SITUATION REPORT DAY 2

FP Situation Report – AQ Khan hopes to be Pakistan’s "Mandela," Afghans work on insider attacks, Dems claim national security, SEALs won’t take book money and more

By Gordon Lubold

Welcome to Thursday’s edition of FP’s Situation Report, where we work to maintain our inbox privileges every day.

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Green-on-blue attacks in Afghanistan continue to haunt U.S. forces there but we’re told that American officials are putting increasing pressure on Afghan commanders to help them solve the problem. American officials say the Afghans are best able to spot members of the ANSF who could pose a risk for ideological reasons or who simply might have a low-level disagreement that could put someone in danger. To make sure the Afghans fully understand the gravity of the situation, they are being told that the "insider attacks" really could threaten the military partnership with the U.S. and the rest of the international coalition. The threat of pulling back from the Afghan government has been a strong motivation for it to take action, we’re told.

Lt. Gen. James Terry, deputy commanding general of the ISAF Joint Command in Kabul, spoke to reporters in the Pentagon by VTC Wednesday. He posited that the attacks, 45 since January, may reflect the increasing desperation among insurgents as they see an ever-capable Afghan security force. Meanwhile, the Afghan Defense Ministry announced that "hundreds" of Afghan soldiers had been pulled from the battlefield or otherwise detained as both the defense and interior ministries re-examine their vetting and recruiting processes. In addition to a new and improved vetting approach, U.S. and Afghan officials are also looking at the role religious cultural advisers can play, Terry said. And, he said, another initiative is to mount a "counterintelligence initiative" to get in among the rank-and-file so "we can identify some of the threat before it actually materializes out there," Terry said. "So again, I would just tell you they’re seized with it."

From the Department of Twitters: The Pentagon’s own @robertburnsAP after Wednesday’s briefing: "LTG Terry tells Pentagon reporters that part of ‘insider" attack prblm linked to Afg gun culture. Disputes settled "at the barrel of a gun.’"

AQ Khan as "Pakistan’s Mandela"? – The father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb (and proliferator of its designs) has political ambitions, recently forming his own party. As Simon Henderson writes for FP, Khan’s name still elicits sneers here in Washington and "leads to invective that makes the often vicious rhetoric of the current presidential campaign seem tame by comparison." But he is becoming a political force in Pakistan and is "trying to become a player in the national assembly elections due to take place in April 2013," Henderson writes.

In Khan’s own words: "Pakistan is in an extremely precarious and dangerous condition … it has gone to the dogs thanks to our most incompetent and corrupt rulers and their Western patrons," he responded when asked his reason for launching the party. "I can’t simply sit back and see it destroyed. I feel that I must do something to try to save the situation." His goal? To be a Nelson Mandela figure for the country: http://bit.ly/OnOpDM

CHARLOTTE INSPIRED – 

Bill Clinton took a big swing at the GOP on defense spending in his speech last night with this:  "They want to increase defense spending over a decade $2 trillion more than the Pentagon has requested, without saying what they’ll spend it on."

John Kerry throws down: Dems continue their commandeering of national security and foreign policy issues. Kerry writes for FP: "Today, it is the Democratic Party that almost all alone occupies that once bipartisan space in national security policy, and it is the Democratic Party that today offers the clear-eyed vision of how to best honor our ideas in the world, while the Republican Party, too often in the grips of hard-edged ideology and a determination above all else to defeat President Barack Obama, is almost unrecognizable from its previous incarnation." http://bit.ly/Q4aaHH

In Charlotte, the tables are turned and the Dems are flexing their national security credentials. FP’s E-Ring blogger Kevin Baron: "In their minds, it’s no accident that for the first time in almost anyone’s memory Democrats are out-polling Republicans on national security. The 2004 election left Democrats flabbergasted how their candidate, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was unable to sell a better national security vision at a time when Afghanistan was forgotten, Iraq was falling to pieces and the incumbent, George W. Bush, was widely unpopular," he writes.

Baron talked to Doug Wilson, a former assistant secretary of defense for public affairs who is active in the Obama campaign: "The Obama team has been a very coherent group of people," Wilson told Baron. "This has been the most unified and coherent and integrated national security team of people I have ever seen." http://bit.ly/OYoOTl

The SEALs say they won’t get dirty. FP’s Killer Apps blog guru John Reed has this: The Navy SEAL Foundation, a charitable group that provides "immediate and ongoing support" to Navy SEALs and their families, will not accept donations from the proceeds of No Easy Day. Read about it at Killer Apps: http://bit.ly/PJw307 The Virginian-Pilot has the story: http://bit.ly/OY9eHj

Marine One is becoming Priority One. Marine Commandant Gen. Jim Amos has said replacing the president’s helicopter is once again at the top of the "to do" list, Reed reports. "It’s not on the back burner anymore it’s actually moved forward and we need to find a replacement for the president’s helicopter," said Gen. James Amos, Marine Corps Commandant of the Corps effort to purchase a new presidential chopper." Read more here: http://bit.ly/OURmex

American drone sales: making a list, but checking it twice. The Pentagon says there is a list of 66 countries that may be eligible to buy drones from American firms, but Congress and State have the final say and, as Reuters reports, they have not yet "opened the spigot" for such exports. http://reut.rs/OUQlCZ

Did HRW find a new case of waterboarding?

A new report by Human Rights Watch that is based on documents and interviews in Libya after the fall of Qaddafi includes a "detailed description of what appears to be a previously unknown instance of waterboarding by the C.I.A. in Afghanistan nine years ago," the Times‘ Charlie Savage and Scott Shane write today.

"That claim clashes with repeated assertions by current and former agency officials that only three high-level terrorism suspects — none of them Libyans — were waterboarded," they wrote. "It underscores how much is still not known about the United States’ treatment of terrorist suspects during the early years of the Bush administration," according to the Times. http://nyti.ms/SmrChQ

HOW THEY SEE IT OVERSEAS – 

As anxiety builds over American ambitions in Asia, Kyodo News reports from Manila that U.S. Marines are planning to build a new "advance command post" on the western Philippine island of Palawan. "The plan is to station 50 to 60 American marines in Palawan as an advance command post in the region," the outlet quoted a Philippine marine officer as saying.

How they see it here: It’s likely the Kyodo report mischaracterized the fact that while U.S. Marines are on the island, they are there just temporarily in anticipation of the amphibious exercise this month. The Pentagon issued a statement from a DoD spokeswoman: "we aren’t building any bases in the Philippines and we don’t have any plans to permanently station any U.S. military there." There are no permanent U.S. bases in the Philippines, and any American forces present are there temporarily and at the approval of the country, she said. .

IN CASE YOU WERE ASLEEP –

We knew her when. Reuters’ Missy Ryan has been chosen as a White House Fellow. Ryan, who was essentially held hostage at a hotel in Tripoli last year with other journalists by Qaddaffi’s boys, doesn’t have an assignment yet but her fellowship will last a year. Her interview on NPR about being held in Libya: http://n.pr/Q8Q4fD

Back to school. John Nagl will navigate a different kind of terrain soon. He announced a couple of weeks ago, but some people seem still not to know, that he will become the headmaster of a Philadelphia Main Line boy’s school, the Haverford School, next year. "I get to work with a whole lot of smart people doing something that matters for the future of the country," Nagl, who now teaches at the Naval Academy, told a reporter with the Inquirer. He starts July 2013. http://bit.ly/NMGcxo