North America

Is a new day slowly dawning for Iraq? In about a week, the Iraqi people will go to the polls once again in perhaps the most important election to date since the 2003 war began.

This week, I continue my review of John Heilemann's and Mark Halperin's book,

The Cable is hearing from multiple congressional sources, diplomats, and former officials that the Obama administration is getting ready to finalize a new National Intelligence Estimate that

A meeting of top U.S. officials on Sudan last week was supposed to yield big recommendations on how to craft the right balance of incentives and pressures toward the Khartoum regime, which stands accused of fomenting genocide in Darfur and stirring instability in its autonomous southern region.

Barack Obama touched on some foreign policy issues in his State of the Union speech, eventually, toward the end, for a couple of minutes. Here are the important excerpts:

With all about the chatter about China’s hacking of Google and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s drive to deliver “consequences” to bad actors in cyberspace, it’s worth noting that the problem of cyber attacks either promulgated or supported by the Chinese government is far from new.

In a previous life, your Cable guy broke a story that revealed senior military officials believe the Chinese government is supporting hackers that attack “anything and everything” in the U.S. national security infrastructure on a constant basis. And while it’s difficult to prove guilt, the scale, organization, and intent of the attacks leads experts and officials alike to one sponsor: the Chinese government.

With Obama envoy Stephen Bosworth, above, finally visiting Pyongyang and a lot of nam

Resume and expand Operation Jump Start (OJS)

OJS was launched in June 2006 as a joint initiative of the Defense Department and the Governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. As part of this two-year operation, thousands of National Guard troops were trained and placed along the U.S.-Mexico border to help curb illegal immigration to the United States.  OJS relied on the National Guard to assist with border fence construction and detect illegal entrants through surveillance, leaving the actual law enforcement to Border Patrol as the leading agency. 

Abstract:

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