Today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Libyan leader Moamer Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam. In a press briefing yesterday leading up to the meeting, reporters pressed State Dept. spokesperson Sean McCormack on whether Rice would urge Libya to release Libyan activist Fathi al-Jahmi, a political prisoner who is gravely ill.

McCormack offered a defensive response: “I have to make it very clear we are concerned not only about Mr. al-Jahmi’s case, but other human rights cases around the world.” McCormack also claimed that President Bush’s human rights record could perhaps be the best in American history:

McCORMACK: And — and one thing I do take exception to is the idea that somehow we are not attentive to pushing the issue of human rights, whether it’s in Libya or any place else around the world. I don’t think — I would put the record of this administration up against any American administration or any other government around the world in terms of promoting universal human rights and pushing for human rights.

Watch it (around 8:20):

Under the Bush administration, the world has witnessed torture, rendition, and the revocation of habeas corpus rights. Amnesty International’s 2008 report rips the United States’s human rights record, citing the following Bush policies:

– Indefinite military detention
– Torture of detainees
– Imprisoning soldiers refusing to serve in Iraq on grounds of conscience.
– Government response to Hurricane Katrina

In 2005, the Center on Democratic Performance at Binghamton University gave Bush a “D” on human rights. The “D” grade was down from a “C” in 2004, due to “reports on the use of political detention without trial, torture of political detainees, and the use of secret detention of political prisoners.” Bush’s record is nothing to be proud of.

Our guest bloggers are Caroline Wadhams, National Security Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Jenny Shin.

In more disturbing news for Pakistan’s security situation and the U.S.-NATO mission in Afghanistan, yesterday, the Washington Post reported that U.S. officials are now looking to find safer alternative routes into Afghanistan for strategic supply lines that pass through Pakistan. The Taliban have been attacking these supply lines, which deliver about 75 percent of NATO and U.S. supplies, at unprecedented levels, stealing military equipment, ammunition and arms, and food, valued around $13 million. New routes through Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan are being considered by the Department of Defense to protect these convoys and secure the flow of supplies for NATO and U.S. forces.

The Taliban have also begun to target Western aid workers and journalists with increasing ferocity in Pakistan, as well as in Afghanistan. This past week, in Pakistan, two journalists were attacked; a USAID contractor was assassinated, and an Iranian diplomat was abducted.

The backdrop for these incidents is a steady stream of violent clashes, bombings and assassinations by insurgents in Pakistan against Pakistanis themselves. On Wednesday, General Amir Faisal Alvi, the former chief of Pakistan’s elite commando unit, was shot dead. On Tuesday, Taliban and tribal elders clashed in the Bajaur Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan; ten members of the Taliban and four elders were killed. And on Monday, at least four paramilitary soldiers of the Pakistani Frontier Corps were killed when a suicide bomber drove a car into a security checkpoint.

As security deteriorates in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United States finds itself increasingly drawn into military action in both countries. Yesterday, for the first time, the United States conducted an attack with a Predator drone outside of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan– deeper inside Pakistan territory than ever before. Read more

Our guest blogger is Andy Grotto, a Senior National Security Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

According to data in a new IAEA report, Iran appears to have acquired enough enriched uranium for a single crude nuclear bomb on the Bush administratrion’s watch.

Here’s the back-of-the-envelope math for all you geeks out there:

– Iran possesses an estimated 630 kg of low-enriched uranium (LEU) containing 3-5% of the fissile isotope U-235. Uranium enriched at this level of U-235 purity is suitable for use in energy reactors. But uranium enriched to 90% U-235 (or greater) is considered weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium (HEU).

– Iran could acquire weapons-grade HEU by further enriching its existing LEU stockpile, which contains somewhere between roughly 19 and 30 kg of U-235. This translates to around 21 to 33 kg of weapons-grade HEU.

– Both the IAEA and the U.S. DOE say 25 kg of weapons-grade HEU is enough for one bomb; many experts believe the threshold is much lower, perhaps even half that.

Thus, with its existing stockpile of LEU, Iran is well within range of having sufficient feed for one nuke.

This is more of a political milestone than a technical one — there is no evidence to suggest that Iran has an actual bomb or the highly-enriched uranium needed to make one just yet. Iran would still need to further enrich its LEU, and there’s a good chance that the IAEA would eventually notice this if it took place in Iran’s known enrichment facilities. Moreover, Iran would still need to make the actual warhead and develop a suitable delivery mechanism. Finally, having a single bomb is a long way from having a credible arsenal.

But make no mistake: Iran achieved this milestone on President Bush’s watch.

Speaking to Hugh Hewitt on Monday, surge architect Fred Kagan — who just last year wrote that “setting hard-and-fast timelines for the withdrawal of U.S. forces… is equivalent to accepting failure in Iraq” — explained how the new security agreement setting a hard-and-fast timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces is equivalent to a huge U.S. victory over Iran.

Kagan said “the Iranian leadership has been pulling out all the stops to get the Iraqis not to” sign the status of forces agreement.

The Iranians are desperate for Iraq not to align itself strategically with the United States, and they have been literally trying to bribe everybody they can bribe in Iraq, and running a fantastic information operations campaign in Iraq to make this an unpopular and hard thing to do. And the Iraqi government has done it anyway. And that is actually a great accomplishment for us, and it tells us a lot about where this Shia Iraqi government actually stands on whether it wants to be aligned with the United States, or whether it wants to be aligned with Iran.

As we’ve written before, the new Iraqi government is dominated by Shia parties which either have a longstanding supportive relationship with Iran (the Da’wa), or were drawn into an alliance of convenience with Iran (Muqtada al-Sadr), or were themselves founded in Iran, under Iranian auspices (ISCI, whose leader, Abdul Aziz la-Hakim, actually okayed the security agreement from Tehran). It’s patently ridiculous to claim, as Kagan does, that an agreement concluded with such a government represents a “defeat” for Iran, especially when that agreement happens to contain provisions that Kagan himself previously warned would represent American failure.