a transcript of CNN’s interview with Defense Secretary Robert Gates. For a transcript of the interview, follow this link.
The second major story is a piece in the Washington Times derived from the CNN broadcast, reporting that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview that aired Sunday that he is optimistic his recommendations for overhauling defense spending can survive an upcoming budget fight in Congress.Mr. Gates told CNN he has been surprised by the limited scope of criticism aimed so far at his recommendations for the Pentagon budget for fiscal 2010, which begins Oct. 1, and had heard some "important voices raised in support."
The Houston Chronicle reports that Defense Secretary Robert Gates, seeking to soothe Mideast allies worried about Tehran's reach, said Sunday that efforts to bolster U.S. relations with Iran may still ultimately face what he called "a closed fist."Gates was flying to Egypt, the first stop on a Mideast tour that continues in Saudi Arabia. He said part of his mission will be to assure Saudis that any U.S. outreach to Iran aims to increase security throughout the region.Building diplomacy with Iran "will not be at the expense of our long-term relationships with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states that have been our partners and friends for decades," Gates told reporters aboard a military jet headed to Cairo.
Pakistan dominates the Early Bird, with the New York Times reporting that, as the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.But the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are located, and its concerns have intensified in the last two weeks since the Taliban entered Buner, a district 60 miles from the capital. The spread of the insurgency has left American officials less willing to accept blanket assurances from Pakistan that the weapons are safe.
The New York Times also reports that the Pakistani government announced the creation of a new Islamic appeals court over the weekend, saying that it was meeting the terms of a February peace agreement with the Taliban and that the militants should now cease their armed struggle.But the Taliban said Sunday that they had not agreed to the two judges appointed to the provincial court.“The government has fulfilled its part of the agreement,” Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for North-West Frontier Province, told reporters on Saturday evening. “Now anyone carrying arms would be treated as a rebel and would be prosecuted in the qazi courts,” he said. A qazi is a judge trained in Islamic law.
As Taliban forces edged to within 60 miles of Islamabad late last month, the Obama administration urgently asked for new intelligence assessments of whether Pakistan's government would survive, according to the Washington Post. In briefings last week, senior officials said, President Obama and his National Security Council were told that neither a Taliban takeover nor a military coup was imminent and that the Pakistani nuclear arsenal was safe.Beyond the immediate future, however, the intelligence was far from reassuring. Security was deteriorating rapidly, particularly in the mountains along the Afghan border that harbor al-Qaeda and the Taliban, intelligence chiefs reported, and there were signs that those groups were working with indigenous extremists in Pakistan's populous Punjabi heartland.The Pakistani government was mired in political bickering. The army, still fixated on its historical adversary India, remained ill-equipped and unwilling to throw its full weight into the counterinsurgency fight.But despite the threat the intelligence conveyed, Obama has only limited options for dealing with it. Anti-American feeling in Pakistan is high, and a U.S. combat presence is prohibited. The United States is fighting Pakistan-based extremists by proxy, through an army over which it has little control, in alliance with a government in which it has little confidence.
Meanwhile, the Boston Globe reports that Pakistan's army and the Taliban blamed each other yesterday for a rise in tensions that threatened to destroy a much-criticized peace deal, just days before the Pakistani president heads to Washington for talks with President Obama.The army accused militants in the Swat Valley of looting, attacking infrastructure, and killing a soldier. A Taliban spokesman said militants will start patrolling Swat's main town, and acknowledged that they cut the throats of two soldiers as revenge for the army killing two insurgents.What happens to the peace pact is likely to figure prominently in talks between Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Obama later this week. Zardari is expected to ask for more money to help Pakistan's battered economy and under-equipped security forces.
President Barack Obama will seek a unified strategy to subdue Islamist militants in the tribal regions straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan when he meets with the presidents of the two nations in Washington this week, according to the Wall Street Journal.The meetings with Presidents Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan come as the Obama administration grapples with how closely to embrace two, who are key allies but flawed leaders.Many U.S. officials question Mr. Zardari's grip on power and whether his government is willing and able to fight Taliban militants who have gained control of more Pakistani territory in recent months. Some in Washington say opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, would make a better partner, despite concerns about his Islamist alliances.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Iraqi police have arrested a senior member of the U.S.-allied Awakening movement in Salahuddin province, the American military said Sunday, continuing a crackdown that has left many of the Sunni Muslim paramilitary fighters seething with anger.Mullah Nadim Jibouri, an Awakening leader in the town of Duluiya, 55 miles north of Baghdad, was detained Saturday along with two of his brothers, the military said.Awakening leaders have been squeezed from all sides in recent months, with Iraqi authorities carrying out a series of arrests against them and Al Qaeda in Iraq continuing to target them with bombs. Late last month, Jibouri escaped a suicide attack at a mosque in the town where he was also an imam. The bomber, who detonated an explosives vest, killed five people and wounded 18, including one of Jibouri's now-detained brothers.
As the Obama administration reviews how to improve U.S. cyber defenses and the Pentagon plans its future strategy, the chief of the U.S. Navy is making it clear his service has a major role to play in defending the nation’s computer networks, Defense News reports.“Cyberspace is on the bottom of the ocean,” even though many U.S. military slides depict the cyber domain as lightning bolts traveling from satellites to war fighters, Adm. Gary Roughead said May 1 at a Center for International and Strategic Studies forum in Washington. “That is the domain of the United States Navy.”Much of the world’s Internet traffic travels along undersea cables, and if adversaries attempt to disrupt electronic transmissions, Roughead said, the sea service will play a critical role in responding.To address the problem, the Navy must devote more “thinking and resources” to cyber security, which will “dominate our thinking and investments in a significant way” over the next few years.
While piracy rages in the Gulf of Aden and in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia, attacks on the other side of the ocean in the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea have steadily dwindled, largely because Southeast Asian nations have banded together to fight back, the Washington Times reports.During the first quarter of 2009, attacks in Southeast Asian waters were down to nine, compared with 41 during the same period of 2004, according to the International Maritime Bureau.
Media summary
1. Leading newspaper headlines: The New York Times and the Washington Post each lead with American officials expressing doubts about the future of Pakistani security in the face of a Taliban uprising. (Slate Magazine)
2. Taliban face human shields charge: Pakistan's army has accused Taleban militants of "reportedly" holding 2,000 villagers as human shields to stop an offensive in the north-west. (BBC)
3. Afghanistan attacks leave 25 dead: Bomb attacks in two Afghanistan provinces have left at least 25 people dead, officials say. (BBC)
4. Big rise in Iraq deaths in April: Iraq's government says that 355 Iraqis were killed in April, making it the bloodiest month so far this year. (BBC)
Leading newspaper headlines
The New York Times and the Washington Post each lead with American officials expressing doubts about the future of Pakistani security in the face of a Taliban uprising. The Los Angeles Times leads with a trend piece on how American car buyers are beginning to shop more like Europeans. USA Today leads with a look at President Barack Obama's search for a new U.S. Supreme Court justice to replace Justice David Souter. The Wall Street Journal tops its world-wide newsbox with word that cases of H1N1/swine flu have appeared in 18 countries, even as officials note that the disease may not be that severe after all.
The NYT's Pakistan coverage is squarely focused on the nuclear threat, with U.S. officials saying they believe Pakistan's nuclear stockpile is secure for now while acknowledging that they don't know where all of Pakistan's weapons are. The WP focuses on the long-term logistical challenges Pakistan presents, like providing funding and training to an unreliable partner. Both pieces note that the Taliban uprising requires the United States to rely on the Pakistanis to handle their own security, a difficult prospect given the history of mistrust between the two countries.
USAT reiterates Obama's claim that he wants the next Supreme Court Justice to understand, "how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives." Many news sources, including USAT, take this as a sign that Obama may not choose a federal judge to fill the vacancy. Racial diversity may have a hand in the selection, the paper says, but political diversity probably won't be an issue. With the Democrats holding nearly 60 seats in the Senate, the paper argues that Obama won't need to nominate a moderate to appease Republicans but can, instead, find someone closer fitting to Souter's left-leaning mold.
After years of gorging on high-performance, low-mileage beasts, Americans are finally changing the way they buy cars. From 1999 to 2007, Americans bought an average of almost 5.9 new cars each year for every 100 people. This year, dealers will be lucky if we buy 3.5 cars per 100 people, and the cars we do buy will be smaller and more fuel efficient. Analysts say Americans are adopting the European mindset of buying very practical cars and keeping them for as long as possible.
The NYT off-leads with a big financial scoop, reporting bank stress tests will reveal that the nation's financial institutions are in better shape than expected. Reports on the strength of the nation's 19 largest banks are expected this week, and an anonymous insider says the results show all the banks are solvent. While some banks may need additional capital to make it through a long recession, the government will be able to meet those needs with the bailout money already appropriated, something that seemed impossible just two months ago.
A total of 30 states have reported cases of swine flu as on Sunday, up from 21 states the day before, writes USAT. While the disease may be spreading domestically, officials say the flu is milder than they first thought. Of course, the paper notes that the 1918 flu epidemic also appeared mild at first, and it went on to kill 50 million people worldwide.
Then again, all that panic over swine flu may be doing some good, says the NYT. According to a pair of competing computer models, it's likely that there will only be 2,000-2,500 cases of the disease in the United States over the next four weeks, in part because of school closings and other preventative measures.
Meanwhile, the WP wants you to know that lobbyists for the pork industry want you to know that you won't get swine flu (sorry, H1N1) from eating pigs. While TP isn't debating the science—influenza isn't a food-borne illness—it's uncomfortable to watch the paper parrot the lobby's message so neatly. Would it have been too difficult to talk to a public health official for this story? Or maybe a doctor? Or how about anyone who isn't being paid by the pork lobby to convince you that their product is safe?
Infrastructure projects funded by the stimulus package may help create jobs, but they're going to be terrible for traffic this summer, according to USAT.
The White House is looking to expand student aid, reports the WP, by expanding the Pell Grant program into an entitlement program not unlike Medicare. To pay for more generous grants, the administration wants to assume direct control of all student lending, effectively killing off the private student-loan industry and saving $94 billion over 10 years. Private lenders are lobbying hard against the plan, but that paper says congressional support for the change is high, even among some Republicans and members from states where student lending is big business.
A growing number of impoverished Pakistani children are turning to radical madrasas for schooling, writes the NYT, due to a lack of other options. Sources tell the paper they're worried that the rise of madrasas in Pakistan will be followed by a growing number of suicide bombers, as it was in Punjab.
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Taleban face human shields charge
Pakistan is engaged in a military offensive in Buner district
Pakistan's army has accused Taleban militants of "reportedly" holding 2,000 villagers as human shields to stop an offensive in the north-west.
The military wants to clear insurgents from Pir Baba, an important religious shrine in Buner district, about 100km (62 miles) from the capital, Islamabad.
A BBC correspondent in Islamabad says it is not possible to verify the claim.
The military has been engaged in an offensive to remove insurgents from the Lower Dir and Buner regions.
The Pakistani government is trying to stop the Taleban extending its influence beyond the Swat Valley, an area which they largely control.
See a map of the region
When the Taleban seized control of Buner last month, Pir Baba was one of the first places they took control of.
They still hold it, despite the army deploying tanks, helicopter gunships and warplanes to the district to defeat them.
Target slipping
The military says its operations elsewhere in the district are progressing well.
In a statement released on Monday, it said security forces had attacked Taleban positions in Buner and had killed seven militants, including an important commander.
Security forces have been battling Taleban militants in four of Buner's six sub-districts.
Militants are in control of the remaining two districts.
Buner resident Nasir Khan told Reuters news agency by phone: "There's been heavy firing going on since morning. It is very scary. Troops are using heavy artillery and gunships."
The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hassan, in Islamabad, says that although security forces appear to have the upper hand, the militants are resisting fiercely and it may be sometime before the forces can take complete control of Buner.
Their commanders had originally hoped to do this within a week.
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Afghanistan attacks leave 25 dead
Officials said the attack in Laghman was carried out by a 14-year-old
Bomb attacks in two Afghanistan provinces have left at least 25 people dead, officials say.
In the southern province of Zabul, a roadside bomb killed 12 civilians, mainly women and children. A separate ambush killed six security workers.
In Laghman, an eastern province, seven people including a mayor, bodyguards and villagers were killed by a suicide bomber, the interior ministry said.
Officials said a 14-year-old boy detonated explosives strapped to him.
The office of the governor of Laghman said 10 people were also wounded, including three women, in the attack outside a municipal administration building, Reuters news agency reported.
Police in Zabul said Taleban militants killed the security workers at a construction site, with two civilians also dying.
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Big rise in Iraq deaths in April
By Jim Muir BBC News, Baghdad
Iraq's government says that 355 Iraqis were killed in April, making it the bloodiest month so far this year.
The bulk of the deaths came from a number of big explosions, and the death count did not include at least 80 Iranian pilgrims killed in Iraq.
April was also the deadliest month for US troops since September, with 18 soldiers killed.
The casualties are nowhere near the 2006-07 levels when the insurgency and sectarian strife were at their peak.
Worrying trend
The figure of 355 Iraqis killed in April is mainly made up of 290 civilians, but it also includes 65 soldiers or policemen, who are often the targets of attacks.
The figures, issued by three Iraqi ministries, showed a 40% rise over March.
This is mainly because of several very big bomb attacks, including four in the space of just two days, in which at least 150 people were killed.
In both 2006 and 2007, the average monthly death toll for civilians alone was over 2,000.
Nonetheless, the trend shown by these and other casualty estimates since January this year has been creeping month by month, and that has to be a worrying development, as American troops start withdrawing.
The same trend seems to be reflected in US military casualties.
Eighteen Americans died in April, the highest number since last September, but also, far below their worst months in 2006 and 2007, when more than 100 died each month.
Iraqi leaders and US military officials are playing down the upward trend.
They say the bomb devices are cruder than in the past, and they are failing to stir up the kind of sectarian reaction which happened before.
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