The Marines can have their bracelets, after all.

Gen. James Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, has decided to carve out an exemption in the service’s uniform regulations to allow “KIA bracelets” following an uproar over news reports that the jewelry, honoring the fallen, had been banned.
(Carol Guzy — The Washington Post)

The policy change takes effect immediately, according to a statement released Tuesday by the Marines. A formal directive was expected to be disseminated throughout the Corps later this week.

“We are acknowledging the close personal nature of our ten years at war and the strong bonds of fidelity that Marines have for one another, especially for those fellow Marines who we have lost,” Amos said in the statement.

Marine Corps Uniform Regulations specifically prohibit the wearing of most jewelry. Enforcement of that policy has been spotty when it comes to the memorial bracelets, but the Marine Corps Times, which is not affiliated with the service, found rule-conscious officers less willing to look the other way.

That, in turn, produced this story — and a good deal of controversy.

The family of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born al-Qaeda operative killed in a CIA drone strike, has released the Colorado birth certificate of his son in response to reports that the teenager was actually a twenty-something militant when he was killed last week.

The document, released to The Washington Post, shows that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was born on Aug. 26, 1995, in Denver to his father, who was born in New Mexico, and Gihan Mohsen Baker, an Egyptian.
Click here to see larger image. (Courtesy Awlaki family)

The spelling of the family name on the birth certificate is Aulaqi, but most American news organizations use the spelling Awlaki.

Abdulrahman Awlaki was the third American killed in Yemen in the past three weeks in U.S. airstrikes. His family has said that he was a noncombatant and was with a group of other teenagers when the group was targeted.

Awlaki’s father, Anwar, was killed late last month in a CIA drone attack. Samir Khan, an al-Qaeda propagandist from North Carolina, died alongside him.

The elder Awlaki was described by President Obama as the chief of “external operations” for al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. The family rejected that characterization and said he was not a “militant.”

A fourth American was killed in 2002 in Yemen in a U.S. attack. That CIA drone strike targeted Abu Ali al-Harithi, a Yemeni accused of planning the 2000 al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole. Kamal Derwish, an American, was in Harithi’s vehicle but he was not the target of the attack.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta — Associated Press)

Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, a regular on the foreign policy speaking circuit in this country, is seeking access to top U.S. lawmakers as he plans his return home after several years of self-imposed exile. And so he’s hired a local lobbying firm, to the tune of $25,000 a month, to help facilitate the effort.

So far, the investment appears to have paid off. Early this month, Musharraf met with six U.S. senators — including Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and ranking committee Republican John McCain (R-Ariz.), as well as Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the senior minority member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Musharraf also sat down with former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who just four years ago denounced him as delusional and undemocratic after he suspended Pakistan’s constitution and imposed emergency rule.

The congressional meetings were widely publicized in Pakistan, where Musharraf has struggled to maintain an image as an international player as he plans to return and run for president.

A spokeswoman for Levin said the senator found the session “useful” but was unsure what role Musharraf could play in helping to repair U.S.-Pakistani relations.

(Courtesy Justice Department)

Federal prosecutors have released a photograph that they say proves a Northern Virginia man met this summer with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — just a few months before the U.S. citizen was arrested on charges of gathering information about anti-Assad protesters and providing it to Syrian intelligence.

The photo was introduced as evidence in Alexandria’s federal court Monday during a hearing in which prosecutors urged a judge to detain Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid, 47, on charges of acting as an agent for a foreign government and making false statements. The photo’s release came days after the Syrian Embassy in Washington said it was “ludicrous” for prosecutors to claim that Soueid met privately with Assad.

Soueid, a Syrian-born naturalized citizen, has been detained since his arrest last week. Prosecutors say the Leesburg resident collected videos of people demonstrating against the Damascus government and sent the recordings to a Syrian intelligence agent.

More than 3,000 people have died in clashes with Assad’s government in six months of protests.

The director of national intelligence on Monday forecast a “double-digit” reduction in the intelligence community’s multibillion budget over the next 10 years, and said that the government would try to find much of the savings by cutting back on contractors.

In proposing reductions in what is now an $80.1 billion annual budget, James R. Clapper Jr., director of national intelligence, said that he was going to try to “protect people” and that he hoped to find “one half the savings” by reducing overlap among the myriad computer systems now operated by the 16 intelligence agencies that make up the community.

(Melina Mara — The Washington Post)

Still, he said, the government’s effort to reduce the federal deficit would mean significant belt-tightening by intelligence officials.

Speaking at a symposium of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation in San Antonio, Tex., Clapper said he had just delivered to the Office of Management and Budget a proposal that “calls for cuts in the double-digit range — with a B — over ten years.”

The family of Anwar al-Awlaki is asserting that the U.S.-born cleric’s son, killed last week in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen, was a 16-year-old noncombatant who “paid a hefty price for something he never did and never was.”
Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in late September. His son was kiled two weeks later. (Associated Press)

In a statement, their first since the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki last month, the family says the cleric’s son was an American citizen who was living in the Yemeni capital until mid-September, when he left his mother a note saying he was going in search of his father. He was killed Friday in a U.S. drone strike while “barbecuing under the moonlight” with other teenagers, the family said.

A family member reached in Sanaa confirmed the Awlakis had released the statement.

The family said they had been shocked to see reports suggesting that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was a 21-year-old al-Qaeda operative. On a memorial page set up on Facebook, they posted photos of the teenager.

“Look at his pictures, his friends and his hobbies,” the statement said. “His Facebook page shows a typical kid.”

A federal court was scheduled today to have opened the trial of a former CIA officer accused of leaking classified information to a reporter. Instead, a judge has postponed the trial because of a dispute over her decision to bar two witnesses.

Prosecutors say they plan to appeal U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema’s decision to strike two witnesses from the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, who was arrested in January on a 10-count indictment that accused him of leaking classified information.

There was no indication from a brief docket entry posted Friday as to when Brinkema would further explain her decision to bar two witnesses or postpone the trial. Many of the case’s proceedings have been conducted in secret because they involve classified information.

The case centers on allegations that Sterling leaked information about CIA efforts to degrade Iran’s nuclear program, which he believed were deeply flawed.

(Carol Guzy — The Washington Post)

Memorial bracelets have become a regular reminder that the country is at war. President Obama wears one. Most soldiers wear them.

So do a lot of Marines.

And that has turned into something of a problem. 

The Marines have always been among the most persnickety when it comes to their uniforms and their appearance. Recently, the Marine Corps Times, which is not affiliated with the service, noticed that some commanders have been ordering Marines to remove their “KIA bracelets,” which are meant to honor fallen service members.

The reason: The Marine Corps Uniform Regulations specifically prohibits the wearing of most jewelry.

Enforcement of that regulation has been spotty, and Marine non-commissioned officers have tended to allow the bracelets. But the article by the Times – which found plenty of Marines who were told they couldn’t have them – has caused an outcry.

Since disclosing an alleged Iranian assassination plot on Tuesday, the Obama administration has offered tough rhetoric when it comes to holding Tehran accountable. Officials have also announced a handful of new sanctions.

On Capitol Hill, they’re not impressed.

Indeed, some of the most heated language on Iran has been coming from lawmakers. And while the toughest response has been from Republicans, Democrats also have been expressing growing impatience with the administration’s policy of trying to engage Iran through a series of carrots and sticks.

“On October 11th, 2011, the United States approach to the Iranian regime should have undergone a major change,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said at a hearing on Friday. Yet “the administration does not plan to alter its course of pressure and persuasive engagement with the Iranian regime.”

“Let me be blunt,” Ros-Lehtinen added. “This planned murder-for-hire must serve as a wakeup call regarding the determination and capability of the Iranian regime.”

Thousands of supporters of the Shiite opposition rally in Manama, Bahrain. (Hasan Jamali — Associated Press)

Pressure is building on the Obama administration to delay a proposed arms sale to the tiny Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain, the longtime U.S. ally that cracked down on pro-democracy protesters earlier this year and that, according to rights groups, has continued to suppress dissent.

Last month, the Defense Department notified Congress of a plan to sell $53 million in armored vehicles, missiles and other military equipment to the kingdom. The sale, the notice said, “will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States” and help improve security in a country that “has been, and continues to be, an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East.”

The announcement drew swift condemnation from rights groups, who argued that, since crushing the blossoms of the Arab Spring in the capital Manama, the Sunni government has waged a large-scale campaign of retribution against the Shiite-led demonstrators and paid lip service to calls for reform.

This week, five Democratic senators – Robert Casey Jr. (Penn.), Richard Durbin (Ill.), Benjamin Cardin (Md.), Robert Menendez (N.J.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) — wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to express their concern about the arms deal.