WarSclerotic

US experiment: Pentagon destroys replica of underground nuclear facility – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Pentagon uses advanced bunker buster bombs to destroy replica of underground facility as part of experiment whose results were relayed to friendly nations

Alex Fishman

The Pentagon has recently completed a series of field exercises on US soil as part of which a replica of an underground nuclear facility was destroyed, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Friday.

The tests were declared a resounding success having exceeded all expectations.

The results of the experiment were relayed to friendly nations with the aim of reassuring them as to the US’s ability to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities in a single strike.

It was also meant to convey that the US is serious in its intentions to attack Iran should circumstances allow it.

The experiment included the firing of several bunker buster bombs first introduced by the US Defense Department in July 2012. The GBU-57 B bomb is mounted on a B-2 bomber and as part of the experiment penetrated the underground facility’s concrete ceilings.

The US has suggested it will manufacture only a limited amount of such bunker busters. Each bomb is estimated at $ 3.5 million and the overall cost of developing the new weapon was $500 million.

The size of the munition is six times greater than any other known bunker buster. It weighs 13 tons and its speed of penetration two times faster than the speed of sound at a rate of accuracy of five meters.

Senior US officers have recently stressed in meetings with counterparts in the region that US defense budget cuts will not affect preparations for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman told the Senate last month that the US will not spare efforts in undermining Iran’s nuclear program.

Her statements were reinforced by Secretary of State John Kerry who in a press conference with his German counterpart Guido Westerwelle said that Israel will do whatever its needs to protect itself. It was the first time a senior US official had publically discussed a potential Israeli strike so unreservedly.

Israel defense sources state that the most recent IAEA report showed that US sanctions have yet to discourage Tehran from going ahead with its nuclear program. They believe the upcoming elections will not change the situation.

A European foreign minister who recently visited Israel quoted a senior Israeli official in a foreign ministers conference. The Iranians, the Israeli official had said, do not believe Israeli and US threats to strike Iranian nuclear facilities but are mistaken.

Putin: Russia can replace Austria in UN Golan force | JPost | Israel News.

MOSCOW – Russia is ready to replace peacekeepers from Austria in the Golan Heights, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, after Vienna said it would recall its troops from a UN monitoring force due to worsening fighting in Syria.

Austria, whose peacekeepers account for about 380 of the 1,000-strong UN force observing a four-decade-old ceasefire between Syria and Israel, said it would pull out after intense clashes between Syrian government forces and rebels on the border.

“Given the complicated situation in the Golan Heights, we could replace the leaving Austrian contingent in this region on the border between Israeli troops and the Syrian army,” Putin said at a televised meeting with Russian military officers.

“But this will happen, of course, only if the regional powers show interest, and if the UN secretary general asks us to do so,” he said.

Russia, a long-time ally and arms supplier to Syrian President Bashar Assad, has been trying along with Western powers to bring the warring sides in Syria together into talks on a solution to the more than two-year-old conflict.

The UN Security Council will meet on Friday to discuss the Austrian withdrawal after anti-Assad rebels briefly seized the crossing between Israel and Syria, sending UN staff scurrying to bunkers before Syrian soldiers managed to push them back.

Concern after UN Pullout: Hizbullah on Two Fronts? – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

UNIFIL and IDF in Lebanon (file)

Flash 90

Syrian rebels on Thursday briefly seized the only crossing along the Israel-Syria ceasefire line on the Golan, before regime forces recaptured it using tanks, an AFP correspondent and Israeli sources said.

A security source told AFP that Israel is worried by the latest developments on the border, which could lead to a situation in which Israel faces Hizbullah on the Syrian front as well as the Lebanese one.

The fighting took place at the Quneitra crossing and the nearby village of the same name in the demilitarized zone between the Israeli and Syrian parts of the strategic plateau.

The clashes were very close to the headquarters of a UN peacekeeping force, prompting Austria to announce it was withdrawing its troops from the mission.

“The Syrian army has recovered control of the crossing,” an Israeli security source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

An AFP correspondent near the crossing also confirmed that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had retaken Quneitra, saying he could see regime tanks moving inside the area.

Quneitra is the only crossing point between Syria and the Israeli side of the Golan Heights which the Jewish state liberated during the 1967 Six-Day War.

The Israeli military earlier confirmed that the crossing and the nearby town of the same name had fallen into rebel hands.

“We can confirm that opposition forces have overrun the town of Quneitra and the border post,” said Captain Arye Shalicar.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors Syria’s two-year conflict, had also confirmed the takeover.

Following the clashes, in which two UN peacekeepers were slightly injured, Austria announced it was withdrawing its 380 troops from the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) which has been monitoring the ceasefire line since 1974.

“The Austrian army’s participation in the UNDOF mission can no longer be maintained for military reasons,” an official statement said, indicating the threat to its soldiers had “reached an unacceptable level.”

The pullout will have a significant impact on the size of the UN peacekeeping force, whose numbers dropped to around 900 in March after Croatia became the latest country to withdraw its soldiers, following similar moves by Canada and Japan.

There was no immediate reaction from Israel which has long feared that the violence could force UNDOF to completely pull out, leaving the ceasefire zone open to infiltration by hardline militants.

“It is very worrying because on the one hand you have jihadists and Islamists who are fighting there (with the rebels), and on the other hand, you also have government forces which are allied with Hizbullah,” said a security source of the Lebanese militia which has allied itself with Assad’s regime.

“We certainly don’t want to have Hizbullah on two fronts,” he said.

Until now, Israel had no information suggesting Hizbullah forces were operating in the area, he added.

But the army spokesman said they were watching the situation “very closely”.

“We have to be ready for any development,” Shalicar told AFP.

The flareup prompted Israel to reinforce its military presence on the plateau, Israel’s public radio said.

Although the army refused to confirm the report, AFP correspondents reported seeing tanks on flatbed trucks in the Quneitra area.

And Israel also lodged a formal complaint with UNDOF over the entry of regime tanks into the demilitarized zone as they moved to retake Quneitra.

“A formal complaint was conveyed by the Israeli army to UNDOF regarding the entrance of tanks to the non-military zone near Quneitra,” a spokeswoman said.

Also on Thursday, the army said three mortar rounds struck the central Golan Heights, causing no damage or injuries.

And during the morning, two badly wounded Syrians were let in through Quneitra and taken to Ziv hospital in the Galilee town of Safed.

It was not clear whether they were rebels, government troops or civilians, but Ziv hospital said that a “live hand grenade” had been found on one of them, sparking a brief security scare.

“The grenade was found as doctors treated a seriously wounded and unconscious person,” a hospital statement said.

“When they began removing his clothes they found the live grenade in his pocket.”

The area of the trauma room and the operating theater were both evacuated but the grenade was quickly defused by bomb disposal experts, it said.

Syria remains formally at war with Israel and Quneitra crossing is used almost exclusively by Druze residents from the Israeli-occupied side who are allowed to cross over to study, work or get married.

Israel controls some 1,200 square kilometers (460 sq miles) of the strategic plateau, while around 510 square kilometers remain in Syrian hands.

Israel Hayom | Happy Israel.

Daniel Pipes

Israel Hayom | Israel can only watch.

Dan Margalit

Sometimes, history repeats itself. In May, 1974, then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger concluded a round of shuttle diplomacy in which he met Israel’s defense minister at the time, Moshe Dayan, and then-Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. Kissinger was able to secure a cease-fire agreement between the sides, which has held until today.

Some two years later, a senior official in Washington showed me a photocopy of a document from his country’s embassy in Damascus, which reported that a Syrian army battalion was participating in the civil war in Lebanon.

A day later, Haaretz published a low-key report on the matter. There was concern that the story was an American trial balloon, intended to gauge the Israeli government’s reaction as well as public opinion in Israel. This was not exactly the purpose. As the Syrian army steadily made its way toward Lebanon, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin pondered whether to ignore the violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty by an enemy army, or hope that this army would be able to rein in the terrorist groups there, primarily Yasser Arafat’s PLO.

Also prevalent was the mind-set that it was preferable to see the Syrian army whittled down in Lebanon as opposed to channeling the bulk of its forces toward the Golan Heights. Whether it wanted to or not, Israel came to terms with the Syrian army’s presence in Lebanon, and demanded that Damascus stop its advance there according to an imaginary line a considerable distance from Israel’s border. The rest, as they say, is history.

Is the same scenario now repeating itself, only in reverse? Hezbollah has entered Syria to fight the rebels, which both reduces its fighting forces along the border with Israel and raises the chances of the Syrian regime retaining control over the country, instead of a lawless entity with no internal system of control such as a rebel victory would portend.

This time, too, the answer is not cut and dry. The more the West accepts the claim, first made by Israel, that Assad is using chemical weapons, the more it exhibits weakness toward him. The forecasts of Assad’s imminent demise are soon to be updated: a stalemate with a slight advantage for the regime’s army will now characterize the civil war in Syria.

If Assad is truly close to winning territorial continuity from the south to the north and retaking the ancient city of Homs, then the Iran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis of evil will have emerged from the fighting with the upper hand. U.S. President Barack Obama, meanwhile, will be perceived as the crutch facilitating the turning tide, just when Turkey — Assad’s bitter enemy — is mired in an internal crisis that could potentially escalate into an Ottoman civil war.

Just as in the 1970s, Israel is studying the picture of the battlefield and cannot do much else but enjoy the relative quiet provided by the war its enemies are fighting. Regardless, Israel does not know what its best course of action is because it has no idea which of these two bad options is preferable

Syrian tanks in Golan; Austria withdraws peacekeeping forces – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Rebels, government forces clash in battle of Quneitra – small town near border crossing between Israel, Syria – injuring Filipino peacekeeper, prompting Austria to withdraw forces, Israel to lodge complaint with UN

News agencies

In wake of ongoing battles in the Golan Heights, Austria has announced it is withdrawing its forces from the UNDOF peacekeeping force active in the region. During the battles, a Filipino peacekeeper was wounded.

A day after losing control of Qusair, an important town close to the Lebanese border, rebels tried to grab back the initiative with an assault on Quneitra – the demilitarized zone on the Golan Heights patrolled by the United Nations’ peacekeeping force and connecting Israel to Syria.

For the first time since the start of the uprising in March 2011, the rebels briefly took control of the area, sending UN peacekeepers scurrying to their bunkers.

Quneitra Crossing, Thursday morning (Photo: Yoav Zitun)

The rarely used Quneitra crossing is the only transit point between Syrian and Israeli disengagement lines set in 1974 and Thursday’s battle will further heighten concerns in Israel about the worsening security environment.

Israel’s military picked up two wounded Syrians after the clashes on the Golan Heights and transferred them to hospital for treatment, a military spokeswoman said.

(Photo: Avihu Shapira)

Additional Israeli sources said Syrian forces wrested back the site after fierce fighting with rebels. However it should be noted that throughout the day conflicting reports regarding the fighting’s outcome were registered.

Because of the presence of tanks and heavy artillery in the Golan, Israel has lodged a complaint with the UN in what it claims is a violation of the two countries’ armistice agreement.

The IDF has instructed farmers from the region to avoid the area. Alex Kodish, the agricultural manager for Ein Zivan, an Israeli community only 100 meters from the border, transferred his workers to the orchard farthest away from the border.

“We got away from the border fence so as not to put ourselves in danger, and beside that we’re business as usual,” he said, adding that “I heard explosions during the morning and that is still going on. I also saw explosions on the other (Syrian) side of the border.”

Syrian soldier in Qusair, Wednesday (Photo: Reuters)

Austria said it would withdraw its 380 peacekeepers from the 1,000-strong UN monitoring force because of the fighting, significantly weakening the UN Disengagement Observer Force’s (UNDOF) ability to act in the region.

“Freedom of movement in the area de facto no longer exists. The uncontrolled and immediate danger to Austrian soldiers has risen to an unacceptable level,” Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and his deputy Michael Spindelegger said in a joint statement.

“This morning’s developments show that a further delay (in pulling out soldiers) is no longer justifiable,” the Austrian statement said.

Austria’s defense ministry was in contact with the United Nations’ department of peacekeeping operations “to create the conditions for an orderly withdrawal of Austrian peacekeepers”, it added.

Boder ahead (Photo: Avihu Shapira)

Before the Austrian announcement, the Golan peace-force was dealt another blow when a Filipino peacekeeper was wounded during the fighting between government and rebel forces.

The soldier suffered a leg injury from an artillery or mortar shell that landed at Camp Ziouni, a logistics base for the UNDOF, said Lt. Col. Ramon Zagala.

The soldier, one of the more than 300 Filipino peacekeepers, was in stable condition, Zagala said.

It was unclear whether the shell came from the government or rebel side, however it is clear the incident highlights the vulnerability of peacekeepers in the Syrian conflict.

The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) is meant to police the peace but has been largely ineffectual during the civil war. Israel however is keen to maintain an international presence in the area and has urged countries contributing to the force not to quit, despite the dangers.

The Syrian side of the crossing is only 70 meters from the IDF‘s position, and the only thing that stands – or stood – between them was the UNDOF position. In light of the conflict, during the previous year, the IDF has reinforced its buffer zone with Syria.

The crossing is one of the sole representatives of governmental authority in the Syrian Golan, and hence, symbolically, unlike the nearby town bearing the same name, it is such a vied for target.

The crossing is currently closed to both journalists and citizens.

In the past, Israel has allowed only a handful of Arabs and Druze residents of formerly Syrian communities – currently under Israel sovereignty – to use the crossing for studies in Damascus, religious purposes or the occasional humanitarian crossing of doctors.

Qusayr was a debacle for the West and Israel: Aftershocks in Lebanon, Golan and Gaza Strip.

Syrian troops capture al Qusayr

The Syrian rebels’ defeat in the key town of al Qusayr, Wednesday, June 6, was also a major strategic debacle for the US, Israel and Western Europe, the price they paid for leaving allied Syrian-Hizballah troops orchestrated by Iranian officers a clear field to win the day. The Syrian-Hizballah machine is now ready to capitalize on its victory and roll into Aleppo and southern Syria to extinguish rebel resistance there too. Israel is next in its sights.

Five months ago, on February 26, an exclusive debkafile video report, entitled “Bashar Assad, Ali Khamenei, Vladimir Putin and Hassan Nasrallah Have Won the War,” revealed how step by step Bashar Assad was turning the tide of war and recovering the initiative, backed by a broad alliance of Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hizballah.
This alliance is already at work building on its success – not just in the Syria conflict, but beyond its borders too.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has posted 20,000 troops on the Syrian border to seal it off against the passage of Sunni and al Qaeda reinforcements for the Syria rebels. Iraqi commandoes are preparing to launch raids against al Qaeda-linked forces in eastern Syria. The Nusra Front, for instance, appears to have vanished from the battlefield and keeping a low profile.

Syria’s half million Druzes, sheltering away from the conflict in their mountain villages on Jebel Druze in the south, were given an ultimatum by Hizballah to proclaim their loyalty to Bashar Assad or face attack.

Hizballah aggression against the Syrian Druzes would have major connotations for the community in Lebanon and its leader, Walid Jumblatt. On the other hand, if Syrian Druzes threw in their lot with the Assad regime, the Druzes of Lebanon would be forced to line up with Iran’s proxy. This realignment would counteract the Syrian rebels’ threat to strike Hizballah strongholds inside Lebanon. And these shifts would leave the Druze villagers on the Israeli Golan few options but to line up with the rest.

Unnoticed by Israel, the long arm of the Syrian war has reached deep into the Gaza Strip. Its Palestinian Hamas rulers lost no time in jumping on the winning bandwagon. A delegation is already in Tehran waiting to plead for a new military cooperation pact.
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal faced heavy pressure to turn away from their ties with Turkey and Qatar and renew the military pact Hamas signed with Iran and Hizballah in September 2012
The pressure came from Marwan Issa, deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing, the Ezz a-din al-Qassam Brigades –  who fled the Gaza Strip after Israel’s Pillar of Defense operation against Hamas rockets, and stayed in Tehran ever since – and Mahmoud a-Zahar, who lost the politburo slot to Meshaal.

Thursday June 6, the Hamas military wing suddenly issued a declaration of allegiance to Iran and Hizballah.
Hamas is in desperate need of a new patron and even more of cash. Turkey and Qatar have cut off funds to the radical Palestinian movement and so its rulers, with the al Qusayr victory resounding strongly in their ears, turned back to Tehran and Hizballah to beg for funding to buy rockets.

This side-effect of the Syrian war and Hizballah’s successful role there is bad news for Israel. Back under the thumb of Iran and its proxy, Hamas is more than likely to scrap its ceasefire deal with Israel after nine months of rocket-free border calm, in its eagerness to rejoin the winning side of the Syrian war.
This would be a strategic slap in the face for Israel and the Obama administration, which helped broker the ceasefire last year, and a major hurdle in the path of US Secretary of State John Kerry and his hard work for reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace track.

With two anti-Israel warfronts looming on the Golan and the Gaza Strip, no Palestinian Authority figure, including Mahmoud Abbas, would venture to sit down with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu

The Syrian-Hizballah victory in Qusayr exposed the hollowness of the US-European-Israeli posture of non-intervention in the Syrian conflict. While all three backed away from confirming the outbreak of chemical warfare in Syria, aside from empty threats,  Moscow, Tehran and Baghdad managed to repair the inroads made on Assad’s military power by two and-a-quarter years of hard fighting, and fashion a combined Syrian-Hizballah fighting machine capable of crushing the Syrian uprising.
Having proved its mettle in an epic victory, the Syrian-Hizballah partnership confronts Israel, Jordan and the US forces posted there with plans to follow up in its success in two stages: First, to conquer Aleppo and southern Syria and clear them of rebels; second, to use the Golan as a jumping-off base to face Israel on the battlefield.
Already, their campaign to seize the town of Quneitra on the Syrian side of Golan has begun. The roar of gunfire and shells heard distinctly in Israel Thursday, June 6, told Israel’s war leaders in no uncertain terms that the war front against Hizballah had shifted from southern Lebanon to the Golan.

Rebels capture Syria-Israel border crossing – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Rebels trying to overthrow Assad seize control of Syrian side of Quneitra Crossing just day after forces loyal to president retake Qusair; fierce battles raging in area; UN inspector injured in mortar explosion at UN camp; rockets hit Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon

Ynet reporters, Reuters

Rebels seized a border crossing on the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria on Thursday, activists said, as heavy clashes raged between the opposition and President Bashar Assad‘s forces.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was the first time that rebels had seized a border crossing next to the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, but it was unclear whether the anti-Assad fighters would be able to hold the site.

Israel is worried that the Golan, which it captured from Syria in 1967, will become a springboard for attacks on Israelis by jihadi fighters, who are taking part in the armed struggle against Assad.

“The rebels have seized the crossing near the old city of Quneitra in the occupied Golan Heights,” said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Observatory. “There are heavy explosions and fierce clashing ongoing in the area.”

Quneitra Crossing, Thursday morning (Photo: Yoav Zitun)

The Syrian side of the crossing is located just 70 meters (about 230 feet) from an IDF position.

The dramatic development in the civil war came just a day after the Syrian army forced rebels to withdraw from the strategic town of Qusair, near the Lebanese border. The army called the town’s capture a victory that sent a clear message to the “Zionist enemy.”

Fierce battles have been raging between rebels and army forces in “Old Quneitra,” the only Syrian city situated near the border with Israel. During the battles, a UN inspector was injured when a mortar shell hit a UN camp located at the Syrian-Israeli border. Explosions were heard in the Golan Heights area on Thursday morning.

Battles near Quneitra (Photo: Gili Sivan)

Opposition sources confirmed that rebel forces seized control of the Quneitra Crossing and caused heavy losses to forces loyal to Assad. The rebels also managed to destroy four Syrian army tanks, the sources said.

The IDF has instructed farmers working near the border to keep away from the Quneitra area.

Syrian soldier in Qusair, Wednesday (Photo: Reuters) 

Meanwhile, reports in Lebanon said 12 rockets exploded in the city of Baalbek, which is considered a stronghold of Hezbollah. The rocket attack may have been launched by Syrian rebel forces as retaliation for the Shiite group’s role in Wednesday’s capture of Qusair. Thousands of Hezbollah fighters fought alongside Assad’s forces against the rebels in the border town, which was recaptured after weeks of intense battles.

“The victory that was achieved at the hands of our brave soldiers sends a clear message to all those who are involved in the aggression against Syria, on top being the Zionist enemy and its agents in the region and tools on the ground,” said a statement carried by Syrian state television after the army retook Qusair.

The Qusair region is crucial in that it connects Damascus with Syria’s Mediterranean coast, the homeland of the country’s minority Alawite population. Assad must keep the route between Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon to the coast open. Opposition sources have claimed that the coastal area may serve as a “refuge Alawite state” in case Assad is overthrown in Damascus and Syria will dissolve into separate ethnic and religious sects.

Also on Thursday, CNN quoted a Pentagon official as saying US intelligence agencies have identified three Russian amphibious warships in the eastern Mediterranean that are believed to be carrying weapons shipments that might be used to resupply the Syrian regime.

Although it’s not confirmed, it’s believed the ships may be carrying some components of the controversial Russian S-300 air defense missile system and other weapons for the regime, the report said.

U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls – NYTimes.com.

( Too scary and disgusting not to post. – JW )

By CHARLIE SAVAGE and EDWARD WYATT

¶ WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed on Wednesday night.

¶ The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over “on an ongoing daily basis” to the National Security Agency all call logs “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

¶ The order does not apply to the content of the communications.

¶ Verizon Business Network Services is one of the nation’s largest telecommunications and Internet providers for corporations. It is not clear whether similar orders have gone to other parts of Verizon, like its residential or cellphone services, or to other telecommunications carriers. The order prohibits its recipient from discussing its existence, and representatives of both Verizon and AT&T declined to comment Wednesday evening.

¶ The four-page order was disclosed Wednesday evening by the newspaper The Guardian. Obama administration officials at the F.B.I. and the White House also declined to comment on it Wednesday evening, but did not deny the report, and a person familiar with the order confirmed its authenticity. “We will respond as soon as we can,” said Marci Green Miller, a National Security Agency spokeswoman, in an e-mail.

¶ The order was sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that regulates domestic surveillance for national security purposes, including “tangible things” like a business’s customer records. The provision was expanded by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which Congress enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

¶ The order was marked “TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN,” referring to communications-related intelligence information that may not be released to noncitizens. That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government, and its disclosure comes amid a furor over the Obama administration’s aggressive tactics in its investigations of leaks.

¶ The collection of call logs is set to expire in July unless the court extends it.

¶ The collection of communications logs — or calling “metadata” — is believed to be a major component of the Bush administration’s program of surveillance that took place without court orders. The newly disclosed order raised the question of whether the government continued that type of information collection by bringing it under the Patriot Act.

¶ The disclosure late Wednesday seemed likely to inspire further controversy over the scope of government surveillance. Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil liberties advocacy group, said that “absent some explanation I haven’t thought of, this looks like the largest assault on privacy since the N.S.A. wiretapped Americans in clear violation of the law” under the Bush administration. “On what possible basis has the government refused to tell us that it believes that the law authorizes this kind of request?” she said.

¶ For several years, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, have been cryptically warning that the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under that section of the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming to the public if it knew about it.

¶ “We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot Act,” they wrote last year in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

¶ They added: “As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.”

¶ A spokesman for Senator Wyden did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the Verizon order.

¶ The senators were angry because the Obama administration described Section 215 orders as being similar to a grand jury subpoena for obtaining business records, like a suspect’s hotel or credit card records, in the course of an ordinary criminal investigation. The senators said the secret interpretation of the law was nothing like that.

¶ Section 215 of the Patriot Act made it easier to get an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain business records so long as they were merely deemed “relevant” to a national-security investigation.

¶ The Justice Department has denied being misleading about the Patriot Act. Department officials have acknowledged since 2009 that a secret, sensitive intelligence program is based on the law and have insisted that their statements about the matter have been accurate.

¶

US official: Russian warships may be carrying weapons to Syria – Israel News, Ynetnews.

CNN reports three Russian warships have been identified in Mediterranean Sea, suspected of carrying weapons to Syria, including advanced anti-aircraft missiles

Ynet

US intelligence agencies have identified three Russian amphibious warships in the eastern Mediterranean that are believed to be carrying weapons shipments that might be used to resupply the Syrian regime, CNN quoted a Pentagon official as saying.

The official declined to be named due to the sensitive nature of the information.

CNN reported Thursday that the US has been tracking the ships since they left Russian ports several days ago. US satellites were able to see some indications of containers being loaded onto the ships.

Russian warships at Syrian port (Photo: AFP)

Although it’s not confirmed, it’s believed the ships may be carrying some components of the controversial Russian S-300 air defense missile system and other weapons for the regime, the report said.

According to the CNN report, the US has been pressing the Russians for weeks to not deliver the S-300 system to Syria because of the threat it would pose by upgrading Syria’s already robust air defense capabilities. The US believes it would give the Syrian government a much greater ability to target US, Israeli, NATO or other aircraft that may try to strike targets on the ground in the future.

The official told CNN the US did not see any military helicopters being loaded; it is believed the Syrians want to add the helicopters to their inventories.

The Russians have kept a regular naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean so they can move in and out of the port of Tartus, where they have facilities.

CNN further revealed that several sensitive military assets are in the region this month as well. In the next two weeks, the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower will also be in the region on a scheduled rotation as it returns to its home port on the East Coast.

A US Patriot missile battery and F-16s are heading to Jordan for a training exercise, though the Jordanians have asked for the Patriots to remain after the exercise concludes at the end of the month.