Two former militant groups offered to call off street protests if the government agrees to ease its pressure on Islamists, a move that underscores how a onetime strong Islamist movement is now bowing to an unprecedented crackdown by security authorities.

The proposal comes after the military rounded up hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood leaders and other Islamists in the wake of the country’s worst bout of violence, which followed the Aug. 14 clearing of two sprawling sit-in camps housing protesters calling for the reinstatement of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected leader.

Read it all.

President Obama is weighing a military strike against Syria that would be of limited scope and duration, designed to serve as punishment for Syria’s use of chemical weapons and as a deterrent, while keeping the United States out of deeper involvement in that country’s civil war, according to senior administration officials.

The timing of such an attack, which would probably last no more than two days and involve sea-launched cruise missiles ”” or, possibly, long-range bombers ”” striking military targets not directly related to Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, would be dependent on three factors: completion of an intelligence report assessing Syrian government culpability in last week’s alleged chemical attack; ongoing consultation with allies and Congress; and determination of a justification under international law.

Read it all.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Monday condemned Syria’s reported chemical weapons attacks as a “moral obscenity” and declared that the Obama administration intends to move quickly to hold the Syrian government accountable.

Citing “undeniable” evidence that the government of President Bashar Assad used nerve gas against its population last week, Kerry said that the world must respond to the use of weapons that have long been outlawed by international agreement.

President Obama “believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people,” Kerry said in a brief appearance at the State Department.

Read it all.

The Egyptian military has enlisted Muslim scholars in a propaganda campaign to persuade soldiers and policemen that they have a religious duty to obey orders to use deadly force against supporters of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi.

The effort is a signal that the generals are worried about insubordination in the ranks, after security forces have killed hundreds of their fellow Egyptians who were protesting against the military’s removal of the elected president ”” violence by the armed forces against civilians that is without precedent in the country’s modern history.

The recourse to religion to justify the killing is also a new measure of the depth of the military’s determination to break down the main pillar of Mr. Morsi’s support, the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, after ousting Mr. Morsi in the name of tolerance, inclusiveness and an end to religious rule, the military is now sending religious messages to its troops that sound surprisingly similar to the arguments of radical militants who call for violence against political opponents whom they deem to be nonbelievers.

Read it all.

The UN’s disarmament chief negotiated with the Syrian government, as the BBC’s Yolande Knell in Beirut explains

The Syrian government has agreed to allow UN inspectors to investigate allegations of a suspected chemical weapon attack near Damascus.

The team is to begin work on Monday. Activists say Syrian forces killed more than 300 people in several suburbs east and west of the capital on Wednesday.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Two days after the alleged chemical attack on the Damascus suburbs of Eastern Ghouta, chemical-weapons experts are dissecting amateur footage to determine exactly what might have caused the deaths of so many hundreds of Syrians. All agree this time, unlike in past alleged attacks, that the number of victims and the lack of marks from physical wounds on their bodies point to some form of chemical poisoning. But they are puzzled that the symptoms””insofar as they are visible from the videos””do not exactly correspond to any particular known substance, including the large quantities of mustard gas, sarin and VX which President Bashar Assad is thought to have at his disposal. “It is beyond doubt that something has made a lot of people ill and killed them,” says Dan Kaszeta, a chemical and biological expert who now runs Strongpoint Security, a defence consultancy. “But there is no obvious agent.”

Read it all.

Jason Heap grew up in Texas among Baptists and Lutherans. He earned a master’s from Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University.

Now, at age 38, Heap wants to be a U.S. Navy chaplain. But Heap is a humanist who doesn’t believe in God, and the U.S. military has never sanctioned a humanist chaplain. Nor has the Navy acted on Heap’s application, filed last month, to become its first approved humanist chaplain.

Read it all.

UN officials say alleged chemical weapons attacks which Syria’s opposition says killed hundreds near Damascus were a “serious escalation”.

Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson made the comments after briefing an emergency UN Security Council meeting about Wednesday’s incident.

The Security Council also said that clarity was needed over the attacks.

Read it all.

Osama Makram Amin woke to the sound of gunfire, looked out his window and saw what he says were young men throwing gasoline bombs at the nearby Coptic Christian church.

Earlier that morning, security forces in Cairo had attacked two predominantly Islamist sit-ins, leaving hundreds dead. Now, hours later on Aug. 14, attackers in this Upper Egyptian city were embarking on a day of burning and looting that would target 14 Christian churches, homes and businesses. It was the work of Islamists enraged by the Cairo crackdown, said police and many Christian residents.

Read it all.

The police lieutenant put his boots up on the desk and casually reloaded his machine gun. “The problem is,” he said, nodding at a television that was live-broadcasting the siege of a nearby mosque, “these people are terrorists.”

It was mid-afternoon last Saturday, and for nearly 24 hours, the lieutenant’s colleagues in the police and army had surrounded the al-Fath mosque in central Cairo, inside which were hiding a few hundred supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. On screen, it seemed like it was the soldiers doing the terrorising. But for the lieutenant, the terrorists were the ones on the inside. They had bombs, the policeman said: they deserved what they got. And a mob of locals agreed. “The police and the people,” chanted a crowd that had gathered to lynch the fugitives as they exited the mosque, “are one hand.”

It was a wretched scene ”“ but one that has become familiar in Egypt.

Read it all.

For two years, the conversation on Egypt centered on how to build a democracy. Suddenly the discussion has turned much darker, with some wondering aloud whether the largest Arab nation is hurtling toward civil war.

The bloody crackdown by Egypt’s security forces has raised the specter of a protracted conflict pitting the military against the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most powerful political force.

Egypt’s escalating crisis is far too volatile for any declarative statements, analysts say. But here are three possible scenarios that could play out:

Read or listen to it all.

“The Egyptian defense minister ordered the engineering department of the armed forces to swiftly repair all the affected churches, in recognition of the historical and national role played by our Coptic brothers,” read a statement that aired on Egyptian television.

Bishop Mousa thanked Sisi for his efforts to repair the damaged churches.

“We thank Col. Gen. Sisi for commissioning the brave Egyptian armed forces to rebuild the places of worship damaged during the recent events,” Bishop Mousa said on Twitter.

Read it all.

For reasons unknown, the government finally has admitted that Area 51 ”” the Shangri-La of alien hunters and a sturdy trope of ­science-fiction movies ”” is a real place in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles north of Las Vegas.

It presumably does not house hideous squidlike ETs, but at least you can see the place on a map. Area 51 is confirmed in declassified CIA documents posted online Thursday by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. A dogged researcher pried from the CIA a report on the history of the U-2 spy plane, which was tested and operated at Area 51.

The military, which runs the base, always denied that Area 51 was called by its famous moniker, preferring a designation connected to the Groom Lake salt flat, a landing strip for the U-2 and other stealth aircraft.

Read it all.

“You wouldn’t have a civil war unless there were people who were really willing to fight the army with arms,” [ Elliott] Abrams said. “It’s not, I think, going to look like Syria.”

Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, added that because the military controls 35 to 40 percent of the economy, it was unlikely the military would splinter like it did in other countries.

“In Egypt, you don’t have a huge armed population, and the chance of the military splitting the way it happened first in Libya and later in Syria is less likely because the role of the military in Egyptian society has been very separate from the population, and very privileged.”

Read it all.

Where there is competent and willing local law enforcement, the U.S. is not launching drones. Where such law enforcement is impossible, what then?

Religious critics of drones rarely offer specific alternatives. Instead, they morally fault drones for imprecision, susceptible to harming innocents, and impersonally guided by desk-bound pilots who, with their bureaucratic overlords, may be cavalier because they are themselves not at risk. The anti-drone letter from Mainline Protestants cited “remote, technical warfare,” which has the “potential to encourage overuse and extension of the policy to more countries and more perceived threats.” But almost all forms of modern warfare are “remote” and “technical.” Combatants no longer typically battle each other with swords and lances.

Absent the option of effective law enforcement against terrorists, the range of options include conventional aerial bombing or cruise missiles, both of which are pretty “remote,” or a military personnel excursion similar to the U.S. Navy SEAL mission that dispatched Osama bin Laden.

Read it all.

Britain has summoned the Egyptian ambassador for a meeting as the death toll from Wednesday’s attack on pro-Morsi supporters rose to 525.

a href=”http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/10244413/Egypt-death-toll-rises-to-525-as-Britain-summons-Egyptian-ambassador.html”>Read it all.

Eighteen of the 19 U.S. embassies and consulates reopened Sunday after being shut down for a week across the Islamic world because of a terrorist threat.

Even as the diplomatic posts inched toward normal operations, and as Muslims celebrated the end of the holy month of Ramadan, questions lingered about how pressing the danger had been and whether the threat had yet passed.

The U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, the same nation from which a threat from an al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula earlier this month spurred the State Department to close its facilities, remained closed.

Read it all.

Foreign-owned banks, mines, and businesses have heard that, to fulfill a campaign promise made by Mugabe, their assets may be seized and restructured into a majority national ownership arrangement.

Now it appears the considerable property of the Anglican church in Zimbabwe, though it is mostly a black membership, may also be under renewed scrutiny by the unscrupulous.

The chief Anglican bishop in Zimbabwe, Chad Gandiya, this week accused a renegade clergyman and friend of Mugabe of restarting a campaign using brutality, the courts, and police to seize churches, orphanages, and missions owned by mainstream Anglicans.

Read it all.

Every night at dusk, the streets of this desert town near the Israeli border empty out, and the chatter and thump of gunfire and explosives begin. Morning reveals the results: another dead soldier, another police checkpoint riddled with bullets, another kidnapping. In mid-July, the body of a local Christian shop owner was found near the town cemetery, his head severed, his torso in chains.

The northern Sinai Peninsula, long a relatively lawless zone, has become a dark harbinger of what could follow elsewhere in Egypt if the interim government cannot peacefully resolve its standoff with the Islamist protesters camped out in Cairo.

In the five weeks since Egypt’s military ousted the Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, the endemic violence here has spiraled into something like an insurgency, with mysterious gunmen attacking military and police facilities every night.

Read it all.

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered the head of the terrorist group’s Yemen affiliate to carry out an attack, according to intercepted communications that have led to the closure of U.S. embassies and a global travel alert, said a person briefed on the case.

In one communication, Zawahiri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden, gave “clear orders” to Nasir al-Wuhayshi, the founder of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to undertake an attack, the source said. McClatchy newspapers first reported the exchange on Sunday.

Read it all.

Iran could begin producing weapons-grade plutonium by next summer, U.S. and European officials believe, using a different nuclear technology that would be easier for foreign countries to attack.

The second path to potentially producing a nuclear weapon could complicate international efforts to negotiate with Iran’s new president, Hasan Rouhani, who was sworn in Sunday in Tehran. It also heightens the possibility of an Israeli strike, said U.S. and European officials.

Read it all.

In the coming weeks, Congress and the civilian defense leadership will have to ask a lot of questions about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, and how to reconcile them with privacy concerns. But they will also have to ask a more basic set of questions: Why on earth wasn’t the NSA prepared for this? Why didn’t the intelligence agency’s leadership have a plan to deal with the global outcry that would follow the leak of classified Internet surveillance programs?

Contingency planning is a critical part of every military operation, and is even more important for secret or covert activities. The Central Intelligence Agency and Special Forces Command examined every possible thing that could go wrong on the raid to kill Osama bin Laden, for example, and had clear plans to deal with any ensuing fallout. Although it has an intelligence mandate, the NSA is a Defense Department organization, and the director of NSA is a 4-star general. As such, it is troubling that the NSA appears to have no plan in place for how to respond once its spying program was made public and plastered on the front pages around the world. Instead, the best defense General Alexander could offer a room full of security professionals at the Black Hat convention, almost two months after the leak, was an explanation of FISA courts and the successful prosecution of a San Diego cab driver who sent money to a Somali militia.

The NSA leadership had ample warning signs that leaks were possible, and that public reaction in the U.S. and around the world would be overwhelmingly negative….

Read it all.

When Egypt’s first elected president, Mohamed Morsi, promoted Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi to defense minister nearly a year ago, sweeping away an aging cadre of generals, many saw it as a triumph for the Islamist president, and for a fledgling democracy.

Mr. Morsi had seized back broad powers from the old guard, and General Sisi, known to be pious, seemed to have a close relationship with the new president, even sending Mr. Morsi a laudatory telegram. “The men of the armed forces assert to your excellency their absolute loyalty to Egypt and its people, standing behind its leadership as guardians of the patriotic responsibility,” it read.

Mr. Morsi is now a prisoner of the military, deposed by General Sisi on July 3 after mass protests against the president’s rule. And the telegenic general, who has cast himself as protector of Egypt’s security and its very identity, is riding a wave of muscular nationalism and pro-military sentiment that has led his adoring fans to liken him to former President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Read it all.

[General Ray] Odierno called the moves “one of the largest organizational changes probably since World War II” for the service.

“If we go though full sequestration there’s going to be another reduction in brigades, there’s no way around it,” Odierno warned, adding that there will likely be more cuts coming in the heavy armor brigades, sequestration or not.

Fewer brigades, fewer soldiers, less money, and an uncertain modernization profile. With all of this in flux, what missions will the Army prioritize in the future?

Read it all.

They are chilling words. Queen Elizabeth II was to tell the nation that they were staring at nuclear conflict, urging the “brave country” to stand firm as it faced up to “the madness of war”.

The words were only written as part of an exercise scenario, but they give a stark insight into the British government’s mindset at a time of heightened tension with the Soviet Union.

Although it was only a simulation, the text of the fictitious Queen’s address ”“ supposedly broadcast at noon on Friday 4 March 1983 ”“ captures with chilling realism just how World War III may have begun. In sombre tones, it seeks to prepare the country for the unimaginable ordeal ahead. There are references to the Queen’s “beloved son Andrew”, serving with his unit as a Royal Navy helicopter pilot and the address by her father George VI on the outbreak of the Second World War ”“ famously dramatised in the film, The King’s Speech.

Read it all.

As Israeli and Palestinian negotiators prepare for preliminary talks in Washington on Monday (July 29), the future of Jerusalem ”” holy to three faiths ”” looms as the thorniest and most difficult issue to resolve.

The State Department announced Sunday that the two sides had accepted invitations from Secretary of State John Kerry to come to Washington “to formally resume direct final status negotiations.” The department said two days of initial meetings will begin Monday evening.

The announcement came shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet approved the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners, a key part of the Kerry-brokered deal.

Read it all.

he Obama administration increasingly fears that Egypt’s military, ignoring American appeals, is deepening a crackdown that could spark a sustained period of instability and lead members of the country’s Muslim Brotherhood to take up arms.

In a series of private messages in recent days, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other American officials warned Egyptian military leader Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi that his clampdown on the Brotherhood risked driving the Islamist group back underground, say U.S. officials involved in the discussions.

Despite those exhortations, Gen. Sisi called for massive demonstrations on Friday, which precipitated the deadliest single incident in the more than two years since Egypt’s revolution. The U.S. also had sent messages urging calm to Brotherhood leaders, but officials said the group, like the military, showed little sign of backing down.

Read it all.

[Heyward] Tumbleston’s companion was shot dead by an enemy patrol when they entered a clearing they thought was isolated. Tumbleston was recaptured and taken back to Camp 5 where he was kept inside a tiny box. “I lived in that thing for two months,” he said. “Whenever I got out, I couldn’t walk.”

Today, the calendar marks the 60-year end of the Korean War when an armistice brought a close to hostilities but not a true peace. Some 483 servicemen from South Carolina were killed in the three years of fighting that claimed more than 54,000 American lives, including nearly 8,000 never accounted for.

Tumbleston, 82, of Mount Pleasant ”” “Gene” to his friends ”” doesn’t plan to do any form of celebrating, figuring the war is long over and barely remembered, except when there’s the occasional saber-rattling from the North. It’s a feeling veterans’ advocates say is common.

Read it all.

The letter Friday from Gen. Martin E. Dempsey to Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., cited the experience of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan and detailed the effort needed to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Mr. Dempsey said hundreds of U.S. aircraft, ships and submarines would be used by thousands of American troops to make airstrikes, launch missiles, maintain no-fly zones and train Syria’s opposition forces. He said training alone would cost $500 million a year. Air action would cost $1 billion a month.

Mr. Dempsey said that such action would be “an act of war,” which would entail risks to Jordan, a neighboring U.S. ally, and could backfire in terms of overall U.S. policy.

Read it all.