Today's Headlines and Commentary

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri’s trial continues---with or without him. Wells’s reporting from Ft. Meade is here, here and here, and here are Charlie Savage of the New York Times and the Associated Press with the latest developments. Wells just posted that the rest of the hearing has been cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy. John Ismay, a former Navy explosive ordnance disposal officer, has a historical piece in the New York Times’s At War blog about the role of Rear Adm. E. J. (Jerry) O’Donnell---his grandfather---in commanding and evacuating Guantanamo Bay during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Laura Pitter of Human Rights Watch argues on the CNN web site that the myriad of “practical and legal problems” with military commissions make the risk that they will result in a overturned verdict like that in Hamdan a risk not worth taking. In non-Gitmo news, Monica Langley discusses rumors that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton will stay on if President Obama is reelected. The Wall Street Journal has the story. Reuters has obtained emails that show that the Obama administration were advised that Islamic militant group Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility for the Benghazi attack a mere two hours after it happened. Eric Shmitt of the Times also reports. Matthew Diaz, a former Navy lawyer who faced court martial in 2008 for sending classified information about Guantanamo Bay detainees to the Center for Constitutional Rights, is looking to have his law license reinstated, according to John Milburn of the AP. Alissa J. Rubin provides a firsthand account of the “distrust [that] has poisoned the relationship between Afghans and Americans” based on her time in Wardak Province, Afghanistan. Kim Murphy of the Los Angeles Times tells us that Ahmed Ressam, the “Millenium Bomber,” convicted in 2001 of plotting to bomb LAX, was finally sentenced to 37 years in prison. Bruce Riedel of Brookings has this piece in RealClearWorld about Al Qaeda’s resurgence throughout the Middle East and North Africa in the wake of the Arab Spring and the civil war in Syria. Read this in-depth report from Reuters about Mali and the “gangster-jihadists” that are giving us all so much grief. From the Department of Not Holding My Breath: Pakistan could be on the “cusp of change” after domestic outrage over the shooting of Malala Yousufzai, CNN reports. And, take this quiz from Foreign Policy and see whether you can match these 15 foreign policy statements with the candidate who said them during Monday’s debate: it’s today’s first-ever Moment of Interactive Zen. For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter, visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief, Syracuse’s Institute for National Security & Counterterrorism’s newsroll, and Fordham Law’s Center on National Security’s Morning Brief and Cyber Brief. Email us noteworthy articles we may have missed at wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com and singh.lawfare@gmail.com, visit the Lawfare Events Calendar for upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings at the Lawfare Job Board.