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

When Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was involved in a car crash last Friday that killed his wife of 31 years and left him hospitalized, more than a few suspected his political rival, President Robert Mugabe, of foul play. A charge Tsvangirai himself denied today.

But ABC News now reports a new twist in the case. The vehicle that sideswiped Tsvangirai's car after hitting a pothole was owned by a contractor working for the U.S. government:

U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the vehicle was owned by the contractor, but had a USAID insignia on it. The vehicle was purchased by the contractor with U.S. government money, and the driver was hired and paid by a British development agency.

The truck is said to have been on a routine delivery route at the time of the accident.

According to officials, USAID has been informed that the truck was impounded and its driver has been detained.

Though it now appears likely to have been just a horrific accident, U.S. and British involvement in this  tragedy is embarassing to say the least. I wouldn't be too surprised if it's now Mugabe's allies who start pushing the conspiracy theories.

I see that American officials in Israel are outraged that U.N. staffers had the temerity to hand John Kerry, who was touring Gaza recently, a letter purportedly from Hamas to U.S. President Barack Obama. And the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman himself has now caught the vapors:

Kerry turned the letter over to the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem on Friday and his spokesman told FOX News that the Democratic senator was not aware that the letter was from Hamas when he accepted it from an official with the U.N. relief agency.

Kerry told FOX News that he never read the letter because it was sandwich among other promotional papers the U.N. gave him. A State Department official confirmed to FOX News that it was from Hamas and is now under review.

A potential concern was whether such a letter would violate the United States' policy toward Hamas. Obama has said his administration will not engage in diplomatic talks with Hamas unless the group renounces terrorism and affirms Israel's right to exist.

This is all rather silly. What's the harm in accepting a letter? There's no obligation to do anything with the information. And shouldn't U.S. officials at least be interested to see what Hamas, or those claiming to be its representatives, have to say? Even if its clear that Hamas has no intention of recognizing Israel anytime soon, this policy of pretending that the group doesn't exist -- even as it steadly takes over the Palestinian territories -- is completely baffling to me.

MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/Getty Images

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

Over at her other home, War and Piece, The Cable's Laura Rozen has a pool report and the full transcript of Biden's speech today in Munich. The bottom line:

The speech was not interrupted by applause while the VP was speaking but got a warm response when it was over.

The NYT's Helene Cooper was there, and she thought the vice president took a hard line:

Mr. Biden’s speech was the highlight of a high-powered security conference that attracted a host of global leaders and diplomats, most of whom seemed primed to hear how the United States and its new leadership viewed the world. They erupted into spontaneous applause when Mr. Biden walked onto the stage.

But for all the talk of a new era in relations between the United States and the world, old sores remained, and with no sign of healing soon.

UPDATE: Craig Whitlock of WaPo saw the speech somewhat differently:

Vice President Joe Biden held out an olive branch Saturday to Iran and Russia, and reassured European allies that the Obama administration would treat them as equals but emphasized that "America will ask its partners to do more as well."

UPDATE II: Cooper's piece has been rewritten with a new focus. What seemed at first to be a hard line was actually well received in Moscow:

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Saturday that the United States will pursue a missile defense plan that has angered the Kremlin, but he also left open the possibility of compromise on the issue and struck a more conciliatory tone than the Bush administration on relations with Russia. 

Dan Drezner quips on Biden's line about not recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, "This is Biden's example of a tough line? Well, whoa, blow me down!!"

 Photo: AFP/Getty Images

On Monday in Washington, President Bush made one last ditch attempt for Darfur: he held talks with the least-worst person he could.

That person was Salva Kiir, who is both the Vice-President of Sudan and President of Southern Sudan. Hours earlier, the administration announced it was authorizing an emergency shipment of supplies to Darfur from Rwanda using two C-17 cargo planes. Another 240 containers of goods will be moved from ports into Darfur to help the fledgling UN-African Union peacekeeping mission.

That leaves me with two questions: Will the supplies do any good? And what exactly is the United States hoping to achieve?

First the supplies: The UN-AU hybrid mission is only at 63 percent of its strength, more than two years after the force was authorized, wracked with one difficulty after another (as if patrolling a space the size of France wasn't hard enough.) Cars and equipment have been stolen; fuel was siphoned from planes at night. Journalists have told me that Sudanese government forces are responsible.

But after months of quietly thwarting further deployment, the Sudanese government has finally swung open the door, "leaving the ball on the side of the UN," International Crisis Group Horn of Africa Director Fouad Hikmat tells me. It's up to UN member countries, particularly the U.S. which provides over a quarter of the budget, to handle the logistics of sending in peacekeepers. Will they be able to make a difference? Hikmat's read: "This is very very very good."

At first glance, it looks like President Bush is trying to cement his legacy as a genocide fighter. But if Bush is thinking Darfur, why meet with Kiir, a Southerner with little record in the region?

Country-wide voting is scheduled for Sudan this year -- part of a 6-year Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the decades long war between North and South Sudan in 2005. The light at the end of that long tunnel for Southerners is a vote on secession in 2011. If all goes according to plan, they'll vote on whether to remain autonomous, or become independent.

Like many Southerners, Kiir favors secession. But countrywide elections have to happen first -- and Darfur is in no shape to hold them. "[Southern politicians] for a long time weren't involved in Darfur, they were focused inward," Hikmat tells me. Now, they see they should become engaged because Darfur is a very serious threat to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement [and their secession vote]."

One more complication: the International Criminal Court may soon issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir. That makes Kiir the international powerbroker with the most credibility.

So Bush's and Kiir's interest may be right in line. For now. The U.S. should think long and hard about whether they want to back a secession, an outcome that Kiir favors and that Khartoum will certainly fight to prevent. It is an open secret that both South Sudan and the Khartoum government are arming in anticipation of the referendum in 2011. Yet another dilemma for the new President to look forward to.

Photo: Dennis Brack-Pool/Getty Images

The classic kung fu movie "The 36th Chamber of Shaolin" (popularized in the U.S. by the Wu Tang Clan) consists almost entirely of an extended training sequence in which the hero must test himself in increasingly difficult "chambers" created by the Shaolin temple monks before achieving the martial arts mastery needed to vanquish his enemies.

Ever since Joe Biden's infamous warning that Barack Obama would face "an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy," observers seem to be treating international events as a series of Shaolin-like "tests" for the president-elect to pass before achieving bona-fide statesman status. The big question is which test Obama will have to face first.

Would Russia putting missiles on the EU's doorstep be Obama's first test? Or would it be Iraq? Or Afghanistan? Or Pakistan? The Mumbai attacks were a popular choice for a while. Dark horse contenders include instability in Somalia and cranky European allies. Lately, the violence in Gaza has seemed an increasingly likely candidate.

Or perhaps... all of the above?

Looking at international affairs this way is both misleading and unfortunately, overly optimistic. Unlike the Shaolin trainee, Obama doesn't have the luxury of facing these tests one at a time, picking up valuable skills along the way. He's going to have to face all of them at once, along with urgent domestic issues and an economy in shambles.

Contrary to what Obama's secretary of state once said, there's no such thing as a "commander-in-chief threshold." Obama will not face down some international crisis and prove himself as a qualified world leader. He's going to have to learn on the job and he will make rookie mistakes as well as (let's hope) major breakthroughs.

It's doubtful that any of the above situations are going to be "solved" no matter how brilliant Obama proves to be, and there's a better-than-even chance that his biggest foreign policy test will be something that isn't even on anyone's radar right now. Americans will have a chance to judge whether he's at least handled himself competently when he faces the presidency's 36th chamber: re-election.

Photo by Jeff Haynes-Pool/Getty Images

There is a crisis. People are dying. Sending peacekeepers sounds great -- they come with U.N. neutrality, a mandate (usually) to use force, and the promise to do something. Who doesn't want to help out in places like the DR Congo, Zimbabwe, and Somalia?

If only it were so easy, writes the U.S. Government Accountability Office in a report released today. Future peacekeeping missions will be plagued by complex logistics, extensive troop needs, daunting political circumstances, and a reluctance from member states to donate troops and resources.

But the report is even more jarring. One cannot help but notice that the "hypothetical" situation described in the report sounds not-so-vaguely reminiscent of Somalia, to which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested sending peacekeepers just this week.

The potential new mission’s area of operations would have limited infrastructure and utilities, lacking roads, buildings, and water, and would thus require increased logistical planning...the potential new operation would be in a high-threat environment, political factions would recently have been fighting for control of the country, and there would be large numbers of internally displaced persons...According to UN planners, a potential new force would likely require units with the capability to deter threats from armed factions supported by international terrorist groups, which previous operations did not have to take into account to the same degree.

Sound familiar? There are only few countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have that level of chaos with possible international terrorists to boot -- and Sudan already has two U.N. missions.

So what would a peacekeeping mission to Somalia look like? This "hypothetical" country would require 21,000 troops, 1,500 police, 4,000 to 5,000 civilian staff, and a costly helicopter force to supply aerial surveillance 24 hours a day. According to the report:

There are a limited number of countries that provide troops and police with needed capabilities to meet current needs, and some potential contributors may be unwilling to provide forces for a new operation due to such political factors as their own national interests and the environmental and security situation in the host country.

The U.N. is already short 18,000 troops to staff its mandated missions around the world, and is missing 22 percent of the needed civilian personnel. The GAO warns that, though there are efforts to help the U.N. close the gap, the U.S. has failed to support some incentives such as increased protection for civilian forces. And Somalia is far less appealing a locale than Liberia, Cote D'Ivoire, and maybe even Darfur.

So peacekeeping is failing -- or it might, if the world tries this particular case. Blue helmets are not one-size-fits-all countries. Hopefully Congress will read this "hypothetical" between the lines.

Photo: STUART PRICE/AFP/Getty Images

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...

With many of the Cabinet-level posts in the new Obama administration already filled, the identity of one big position -- the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq -- remains up in the air. Obama's national security team is convening today and the question of who will act as America's day-to-day emissary to the Iraqi government will likely be on the docket. So, who is in line to be our next man in Baghdad? Here are four possibilities:

Ryan Crocker

Former Ambassador to Syria and Israel Edward Djerejian pushed the possibility of keeping on a former member of his staff, current U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. "He has a record of seeking out difficult assignments," Djerejian told me. "He knows the region like the back of his hand, [and] he works well with the military." Among other impressive assignments, Crocker served in the U.S. Embassy in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, and became ambassador at the conclusion of the war in 1990. He also was sent to Kabul to reopen the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan in January 2002, and served as U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan from 2004 to 2007.

David Satterfield

One person who may be able to duplicate Crocker's knowledge of the Middle East, while still allowing Obama to claim the mantle of "change," is another career diplomat, David Satterfield. He currently serves as senior advisor to Secretary Rice on Iraq, and had previously been the deputy chief of mission in Baghdad. He has also served abroad in Tunis, Jeddah, Beirut, and Damascus, as well as a stint in Washington as director of the State Department's Office of Israel and Arab-Israeli Affairs.

Frank Ricciardone

Ricciardone served as the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt from 2005 until earlier this year. Ricciardone has long experience working with Kurdish groups in the north of Iraq. He served as U.S. political advisor for Operation Provide Comfort, an effort by the US and Turkish military to protect Kurds persecuted by Saddam Hussein following the first Gulf War. In 1999, he was selected as the State Department's special coordinator for the transition of Iraq, tasked with coordinating the overthrow of Hussein's regime with Iraq opposition groups.

Richard Holbrooke

Journalist and blogger Spencer Ackerman endorsed the former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke for the position. Ackerman speculates that Holbrooke could use his experience mediating in the Balkans to help Iraq overcome its sectarian obstacles. Having evidently missed out on a place in the cabinet, serving as U.S. ambassador to Iraq is one of the few remaining positions appropriate to Holbrooke's stature. However, he lacks the Middle East experience of the other candidates, as well as fluency in Arabic, which is crucial for public diplomacy.

These are some names currently grinding through the D.C. rumor mill. Who do you think would be right for the job?

Photos: CEERWAN AZIZ/AFP/Getty Images, Mohammed Jalil-Pool/Getty Images, cairo.usembassy.gov, Alex Wong/Getty Images

I don't have strong feelings yet about Barack Obama's new national security team. For one thing, it's far too early to tell how they will work together and what policy approaches they will take to the major challenges of the day -- be it battling terrorism and militancy in South Asia, withdrawing from Iraq, or combating climate change. President-elect Obama is a smart guy who has thus far demonstrated excellent judgment, and chances are his vaunted "Team of Rivals" will be very successful under his leadership.

That said, I do have what you might call "inchoate fears" about the Obama administration. Here are my biggest worries, and I stress here that these are worst-case scenarios, not predictions:

James L. Jones, for all his gravitas, will prove to be unimaginative as national security advisor. He seems to have risen to his present level of bipartisan esteem with very little scrutiny, even though his record -- getting NATO more involved in Afghanistan, improving security in the Palestinian territories, stabilizing Darfur, opposing the surge in Iraq, promoting an industry-friendly energy policy completely at odds with Obama's approach -- is certainly open to question.

Hillary Clinton won't be able to develop the close relationship with Barack Obama that a secretary of state needs to be effective. Her past positions on Israel suggest that she might hew too closely to a diplomatic line that failed in the 1990s and be too reticent to put pressure on Israel to stop the settlements. She will be cautious to a fault toward Iran. Her managerial skills, as demonstrated by her dysfunctional primary campaign, will prove disastrous within the State Department's sprawling, leak-prone bureaucracy. The national security council staff, full of Obama loyalists from the campaign, will work to undermine her.

Bob Gates will be seen as a lame duck within the Pentagon and he won't be able to effect the sweeping administrative changes and massive shifts in budget priorities the Department of Defense needs. The forces of the status quo will simply wait him out. He and his generals will not feel comfortable with Obama's timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. And if the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, he will become the fall guy as the lone Republican in the cabinet.

Joe Biden will chafe at being kept in a box and develop a pet issue, such as his widely panned plan for Iraq, on which his ideas are bad but Obama doesn't have the wherewithal to rein him in.

Barack Obama will be so distracted by the all-consuming global economic meltdown that he will be surprised or unprepared for a national-security crisis that, in retrospect, will appear to have been obvious and inevitable.

Readers, what are your biggest fears about the Obama team?

Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

When it comes to whether President-elect Obama should follow through on plans to base a missile defense shield in Europe, everyone's got an opinion. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says dropping the shield program would pave the way toward improving U.S.-Russia ties. French President Nicolas Sarkozy says the shield isn't worth all the trouble and should be scrapped. The LA Times editorial board says Obama should make up his own mind, before basically telling him to ditch the shield.

In favor of the shield are U.S. defense hawks like John Bolton, some top military officers, NATO, and current (and possibly future) Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

What Obama thinks about all of this isn't entirely clear. After a conversation between the president-elect and Polish president Lech Kaczynski last week, Kaczynski seemed to get the impression that Obama and expressed support for the shield, which will be partially based on Poland. Obama's people say he never promised any such thing:

"President Kaczynski raised missile defense, but President-elect Obama made no commitment on it. His position is as it was throughout the campaign: that he supports deploying a missile defense system when the technology is proved to be workable," McDonough said.

Bolton characterizes this statement as "weak and ambiguous." He's right, but it's probably the best the Obama team can do at the moment.

In an ideal world, I suspect Obama would scrap Star Wars. It's an expensive and unnecessary program that stands in the way of Obama's goal of engaging Russia on more pressing matters. But as Time's Mark Thompson points out, extravagantly expensive military programs take on a momentum of their own and are often harder to shut down than they are to start.

Then there's the matter of agreements that the Obama's predecessor signed with Poland and the Czech Republic. Mevedev's recent bluster has also put Obama in a position where he would look awfully weak by acquiescing to Russia's wishes.

The fact that the Obama team hasn't come down strongly on either side of this debate yet seems to be driving partisans crazy, but there's little reason for him to dive in headfirst before there's even national security team in place. This issue is a lot more complex than either side usually admits and Obama is right to take his time.

It was inevitable that the world would eventually realize the unhappy fact that President-elect Barack Obama will not represent a complete break with the past 60 years of American diplomacy. By tapping Rahm Emanuel, a fierce partisan of Israel who volunteered as a mechanic in northern Israel during the first Gulf War, it is fair to say that process has already begun.

For example, what does Abu Jayab, the young Palestinian in Gaza who was cold-calling Americans, imploring them to vote for Obama, think about the fact that the president-elect's first major appointment is a man who is being hailed by the Israeli press as "our man in the White House?"

Rahm's father Benjamin Emanuel served in the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist group that targeted British and Palestinian civilians -- most famously with the King David Hotel bombing and the Deir Yassin massacre -- to advance the goal of creating a Zionist state. This week, the elder Emanuel has not exactly assuaged doubts about his son's pedigree. "Obviously, he will influence the president to be pro-Israel," he told the Israel daily Maariv, "Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab?"

But Rahm Emanuel has always combined hyper-partisan rhetoric with relatively centrist policy views, and that may hold true for his stance on Israel as well. During his work on the Oslo Accords under President Clinton, he developed his closest relationships with the aides to the dovish Labor Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. If Emanuel is seen as sympathetic to Israel's plight, but also unafraid to use his legendary toughness to pressure Israeli leaders during the inevitable foot-dragging over the removal of key settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, he could be a key player in the upcoming Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Photo: Lauren Victoria Burke/ABC NEWS via Getty Images

FP has had its turn, you have had your turn... now it is President-elect Barack Obama's turn to pick his "Dream Team" of cabinet officials.

The transition, which Kenneth Duberstein told FP this week leaves no margin for error, is just formally beginning. So far, a few possible names for top jobs have leaked out into the press. The good news for eager speculators is that we won't have to wait too long, with a few announcements expected this week. Already, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat from Illinois, has been offered the key position of White House chief of staff. Tom Daschle looks like the next go-to-guy, should Emanuel turn down the spot.

Meanwhile, former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta is putting together an economic team, the top priority for the incoming president. Politico thinks Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary and president of Harvard University, is a favorite for Treasury, while CNN puts Warren Buffett and New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner in the running. For his White House economic advisers, Austan Goolsbee and Jason Furman look like frontrunners, followed by Michael Froman, a former classmate of Obama's.

For defense, some speculate that Robert Gates could keep his secretary post, an appointment he gained late in the Bush administration, with former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig as an understudy. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is also in the running, though he may be only a second or third choice.

National security adviser could be former Clinton deputy Jim Steinberg or former Clinton counsel Gregory Craig, who was a foreign-policy advisor with the campaign. Retired Gen. Anthony Zinni is unlikely, but adds some nice military spirit to the mix.

Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. John Kerry, or Sen. Richard Lugar are among those pegged for secretary of state. Lugar, a Republican who took Obama under his wing on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would make a nice bipartisan addition to the cabinet.

Other interesting names that pop up on Politico's predictions list include Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations. Reputed to be one of Obama's closest aides on foreign policy, she is likely to get a senior-level position, even if Turtle Bay isn't the one. Likewise, Obama might want to designate Al Gore as some kind of special ambassador on climate change.

All told, it looks like an experienced and well known Washington lot -- one that Obama might hope will meet little opposition and controversy in his opening days. Let the dream team take the stage.

Scott Olson/Getty Images