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taken from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052340.html

ANALYSIS / Solution to Gaza crisis requires pan-Arab effort

By Zvi Bar'el

January 4, 2009

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The reality is that Hamas had already broken the truce several times before it was a week old:

"Gaza Rockets Again Break Hamas Truce Pledge
By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press | June 26, 2008

JERUSALEM � Gaza militants fired two rockets into southern Israel today, further straining a shaky, week-old truce as Israel kept vital Gaza border crossings closed in response.

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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

President-elect Barack Obama flew into Washington this weekend on the wings of hope and into a storm of issues that will challenge his Presidency when he takes office in 15 days.

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We refuse all donations from corporations, labor unions and PACs. Individuals may not donate more than $5,000. We also refuse all contributions from registered federal lobbyists and registered foreign agents.

You can search through the donors here. So far, I can tell you that Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Rod Blagojevich, and Roland Burris have all chosen not to donate. Like every journalist in America, I plugged their names in before anyone else's.

It's an unusual choice, for Panetta, a former Democratic congressman who became President Bill Clinton's budget chief and then his White House chief of staff, has no direct intelligence experience, and the CIA in previous decades has been rather unwelcoming to outsiders. (Obama's first pick for the spy chief slot, John Brennan, a career CIA officer, withdrew his name, after bloggers and others raised questions about his involvement in the agency's post-9/11 detention and interrogation programs.) Panetta, if confirmed, will work closely with retired Admiral Dennis Blair, Obama's choice to be director of national intelligence.

Panetta is an even-tempered and highly regarded Washington player--kind of a Mr. Fixit in a nice suit. He is also a zero-tolerance critic of the use of torture, and he considers waterboarding--a tactic used by the CIA--to be torture. A year ago, he wrote in The Washington Monthly:

John Yoo, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the Bush administration's Justice Department, became famous for his memos in defense of torture and his theory that the Constitution grants the president almost unlimited power during times of war. (The OLC is the part of the Justice Department responsible for providing legal advice to the executive.) Dawn Johnsen, the woman whom Barack Obama selected on Monday to run Yoo's old office*, published an article in 2007 entitled "Faithfully Executing the Laws: Internal Legal Constraints on Executive Power." That's quite the contrast. In a 2008 paper, "What's a President to Do? Interpreting the Constitution in the Wake of the Bush Administration's Abuses," (PDF) she writes that the Bush administration's disregard for the law should be the exception, not the rule, going forward:

The lesson we should draw from the Bush administration is not that we should dramatically alter our understanding of longstanding presidential authorities. Rather, it is the urgent need for more effective safeguards and checks from both within and without the executive branch to preclude any future recurrence of the Bush administrations appalling abuses.

If you delve further into Johnsen's work, the contrast with Yoo gets even sharper; she directly criticizes his legal theories. In the 2007 paper (PDF), she wrote:

Much appears to stem not just from anger over his policies or his actions but instead from a deep-seeded hatred of the man.

Regular readers of this column know I disagree strongly with many of Bush's policies and actions. I've been hypercritical of his administration.

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It's not hard to see why the S.E.C. behaves as it does. If you work for the enforcement division of the S.E.C. you probably know in the back of your mind, and in the front too, that if you maintain good relations with Wall Street you might soon be paid huge sums of money to be employed by it.

The commissions most recent director of enforcement is the general counsel at JPMorgan Chase; the enforcement chief before him became general counsel at Deutsche Bank; and one of his predecessors became a managing director for Credit Suisse before moving on to Morgan Stanley. A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the whole point of landing the job as the S.E.C.s director of enforcement is to position oneself for the better paying one on Wall Street....

The key suggestion:

If the S.E.C. is to restore its credibility as an investor protection agency, it should have some experienced, respected investors (which is not the same thing as investment bankers) as commissioners. President-elect Barack Obama should nominate at least one with a notable career investing capital, and another with experience uncovering corporate misconduct. As it happens, the most critical job, chief of enforcement, now has a perfect candidate, a civic-minded former investor with firsthand experience of the S.E.C.s ineptitude: Harry Markopolos [the investor who spent years trying to alert the SEC to Bernie Madoff].

On Monday morning, NPR ran an interview with Michael Oren, an American-Israeli best-selling military historian and Israeli reservist who is a spokesperson for the Israeli military. (He has also been a contributing editor for The New Republic.) Asked if the goal of the current Israeli operation in Gaza is regime change--that is, the expulsion of Hamas from power--he replied that Israelis "do not want to see continuation of Hamas rule in Gaza," but added, "It is not Israel's explicit goal to topple the Hamas government....That is not the stated goal of this operation. If it happens...there will be many people happy about it...The stated goal is to restore security to the southern part of Israel."

This line echoes the rhetoric used by Bush-Cheney officials in 2002 and 2003. They repeatedly noted that the United States officially favored regime change in Iraq but that the invasion to come was about WMDs and security. If it took regime change to neutralize that supposed dire WMD threat posed by Saddam Hussein, so be it.

The board was to meet Monday and was expected to declare which candidate received the most overall votes from nearly 3 million ballots cast. The latest numbers showed Franken, a Democrat, with a 225-vote lead over Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, who led Franken on election night.

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Author: Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies

http://www.cfr.org/bios/5641/max_boot.html

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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged "kingpin" of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in Pakistan in March 2003. He then disappeared in the global network of "black sites" operated by the CIA before resurfacing in Guantanamo in September 2006. The US military plans to try him for the deaths of over 3,000 Americans by means of a military commission. Human rights groups argue that such a trial would lack legal safeguards necessary to guarantee a fair trial, and are therefore urging that the US government try Mohammed either in civilian court or by a standard military court martial.

The battle over Mohammed's legal fate continues, but we may see him tried (and presumably convicted) well before any US action takes place. The BBC reports that a trial opened today in France, accusing Mohammed and several co-conspirators of planning the April 2002 truck bombing of a Tunisian synagogue, which killed 21 people. Two of the victims were French nationals, a fact that has enabled French prosecutors to try the case.

From the BBC:

According to court documents, suicide bomber Nizar Nouar called Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Mr Ganczarski, a convert to Islam who specialised in communications, just before he drove the gas-laden truck into the synagogue.

The calls were allegedly made on a telephone brought into Tunisia by the bomber's brother, the third defendant Walid Nouar.

All three men have been charged with "complicity in attempted murder in relation to a terrorist enterprise". They face 20 years in prison if convicted.

Relatives of the victims were in court on Monday.

"We are hoping for a life sentence... and we think there is sufficient evidence," said Judith-Adam Caumeil, a lawyer for German families.

Christian Ganczarski, a Polish-born German, identified himself to the court in German and insisted on his innocence.

"I had nothing to do with the attack," he said.

The bomber's uncle, Belgacem Nouar, was jailed in 2006 for his role in the attacks.

The trial is due to last until 6 February.

A state election board on Monday will announce Democrat Al Franken has defeated Republican incumbent Norm Coleman in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race, state officials told CNN Sunday....

The canvassing board on Monday will say a recount determined Franken won by 225 votes, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie told CNN.

The Coleman campaign is expected to file a legal challenge, alleging that about 650 absentee ballots, many from pro-Coleman areas, were improperly rejected in the course of the recount. Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats have declared Franken the winner, but Republican senators have promised they will filibuster to keep Franken from being seated while legal challenges are still outstanding. It appears "Senator Franken" could be seated in January, February, or even March.

Update: What's the takeaway? We will soon have a senator who once did things like this.