In a press release, Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice announce the withdrawal of the "enemy combatant" definition of Gitmo detainees. The memo says that, under President Obama's orders, the department is reviewing detention policy:

In a filing today with the federal District Court for the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice submitted a new standard for the government’s authority to hold detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility. The definition does not rely on the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief independent of Congress’s specific authorization. It draws on the international laws of war to inform the statutory authority conferred by Congress. It provides that individuals who supported al Qaeda or the Taliban are detainable only if the support was substantial. And it does not employ the phrase "enemy combatant."

The Department also submitted a declaration by Attorney General Eric Holder stating that, under executive orders issued by President Obama, the government is undertaking an interagency review of detention policy for individuals captured in armed conflicts or counterterrorism operations as well as a review of the status of each detainee held at Guantanamo. The outcome of those reviews may lead to further refinements of the government’s position as it develops a comprehensive policy.

The memo states that the government will no longer detain combatants who provided "insignificant or insubstantial" support to al Qaeda or the Taliban. (The Bush administration came under fierce criticism for holding persons with little or no connection to the terrorist organizations.) More than 200 remain incarcerated at Camp Delta; it's unclear if any -- or how many -- will be released under the new legal standards. 

Photo: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

The Obama administration may actually dodge a battle over that Air Force refueling tanker controversy that former Undersecretary of Defense Jacques Gansler weighed in on for FP by simply not buying it at all. Of course, this is going to set off an even bigger battle with congress. CQ's Josh Rogin reports:

The White House has given the Pentagon guidance to delay procurement of aerial refueling tankers by five years and cancel plans for a new long-range bomber, according to three sources close to the discussions. [...]

If OMB’s recommendations are enacted, the largest battle in Congress will be over the Air Force’s contract for a new fleet of midair refueling tankers, which the Pentagon delayed last September following a protest backed by the Government Accountability Office.

The competition, which ultimately will be worth as much as $100 billion, has pitted Boeing Co. against a consortium of Northrop Grumman Corp. and the North American arm of the European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co.

Lawmakers from states representing both companies reacted with dismay to the prospect that the tanker competition could be delayed again, especially for five years.

Sen. Jeff Sessions , R-Ala., said Congress would fight back against a delay in the tanker contract if it is submitted in the formal budget request. The Northrop Grumman contender for the contract would be assembled largely in his state.

“For a group who has been in the OMB for just a matter of weeks to come in and suggest the cancellation of the No. 1 Air Force priority for procurement is stunning, and I don’t think Congress will accept that,” Sessions said.

Sen. Sam Brownback , R-Kan., whose state would benefit if Boeing won the contract, called the OMB guidance “deeply disturbing

I'm not enough of an expert to know how much the Air Force actually needs this tanker (and they seem pretty unlikely to give a straight answer on budget questions) but I do wish the U.S. had a procurement strategy aimed at getting the military the best equipment for the best price rather than getting congressmen reelected.

(Hat tip: Danger Room)

One European company seems to be surviving the global economic downturn just fine. EADS, the pan-European aerospace conglomerate best known as the parent company of Airbus, has recovered from a dismal 2007 to record a $2 billion profit in 2008. 

Travis Sharp's new piece for FP, might offer a hint for why things are looking up for EADS. While the world's economy contracts, countries everywhere are investing in expensive military systems like those built by EADS:

Despite its overwhelming dominance in overall spending, the United States did not have the fastest growing defense budget in the world between 2005 and 2007, the most recent period for which an accurate assessment is possible. That distinction belongs to Kazakhstan, which saw its defense budget increase by 84 percent. Other countries with booming budgets during this period included Angola (80 percent), Ukraine (57 percent), Jordan (57 percent), and Slovakia (55 percent). The United States, China, and Russia had more modest growth rates of 17 percent, 27 percent, and 33 percent, respectively.

But EADS's good times may not last forever, particularly if U.S. Democrats enact "Buy American" policies to limit the amount of equipment the U.S. military buys from overseas. The main flashpoint for this debate is an Air Force refueling tanker contract that Airbus and U.S. rival Boeing have been fighting over for years with Congress acting as an increasingly incompetent referee. Former Undersecretary of Defense Jacques Gansler believes military protectionism is bad for dense and ultimately bad for the economy:

The Defense Department is not a social welfare organization, and its sole responsibility is to supply U.S. war fighters with the best equipment at the best price. Luckily, though, these two goals aren't mutually exclusive: Military globalization is in fact a blessing for Americans.

The United States is still the world's largest military customer, and it's in the interest of international weapons manufacturers to do business where the buyers are. In the past decade, a number of major international firms have set up shop in the United States. In fact, the Northrop deal would have created tens of thousands of U.S. jobs.

 JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images

This morning, Erik Prince, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Blackwater stepped down. A former Navy SEAL and heir to a multi-million dollar auto-parts fortune, Prince was the brains behind and public face of the company, which garnered a billion dollars' worth of government contracts between 2001 and 2008.

But, the company's fortunes have changed with the administration. Five of its former employees are currently on trial for manslaughter, for killing unarmed civilians. This year, Iraq ousted Blackwater and it lost a State Department contract worth a third of its revenue.

Prince's resignation comes as part of a "comprehensive restructuring," initiated last month. Blackwater fired a number of employees, and announced it would no longer seek U.S. security contracts, instead focusing on training law enforcement officials and security guards in its facilities across the world. It also rebranded itself "Xe," pronounced "zee." (The firm provided no explanation for the name, the symbol for the noble gas Xenon.)

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, chair of the Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, responded:

"This is the second time Blackwater has tried to change its image by rebranding itself. No matter what it calls itself, Blackwater can't change the fact that its lethal actions have resulted in the deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians. The company's reckless actions have also put our troops in harm's way and jeopardized our mission in Iraq. I'm glad that the State Department under Secretary of State Clinton has decided not to renew Blackwater's contract in Iraq. Blackwater's notorious reputation will outlast its name."

Maybe a new jingle?

Scott Olson/Getty Images

In President Obama's speech on Tuesday, he pledged to "reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use." Could this have been a reference to the planned missile defense system in Eastern Europe, on which Obama's views are not exactly clear?

Congressional Democrats, at least, do seem to be taking aim at the system. California Rep. Ellen Tauscher, chairwoman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee is a critic of long-range missile defense, calling for a focus on short- and medium-range defense which have been more rigorously tested:

"Given the need to fund other high priority defense programs, reductions to the missile defense programs may be required."  

Tauscher's subcomittee held a hearing yesterday in which Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, who heads the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, explained that his agency was conducting a review of existing missile defense systems in order to "identify limitations." 

The decision may be out of his hands. With Obama looking to contain costs, the Pentagon has drawn up a list of expensive weapons programs for possible cuts. MDA is on the list along with the Air force's massively expensive F-22 fighter and new destroyers for the Navy. Details on which programs will be cut won't be released until March or April but it's rumored that missile defense will be cut by around $2 billion. 

Some defense analysts see the end of an era:

"There are clear signs that US defense spending peaked in 2008 and that it will be gradually declining over the next four years as the United States reduces its presence in Iraq," Thompson told AFP.

Joseph Cirincione made a persuasive case for cutting missile defense in the May/June 2008 issue of FP.

With Kyrgyzstan taking another step toward shuttering the Manas air base, there's increasing speculation that the Obama administration is considering resuming military cooperation with Uzbekistan, which expelled the U.S. in 2005 in the midst of a diplomatic feud over the country's human rights record. Christopher Flavelle writes in Slate:

The shifting landscape around Afghanistan is closing off options for Obama, who must now begin to think about unsavory compromises if he wants to make progress in the Afghan campaign. [...]

President George W. Bush, though largely indifferent to public opinion, could afford to do the honorable thing in 2005 by walking away from an ugly regime in Uzbekistan, when Afghanistan was looking better and the base in Kyrgyzstan was still available. Obama, whose inauguration speech promised that the ideals of rule of law and rights of man "still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake," may have to let his image suffer because he lacks the options of his predecessor.

Obama may still be spared this unpleasant choice. Analysts tell Eurasianet the Kyrgyz move is likely a ploy to get Washington to pony up more cash for the base, though some recent statements from the U.S. military indicate that Kyrgyzstan may have overplayed its hand.

Hopefully the Uzbekistan option is being floated by the Obamans as a bargaining chip with Kyrgyzstan and won't actually come to pass. Kyrgyzstan's not exactly Canada but Uzbekistan is in a class of its own as a human rights abuser and Fred Kaplan's 2005 arguments for why the U.S. should steer well clear of the place still hold.

Given all his encouraging human rights rhetoric, it would be nice if Obama could just minimize his dealings with post-Soviet dictatorships. Besides, his campaign manager and his secretary of state's husband have them well covered.

VYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote enthusiastically about the tri-government military operation that Uganda, Congo, and Southern Sudan were undertaking to root out the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Unfortunately, since then, things haven't been going well. The LRA managed to survive the initial military onslaught, and went on to massacre as many as 900 civilians since the military offensive began in mid-December. Joseph Kony, the group's notorious leader, is still alive and well. (While the LRA's deputy commander is set to surrender soon, it was Kony's death or capture that was the main point of the endeavor.)

 

Yet, just when this military venture was about to fizzle out with its primary objective still not met, an interesting piece of news, courtesy of the New York Times, has now thrown the operation back into the spotlight. On Feb. 7, the Times reported that the United States, through the Pentagon's newly minted Africa Command (or Africom), was heavily involved in the planning of the operation -- supplying intelligence, supplies, and more than a million dollars in fuel aid. According to the Times:

The Ugandan government asked the American Embassy in Kampala, Uganda's capital, for help, and the request was sent up the chain of command in November to President Bush, who personally authorized it, a former senior Bush administration official said."

Given the number of civilian massacres that have occurred since the start of the operation -- massacres that happened because no one adequately secured the villages in the area -- this could potentially be embarrassing for Africom and the Pentagon.

I asked Vince Crawley, chief of public information at Africom, to comment on the claims made by the New York Times. He responded by emphasizing that the United States was involved only in an advisory capacity and that "this wasn't a U.S. plan that Uganda carried out. It was a Ugandan plan that would have taken place regardless of U.S. assistance." With regard to the securing of villages in the area, Crawley said,

There was dialogue on how to protect the areas. There was discussion. Again, it's not a U.S. operation. ... Fundamentally, it's not appropriate for us to comment on the strategies and tactics of other nations. That's not what partners do."

Even with U.S. help, the LRA won't be easy to stamp out. Check out our new list of five other rebel groups around the world that have demonstrated remarkable staying power.

TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty Images

In case you missed the game last night, Gen. David Petraeus's coin toss was a great bit of theater, and very much in keeping with the Super Bowl's overall last days of the Roman Empire vibe.

As one guest at the party I attended observed, it must be nice for him to be involved in a conflict where you know one side is eventually going to win.

Check out FP Executive Editor Susan Glasser's interview with Petraeus here.

Photo: Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Laurent Nkunda's arrest isn't the only recent major development in central Africa. Beginning in mid-December, the governments of Uganda, Congo, and Southern Sudan began a significant joint military operation to root out the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), an insurgent group out of northern Uganda whose leaders have outstanding arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court.

The LRA has a tumultuous 20-year history of not just destabilizing northern Uganda (which currently has about 1.5 million citizens in camps for internally displaced persons because of the group's activity), but also destabilizing southern Sudan, eastern Congo, and the Central African Republic. In the past few days alone, new reports of LRA attacks have trickled out of Southern Sudan, where some members of the group fled after their Congolese hideout was bombed by the tri-government military venture.

What is striking about this military operation -- which, so far, has failed to kill the group's notorious leader, Joseph Kony -- was the regional approach that the three countries took, especially in an area that's not exactly known for its international cooperation (particularly in the aftermath of the Congo War). True, Uganda's army and air force supplied the bulk of the manpower, but even the modest involvement of the Congolese and Southern Sudanese armies at the periphery of the operation is a step in the right direction. While the outcome of the current military operation is still not clear, greater regional coordination almost certainly holds promise for future efforts -- both military and diplomatic -- between the three conflict-rife states.

Over the next weeks and months, anyone who is interested in a political resolution to the crisis in Darfur would do well to pay attention to the actions of the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the semi-autonomous Government of Southern Sudan with regard to the LRA and other rebel groups in the region. Much has been made of the connections between the LRA and Khartoum, which covertly funded the the group's terrorist activity in southern Sudan during the country's most recent civil war. Indeed, whether this new regionalism will bear tangible fruit, only time will tell.

Meanwhile, the region's stability and the lives of possibly thousands of people hang in the blance.

When Michael "Scott" Speicher's F/A-18 Hornet was shot down over Baghdad in the wee hours of America's first war in Iraq, on Jan. 17, 1991, no one imagined that the story of his disappearance would end in a Washington, DC, boardroom. Fortunately, it hasn't.

The Navy pilot, father of two, and native of my own Jacksonville, Florida, was the first American lost in the first Gulf War. The night his plane crashed, the Pentagon and then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney declared him killed in action. It was a decision that Speicher's family and friends have fought for years. Because his remains were never found, many experts have been led to believe that he was captured, not killed, that fateful night. Evidence surfaced--including his initials scratched into an Iraqi prison wall--that forced the Defense Department in 2001 to declare him "Missing in Action" instead. When the more recent U.S. war and takeover of Iraq failed to explain definitively what happened to Speicher, the Pentagon prepared to close the case. His family vehemently opposed that move.

Last week, the ongoing saga over his whereabouts took a dramatic turn, when a Naval review board decided that Speicher's case should remain open and more evidence should be collected. Now, the decision will be left up to the secretary of the Navy, who will have the final decision on the case before he leaves office in less than a month.

It's an interesting case for many reasons, most important of which is that it could serve as a test case on how not to handle the recovery of missing military members during and after a time of war. We here at Passport will be watching.

Photo: Getty Images 

The Washington Post's Walter Pincus has an analysis of Robert Gates recent articles and media appearances. He writes:

A longtime Russia analyst during his years with the CIA, Gates today sees Moscow as less of a threat than do many inside and outside the U.S. military establishment.

Pincus is referring to statements like this one, from Gates' piece in the new Foreign Affairs:

Russian tanks and artillery may have crushed Georgia's tiny military. But before the United States begins rearming for another Cold War, it must remember that what is driving Russia is a desire to exorcise past humiliation and dominate its "near abroad" -- not an ideologically driven campaign to dominate the globe. As someone who used to prepare estimates of Soviet military strength for several presidents, I can say that Russia's conventional military, although vastly improved since its nadir in the late 1990s, remains a shadow of its Soviet predecessor. And adverse demographic trends in Russia will likely keep those conventional forces in check.

Good point, but do "many inside and outside the U.S. military establishment" really disagree with it? I find it hard to believe that even those who think the military is neglecting conventional threats by focusing on counterinsurgency would argue that Russia today is a comparable threat to the Soviet Union.

If there actually is a real debate about this, I'm glad Gates is the one in charge. Here's hoping he and his colleagues continue the recent strategy of basically ignoring Russia's pointless military posturing and focusing their attention where real damage can be done.

Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Having bid farewell to the Green Zone last week, U.S. forces today opened the brand new Baghdad embassy, which will house "1,200 employees, including diplomats, troops and staff from 14 federal agencies."

For a detailed look at America's new digs in Iraq, it's worth revisiting architectural historian Jane Loeffler's analysis of the structure from the September/October, 2007 issue of FP, written before it was constructed:

It will be six times larger than the U.N. complex in New York and more than 10 times the size of the new U.S. Embassy being built in Beijing, which at 10 acres is America’s second-largest mission. The Baghdad compound will be entirely self-sufficient, with no need to rely on the Iraqis for services of any kind. The embassy has its own electricity plant, fresh water and sewage treatment facilities, storage warehouses, and maintenance shops. The embassy is composed of more than 20 buildings, including six apartment complexes with 619 one-bedroom units. Two office blocks will accomodate about 1,000 employees. High-ranking diplomats will enjoy well-appointed private residences. Once inside the compound, Americans will have almost no reason to leave. It will have a shopping market, food court, movie theater, beauty salon, gymnasium, swimming pool, tennis courts, a school, and an American Club for social gatherings. To protect it all, the embassy is reportedly surrounded by a wall at least 9 feet high—and it has its own defense force.[...]

If architecture reflects the society that creates it, the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad makes a devastating comment about America’s global outlook. Although the U.S. government regularly proclaims confidence in Iraq’s democratic future, the United States has designed an embassy that conveys no confidence in Iraqis and little hope for their future. Instead, the United States has built a fortress capable of sustaining a massive, long-term presence in the face of continued violence.

Yeah, it's safe to say there's going to be a sizeable U.S. presence in Iraq for a while.

So, that "exact" Taj Mahal replica that a Bangladeshi filmmaker is constructing near Dhaka turns out to be a more of a crappy carnival attraction. Here's video:

 

of Global Voices has more from the Bengali blogosphere.

As I wrote on Monday, the United States is hoping to send U.N. peacekeepers into turbulent Somalia. Yesterday, a U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing the use of force on ground in Somalia to stop pirating passed. In a press briefing afterward, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was very cryptic in response to the final question:

QUESTION: (Inaudible) does this resolution mean that –

 

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you.

 

QUESTION: -- you can intervene militarily in Somalia?

 

SECRETARY RICE: We – there is a very – there is a very clear, longstanding understanding in international politics about the role of UN Security Council resolutions in this regard, and the fact that it is the Transitional Federal Government that is desirous of not having their territory used for safe haven for pirates. And so that is what has just taken place here in the Council.

Stay tuned...