“No new testing, no new warheads,” Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pledged in a Pentagon briefing.

Yet officials said later that the policy could allow them to bring back older, tested warhead components and designs to build what would be, for all practical purposes, a new weapon.

The administration’s hedge on the warhead issue was but one example of the caution built into a policy portrayed as a groundbreaking effort to reduce U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons.

Although Obama campaigned on a pledge to overhaul nuclear policy, administration officials listened closely to the more conservative advice of Pentagon officials in a yearlong study, said people close to the discussions. And they were sensitive to the need to win Republican votes in the Senate for ratification this year of a new arms control treaty with Russia.

The nuclear weapons policy sets limits on the use of U.S. warheads, declaring some countries off-limits even in wartime, as a step toward reducing U.S. reliance on its most destructive weapons.

The new policy came two days before Obama travels to Prague, Czech Republic, to sign the new arms reduction treaty with Russia and the week before he holds an international nuclear summit in Washington.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES:  Obama’s nuclear policy walks careful line – latimes.com.

Colleen R. LaRose agreed to murder the artist, marry a terrorism suspect so he could move to Europe and martyr herself if necessary, the indictment filed Tuesday said.

LaRose, who called herself JihadJane online, is “one of only a few such cases nationwide in which females have been charged with terrorism violations,” said U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Dean Boyd.

LaRose, 46, of Pennsburg, Pa., has been held without bail since her Oct. 15 arrest in Philadelphia.

Authorities said the case shows how terror groups are looking to recruit Americans to carry out their goals.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR AP/YAHOO! NEWS

In rare case, Pa. woman accused of aiding terror – Yahoo! News.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates

Without giving specifics, Gates said, “It would have to be conditions-based.”

Gates made the remarks during a visit to a dust-blown training ground in Kabul province where Afghan soldiers come for weeks of training under U.S. and British instruction. British Brigadier Simon Levy told Gates that if NATO countries contribute more trainers, the project to expand the Afghan army will keep pace.

In a press conference with Gates, Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said his country is ashamed to have foreigners assuming its defense, and eager to take over the job. He referred repeatedly to the goal of some handover of responsibility by the fall of next year. The goal is to expand the Afghan National Army to 171,000 by then, and the police force to 134,000.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR AP & YAHOO! NEWS:

Gates: Some troops could leave Afghanistan early – Yahoo! News.

“We will continue with the responsible removal of the United States forces from Iraq,” he said at the White House, confirming that “by the end of the next year, all U.S. troops will be out of Iraq.”

At least 38 people were killed during a spate of bombing and other attacks near polling stations on Sunday, but millions of Iraqis defied terrorists’ threats and turned out to cast their ballots. Obama noted that Iraqi forces had taken the lead in providing security.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THE LINK FOR CSNnews.com:

CNSNews.com – Timetable for U.S. Troop Withdrawal on Track, Obama Says, After Iraqis Vote.

Polls were scheduled to close at 5 p.m. local time (9 a.m. Eastern time), but some voting stations accommodated crowds lined up after closing time. Iraq’s high electoral commission scheduled a press conference at 9 p.m. in Baghdad. Party officials said they may release their own preliminary results later Sunday evening, but no official results will be released for several days.

A series of morning attacks cast an early pall over voting, seeming to confirm fears that insurgents would disrupt polling. But violence subsided later. The death toll Sunday was likely to rise as emergency services responded to several bombings. But the violence didn’t approach other, recent attacks in Baghdad, marking a victory of sorts for Iraq’s security services.

At least 25 Iraqis died in dozens of attacks around the country Sunday morning. Mortar attacks in the restive northern city of Mosul and its surroundings forced five polling stations to temporarily close there.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK TO THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:

via Blasts, Mortars Mar Voting in Iraq – WSJ.com.

In a 25-minute video posted on militant Web sites, Adam Gadahn described Maj. Nidal Hasan as a pioneer who should serve as a role model for other Muslims, especially those serving Western militaries.

“Brother Nidal is the ideal role-model for every repentant Muslim in the armies of the unbelievers and apostate regimes,” he said.

Gadahn, also known as Azzam al-Amriki, was dressed in white robes and wearing a white turban as he called for attacks on what he described as “high-value targets.”

Gadahn grew up on a goat farm in Riverside County, California, and converted to Islam at a mosque in nearby Orange County.

“You shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that military bases are the only high-value targets in America and the West. On the contrary, there are countless other strategic places, institutions and installations which, by striking, the Muslim can do major damage,” he said, an assault rifle leaning up against a wall next to him.

Gadahn has been wanted by the FBI since 2004 and two years later was charged with treason. There is a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS:

Al-Qaida calls on US Muslims to attack America – Yahoo! News.

Several universities issued similar warnings last year, but this was the first time the Texas law enforcement agency had issued the specific advisory against travel, said spokeswoman Tela Mange. In the past, she said, Texas authorities had just urged students to be careful.

“Because of the increased violence, we decided to step it up a little bit and say, ‘Parents, bad idea,’” Mange said.

DPS Director Steven C. McCraw said, “Parents should not allow their children to visit these Mexican cities because their safety cannot be guaranteed.”

The State Department renewed a travel alert to Mexico last month, citing increased violence in the country — border areas in particular.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS STORY, CLICK THIS LINK TO CNN: Texas police warn spring breakers: Stay out of Mexico border towns – CNN.com.

The attack took place in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province where a massive US-led military offensive against the Taliban entered a tenth day and US defence chiefs said progress was slower than expected.

Sixteen people were also injured in the blast, the interior ministry said.

The Helmand assault by 15,000 US troops, dubbed Operation Mushtarak — meaning “together” in the Dari Persian dialect spoken in Afghanistan — aims to push the Taliban out of the Marjah and Nad Ali areas under their control.

But the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said in Washington progress against Taliban fighters in the target areas was “steady if perhaps a bit slower than anticipated”.

Commanders have said it could take another month to bring the areas under total control, though civilian police have already been deployed.

“Afghan and combined forces continue to encounter small but determined pockets of resistance, often from bunkers or other fortified positions,” NATO said in an operational update.

IEDs, improvised explosive devices, posed the main challenge, it said, adding “a new patrol base is operational” and “a new police base is being built in southeast Marjah”, referring to the main Marjah bazaar.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR YAHOO! & AFP: Eight die in Afghan bombing as US loses 1,000th soldier – Yahoo! News.

In the Korean War, for instance, the Americans lost the initiative in the beginning, took it back with a dramatic and daring operation, and then lost it again, finally fighting to a blood-soaked stalemate.

At Stalingrad, the Soviets took perhaps a million casualties, and inflicted nearly a million more, to wrest the initiative from Germany.

In 2007, in Iraq, the Americans gambled and, at great expense, regained a modicum of control over the course of events.

Here in Kabul, at the end of a long and eventful week, it is perhaps not unreasonable to pose the question: Have the Americans and their allies, at long last, regained the initiative in Afghanistan?

The past week offered a couple of large reasons to believe they had. In Marja in southern Afghanistan, 15,000 American, Afghan and British troops pressed ahead with their biggest offensive of the war, aimed at expelling the Taliban from their largest Afghan sanctuary and installing something rarely seen here: a government that works.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS  ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES: Prize on the Battlefields of Marja May Be Momentum – NYTimes.com.

The Department of Energy recently proposed $36 billion in new federal loan guarantees on top of $18.5 billion already budgeted – for a total of $54.5 billion. That’s enough to help fund six or seven new power plants.

It’s a full-speed nuclear-power gambit that many say is largely a bid to win votes from pro-nuclear senators for legislation to address climate change. But his strategy is generating a firestorm of opposition, amid warnings that much more is at stake than a political calculus.

From environmentalists to fiscal hawks to nuclear security experts, the Obama plan is sparking near-open revolt. The nuclear-power expansion is not accompanied by any plan to store commercial radioactive waste, they note, and includes a new push by the Department of Energy into spent-fuel reprocessing and small “pocket nuke” reactor research, which they see as a proliferation risk. The Obama nuclear policy is at cross purposes to his nonproliferation goals, they add, and might even cement his energy legacy as the president who revived a moribund industry that hadn’t built a nuclear plant in decades because of the financial, environmental, and security risks involved.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Obama’s nuclear power policy: a study in contradictions? / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com.