Apparently, the video feeds from the military's unmanned predator drones are unencrypted and can be picked up using readily available software. America first realized the extent this problem a year ago when they found feeds on the laptops of captured Shiite insurgents in Iraq.  The insurgents are thought to have been trained by Iran.  In the past several months, authorities have found at least one case of this happening in Afghanistan too.

By watching the video feeds, insurgents can get advanced notice of which areas the U.S. military is planning to target.  The Pentagon is working to fix this problem, but as usual the effort is a lengthy process.

Update: Apparently the Pentagon has known about this problem since the 1990s. From the WSJ:

Senior defense and military officials first became aware of the vulnerability of video feeds in the 1990s, during the U.S. campaign in Bosnia. But Pentagon officials acknowledge they didn't start encrypting the video feeds until April, according to a person familiar with the matter.

North Korea confirmed today that the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il received a personal letter from Barack Obama. The precise contents of the letter are unknown, but the goal is to bring the hermit kingdom back to the six-nation talks aimed at nuclear disarmament. I pity the diplomats who have to waste their time in farcical negotiations with the North Koreans.

America is the number 3 oil producer in the world, producing 8.5 million barrels per day. Iran produces less than half of that amount (4.2 million). Saudi Arabia tops the list at 10.8 million. Of course, Americans also consume 19.5 million barrels per day-- much more than anybody else does.

According to reports, the dispute between Kai Eide, the top UN official in Kabul, and Peter Galbraith (the #2 UN official) went beyond simply acknowledging fraud in the election. Galbraith apparently wanted to unseat Karzai and replace him with Ashraf Ghani, an American favorite.

Galbraith contends that he just wanted Ghani to serve as an interim minister before new elections could be held.

I have met Galbraith briefly before. I can't imagine him doing well with European bureaucrats. He's a maverick in the sense that existed before McCain cheapened the word-- a Christopher Hitchens-style moral interventionist and political gadfly. When I met him he was unkempt, rushed, and rather aloof. I'm sure that his personality irritated many people in Afghanistan-- the same way that a lot of people personally despise Dick Holbrooke. 

Galbraith devoted himself to the Kurdish cause when nobody in Washington wanted to acknowledge the genocide at Halabja (because of America's alliance with Saddam). When Bush I failed to support the Kurds after inciting them to revolt in 1991, Galbraith impetuously flew to Iraqi Kurdistan to document Saddam's brutal suppression of the rebellion. As a staffer on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he was not allowed to speak to the press, but he broke the rules anyway and gave interviews to major news outlets. At the time, Galbraith appeared foolish and idealistic. In retrospect, he appears admirable (shady oil contracts notwithstanding). Perhaps one day we will say the same about his efforts in Afghanistan.

This is what Thomas Johnson and M. Chris Mason argue in Foreign Policy. Johnson works at the Naval Postgraduate School, and Mason formerly served with the U.S. Foreign Service in Afghanistan. Their article is one of the best from the camp who believes that the current effort in Afghanistan is futile. Money quote:

The reality on the ground is that Afghanistan is Vietnam redux. Afghan President Hamid Karzai's regime is an utterly illegitimate, incompetent kleptocracy. The Afghan National Army (ANA) -- slotted to take over the conflict when the coalition pulls out -- will not even be able to feed itself in five years, much less turn back the mounting Taliban tide. The U.S. Center for Army Lessons Learned determined by statistical analysis that the ANA will never grow larger than 100,000 men because nearly 30 percent either desert or fail to re-enlist each year. The ANA is disproportionately Tajik, drug use is a major problem, all recruits are illiterate, and last month the ANA reached only half its modest recruiting goal despite 40 percent unemployment nationwide.  The American media, in its own regression to 1963, simply regurgitates Pentagon press releases that vastly inflate the actual size of the Afghan military, which is actually less than 60,000 men, just 32,000 of whom are combat troops.

Johnson and Mason go on to argue that Obama realizes that the situation is futile, and therefore the current surge is just a political effort to allow Obama to save face before pulling out. I don't believe that-- I think Obama genuinely wants to give McChrystal and the troops a last chance to turn the war around.  Certainly, if the effort fails, it will strengthen Obama's ability to pull out.  But I don't think that adding 30,000 more troops was nothing more than a cynical, political maneuver. It is always easier to criticize someone else than to offer a viable alternative. In any case, their warnings about the weakness of the ANA are absolutely frightening.

The five young American who recently turned up in the Pakistani city of Sargodha aren't the only foreigners interested in Pakistan's "alternative" education system. A large number of foreign student are coming to Pakistan to attend one of the country's conservative religious school. According to AP:

Only a handful of the foreign students are Westerners; most are Asians and Africans in the late teens or early 20s. Many come to Pakistan for a cheap Islamic education, albeit a conservative one, part of a tradition of Muslims traveling to gain knowledge that goes back centuries.

But with Pakistan now a main global hub for al-Qaida and other militant groups, their presence in poorly regulated schools — many with links to extremist groups — inevitably raises concerns.

Check out the full story here.

Background on the project here.

Apparently outgoing International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohamed ElBaradei is a glutton for pain. After 12 tumultuous years at the IAEA, the Nobel Prize winner announced that he is considering a run for the Egyptian presidency in 2011.

While its unlikely that ElBaradei will win (his recent support for Iran has been extremely unpopular in Egypt and he was only popular with a limited set of the elite in the first place) or even become an official candidate, his potential candidacy does shake up the race in a couple of interesting ways.

First, it almost ensures that Hosni Mubarek will run for reelection once again. The age and experience gap between the ElBaradei and Mubarek's son and potential successor Gamal Mubarek would allow the challenger to gain a significant advantage.  Second, ElBaradei's candidacy would bring a great deal of publicity to an election that otherwise would have been largely ignored.   

For more details, check out the discussion over at the Boursa Exchange.

Turkey's foreign policy since AKP solidified its domestic political position in 2007 has largely been defined by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's dogmatic interest in eliminating potential liabilities. One of his most notable successes has been the improvement of Turkey's relationship with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Northern Iraq.

On October 31st, less than three years after Turkish troops invaded Northern Iraq, Davutoglu stood shoulder to shoulder with KRG President Masoud Barzani at the inauguration of Turkey's new consulate in Erbil--an image very few Turkey observers thought they would ever see.

Undergirding the dramatic improvement of diplomatic ties has been the growth of economic relations between Turkey and the KRG. Turkey is by far the region's largest source of foreign direct investment and Turkish companies participate in virtually every sector of the Kurdish economy from construction to airport management. Additionally, natural gas from the Kurdish controlled regions of Iraq is an important part of Turkey's plan to become a regional energy hub.

Unfortunately, Davutoglu's masterpiece is in danger.

More after the jump ->