Morning Brief - 4/26/12

ISRAELI MILITARY CHIEF: IRAN WILL NOT BUILD A NUCLEAR BOMB
The Washington Post reports that Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Israel’s military chief, said in an interview with the newspaper Haaretz published Wednesday that he believes Iran will choose not to build a nuclear bomb. That contrasts “with the gloomier statements of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pointed to differences over the Iran issue at the top levels of Israeli leadership.” (WaPo)

The United States
NYC TERROR TRIAL NEARS CLOSING ARGUMENTS
Closing arguments could begin today in the trial of Adis Medunjanin, a Bosnian-born American accused of participating in an al Qaeda plot to attack the NYC subway system. His two alleged co-conspirators, Najubullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay, have pleaded guilty and testified against him. On Wednesday, Medunjanin’s mother and sister testified, giving tearful accounts of the FBI raid on their apartment when Medunjanin was arrested. (CNN, NY Daily News)

OBAMA, HOUSE CLASH OVER CYBER BILL
President Obama has threatened to veto a bill being taken up by the House of Representatives that “invites companies to voluntarily share cyber threats with the National Security Agency and other government agencies and private-sector companies,” reports the Wall Street Journal. Senate Democrats and the White House want to place more stringent requirements on businesses, particularly those involved with core critical infrastructure, to bolster their cyber defenses. The White House also wants stronger privacy protections built into the bill. (WSJ, Politico, AP)

Marine discharged over Facebook comments: A Marine Corps sergeant who made critical comments about President Obama on Facebook has been discharged without honor. Sgt. Gary Stein, who wrote “Screw Obama and I will not follow all orders from him,” will lose most of his benefits for violating Corps policies. (AP)

Lindh lawsuit: A lawsuit on whether daily group prayers can be held in a highly restricted cell block at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., brought by convicted American-born Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, will be heard by a federal court in August. (AP)

Pentagon layoffs possible: Thomas Lamont, an assistant secretary of the Army, told a Senate Armed Services panel Wednesday that the Army could lay off as many as 24,000 enlisted personnel and up to 5,000 officers within five years to meet projected budget cuts. (AP)

Conflict Zones
PAKISTAN COURT CONVICTS PM OF CONTEMPT, SPARES HIM PRISON
Pakistan’s Supreme Court has found Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani guilty of contempt for failing to reopen an old corruption case against the Pakistani president. But the verdict was largely symbolic, and Gilani, who could have received up to six months in prison, was spared any sentence; the judges said Gilani had served a symbolic sentence by attending court. The decision appears to be a retreat by the court, though Gilani’s political future remains uncertain. (WSJ, Reuters, WaPo)

Syria: The Arab League has called an emergency meeting to discuss Syria’s fraying ceasefire, as the Syrian regime blamed anti-government forces for a large blast in Hama, which opposition activists say was caused by intense government shelling and may have killed as many as 70 people. (AP, BBC News, CNN, Guardian)

Al Qaeda: The intelligence chief of U.S. Cyber Command says that al Qaeda is seeking the ability to wage cyberattacks against U.S. targets. The terror group isn’t currently close to having such a capacity, but “how fast that can change is my concern,” Rear Admiral Samuel Cox said at a conference this week in Arlington, Va. (Bloomberg)

World News
Europe: New data from Europol indicate that terror attacks and arrests in the EU fell significantly in 2011, continuing a trend that dates back to at least 2007. (WSJ)

Canada: Mohamed Harkat, a 44-year-old Algerian first detained in 2002 on suspicion of links of al Qaeda, has been granted a new hearing by a Canadian appeals court on the grounds that telephone intercepts made by the country’s spy agency should have been excluded from evidence. (AFP)

The Hague: Former Liberian President Charles Taylor is currently awaiting a verdict at The Hague, where he is charged with crimes against humanity and other counts in connection with atrocities committed against civilians in the civil war in Sierra Leone. (NYT)

Arguments, Editorials, and Must Reads
Andrew Rosenthal on how to try terrorists: “There is no evidence suggesting that civilian courts can’t handle terrorist trials,” writes Rosenthal on NYTimes.com. “On the contrary, there’s ample and mounting evidence proving that they can....In fact, there is a terrorism trial going on right now—in Brooklyn, of all places....There is no good reason to believe that the criminal justice system can handle an alleged terrorist who plotted to destroy the subway, but not an alleged terrorist who plotted to destroy the World Trade System. No good reason.”

Nick Turse on how the U.S. still doesn’t get guerrilla warfare: “More than 40 years after the Vietnam War’s Tet offensive, after more than a decade of war in Afghanistan, the U.S. military still doesn’t get” guerrilla warfare, writes Turse in the LA Times. “Recently, after Afghan militants unleashed sophisticated, synchronized attacks across Afghanistan, including in the capital, Kabul, the Pentagon was quick to emphasize what hadn’t happened....‘There were,’ Leon Panetta insisted, ‘no tactical gains here. These are isolated attacks that are done for symbolic purposes, and they have not regained any territory.’ Even granting the need to spin the assaults as failures, the official American reaction to the coordinated attacks reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of guerrilla warfare in general and of the type waged by the Haqqani network in particular. It’s a lesson the United States should have learned decades ago.”