AQAP: “victory is imminent;” Reassessing the AQ threat; Maybe sequester wasn’t so bad after all; Dempsey lands in Israel; ICYMI: Changes for COCOMS?; Hooray for WH transcribers; and just a little bit more.

By Gordon Lubold

AQAP’s chief  promises more jailbreaks, telling them “victory is imminent.” AP: “The leader of the Yemen-based al-Qaida offshoot has vowed to free fellow militants from prisons everywhere and urged them to remain faithful to the terror group’s ideology. The message by Nasser al-Wahishi, posted on militant websites Monday, warns al-Qaida prisoners not ‘to be lured by their jailers’ and promises that ‘victory is imminent’ to ensure their freedom. The note by al-Wahishi, a onetime aide to Osama bin Laden, comes after last week’s closure of 19 U.S. diplomatic missions triggered by the interception of a secret message between al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri and the Yemeni branch’s leader about plans for a major attack.” More here.

American embassies are back open – except the one in Sana – as the U.S. reassesses al-Qaida and the new, diffuse threat. The NYT’s Eric Schmitt, on Page One: “Senior American counterterrorism and intelligence officials say the lack of certainty about the effectiveness of the latest drone strikes is a sobering reminder of the limitations of American power to deal with the array of new security threats the turmoil of the Arab Spring has produced. These doubts come even as lawmakers in Washington debate whether to restrict the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency. And Yemen is not their only concern…”

And: “The United States carries out strikes only against terrorists who pose a “continuing and imminent threat” to Americans, he said, and only when it is determined it would be impossible to detain them, rather than kill them. But the increased reliance on drones in Yemen suggests the limit of the resources the United States can employ in combating the new threats. A senior American official said over the weekend that the most recent terrorist threat “expanded the scope of people we could go after” in Yemen. An American official to the NYT: “Before, we couldn’t necessarily go after a driver for the organization; it’d have to be an operations director… Now that driver becomes fair game because he’s providing direct support to the plot.”

Schmitt: “Senior American intelligence officials said last week that none of the about three dozen militants killed so far in the drone strikes were ‘household names,’ meaning top-tier leaders of the affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. But the American official said the strikes had targeted “rising stars” in the Yemen network, people who were more likely to be moving around and vulnerable to attack. ‘They may not be big names now,’ the official said, ‘but these were the guys that would have been future leaders.’ The rest of the story, here.

Reporting from Yemen, al-Monitor has this piece about how the U.S. loses the Yemenis in the drone war. Click here.

How the U.S. Navy helps Yemen’s military (psst: they dig light spy planes). Killer Apps’ John Reed: “U.S. drones have been battering Yemen, killing at least 28 people, and American spy planes watch from overhead. And now, Yemen’s skies are looking to get even more crowded. The U.S. Navy is helping the Yemeni air force buy 12 light spy planes, adding to the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military aid the U.S. given to the Sana’a regime. The Navy’s Light Observation Aircraft for Yemen program aims to buy 12 small planes — or maybe choppers — equipped with infrared and night vision cameras and the ability to beam the images collected by those cameras back to a ground station. (The image above shows one of the Iraq air force’s CH2000 light observation planes.) ‘The contractor shall also provide pilot, sensor operator, and maintainer training and associated training materials all in Arabic,’ reads an Aug. 8 U.S. Navy notice to potential suppliers. The Navy wants to buy the aircraft on the cheap, too. This is a ‘Low Price Technically Acceptable source selection, ‘ which means the lowest bidder who meets the bare minimum technical requirements for the Yemenis will get the contract.

Situation Report’s report last week (with FP’s own Noah Shachtman) on how the U.S. helps Yemen, here.  Reed’s report on the light spy planes, here.

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Didja hear? The sequester is a success. So writes Stephen Moore in the WSJ this morning.  “…Mr. Obama has inadvertently chained himself to fiscal restraints that could flatten federal spending for the rest of his presidency. If the country sees any normal acceleration of economic growth (from the anemic 1.4% growth rate so far this year), the deficit is on a path to drop steadily at least through 2015. Already the deficit has fallen from its Mount Everest peak of 10.2% of gross domestic product in 2009, to about 4% this year. That’s a bullish six percentage points less of the GDP of new federal debt each year…”

… “And defense hawks won’t be happy that at least half of the fiscal retrenchment has been due to cuts in military spending. The defense budget is on a pace to hit its lowest level (as a share of GDP) since the days of the post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’ during the Clinton years. These deep cutbacks could be dangerous to national security, but as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were winding down, defense would have been cut under any scenario.” Read the rest here.

Dempsey lands in Israel. From ynet news this hour: [Dempsey] landed at Ben Gurion Airport as part of a visit in which the general will be a guest of IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz. During the visit, Dempsey will meet with senior IDF officers, and will discuss the strengthening of military cooperation between the two armies and other security issues. Dempsey will also meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.” Dempsey will also visit Jordan, where Syria will be Topic A. Read about the secretive visit to Israel last week by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, here.

What’s a cross between a Concorde, a rail gun and an air hockey table? The Hyperloop, silly. Space.com’s Mike Wall reports on the secretive Hyperloop project by visionary Elon Musk: “The fevered speculation about billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s mysterious “Hyperloop” transport system is about to come to an end. Musk, the visionary behind electric-car firm Tesla and the private spaceflight company SpaceX, has said he will unveil a Hyperloop design

on Monday, Aug. 12, after teasing the world about the superfast travel technology for more than a year. The solar-powered Hyperloop would allow passengers to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than 30 minutes, Musk has said, meaning it must travel at speeds greater than 600 mph. The system would be cheap and convenient, he added, with tickets costing less than a seat aboard a plane or train and Hyperloop vehicles departing frequently from their various stations.” Read it here.

ICYMI: DOD is considering a major realignment of geographical combatant commands to include dissolving Africa Command. Defense News published over the weekend a story about how the budget squeeze might force Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to consider realigning combatant commands and thus eliminate thousands of military and civilian positions. DN’s Marcus Weisgerber: “While the plans for combatant command (COCOM) realignment and consolidation are still notional, sources say some options include: Combining Northern Command and Southern Command to form what some are calling “Americas Command” or “Western Command;” Dissolving Africa Command and splitting it up among European Command and Central Command; and Expanding Pacific Command to include Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are part of Central Command. In all, the realignments could shutter two COCOMs and eight service-supporting commands, totaling more than 5,000 people both uniformed and civilian. [Hagel] for the first time hinted at the consolidations of the COCOMs during a July 31 press conference when he announced significant budget-cutting options the Defense Department would have to make should federal spending cuts remain in place across the decade.” Read the rest here.

Corporate suicide over NSA demands. FP’s Shane Harris: “When the U.S. government orders a communications company to give up its data, the firm has two basic choices: resist, and risk its leaders going to jail, or comply, and break faith with its customers. On Thursday, Aug. 8, however, two privacy-minded businesses chose a third and unprecedented option: They committed corporate suicide rather than bend to the surveillance state’s wishes. It could just be the opening battles in a new front of the surveillance war. In a move that blocks governmental monitoring of private email accounts, two secure email providers closed shop on Thursday rather than divulge information about their users to the authorities. The first Dallas-based Lavabit — which reportedly counts among its users NSA-leaker Edward Snowden — stopped operations after apparently fighting a losing battle to resist a federal surveillance order. (Snowden called the decision “inspiring” in a note to the Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald.) A few hours later, Silent Circle, headquartered outside Washington, D.C., announced it was suspending its encrypted email service as a preemptive measure before ever receiving a command from the government to spy on its users.” For more, click here.

How Obama wants to make you comfortable with NSA spying. Friday’s big presser at the White House gave the President an opportunity to make folks feel a little better about NSA surveillance policies. FP’s Shane Harris on that and washing dishes: “In reality, the White House briefing was the start of a marketing campaign for the spy programs that have turned so controversial in recent months. And the president’s message really boiled down to this: It’s more important to persuade people surveillance is useful and legal than to make structural changes to the programs. ‘The question is, how do I make the American people more comfortable?’ Obama said. Not that Obama’s unwilling to make any changes to America’s surveillance driftnets — and he detailed a few of them — but his overriding concern was that people didn’t believe him when he said there was nothing to fear. In an awkward analogy, the president said that if he’d told his wife Michelle that he had washed the dishes after dinner, she might not believe him. So he might have to take her into the kitchen and show her the evidence.'” Read the rest here.

Oorah for WH transcribers. After Marine Corps Times’ Dan Lamothe took White House transcribers to task for writing that Marines chanted “hooray!” after President Barack Obama’s visit to Camp Pendleton, transcribers got a little military culture on and the offending word was removed from the official transcript of the remarks. The appropriate one, oorah, was inserted in its place. This of course, would make any Marine say but one thing: “Hooah.” JK! “Oorah.”