Today's Headlines and Commentary

Milton J. Valencia and Martin Finucane of  Boston Globe and Laurel J. Sweet of the Boston Herald report on the opening statements in Tarek Mehanna's trial, which Bobby discusses here and here.  Peter Gelzinis at the Boston Herald has an op-ed on the free speech issue that is dominating the trial. Abu Zubaydah, one of the high-value detainees at Guantanamo Bay, has filed a lawsuit against Lithuania with the European Court of Human Rights over his treatment and detention at a secret CIA-run black site there, according to the AP. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that hackers have "come close" to a major cyberattack on the United States, reports Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post. Meanwhile, according to the AP, Slovenian authorities arrested an alleged comuputer hacker believed to be responsible for a virus that affected 12 million computers worldwide.  Catherine Herridge of Fox News discusses the House Homeland Security Committee's push to have two 9/11 suspects questioned about Anwar al-Awlaki. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defends the White House strategy for ending the war in Afghanistan. In other news, the Pentagon's semi-annual Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan was submitted to Congress today; it states that security has improved in Afghanistan but takes a harsher tone towards insurgents sheltered in Pakistan, say Donna Cassata of the AP and Charley Keyes of CNN. The report is not publicly available yet, but the Department of Defense press release is here. Paul Wolfowitz and Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution discuss  how "success in Afghanistan would look a lot more like the success that has been achieved in Colombia over the last 10 years, rather than the success that we are hoping for in Iraq" in Foreign Policy. Paul R. Pillar of the Center for Peace and Security Studies asserts that applying the "war" label to counterterrorism is wrong and has many negative consequences. The Post's Craig Whitlock informs us that the Air Force has confirmed the existence of a U.S. drone base in Ethiopia, from which it is targeting al-Shabab. Meanwhile, al-Shabab rallied hundreds of supporters outside Mogadishu, calling for attacks against Kenya, report Josh Kron and Mohamed Ibrahim of the New York Times. Speaking of drones, here is your moment of Zen. For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter and visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief. Feel free to email me noteworthy articles I may have missed at singh.lawfare@gmail.com.