The Los Angeles Times yesterday published photos from nearly two years ago of U.S. troops posing with body parts of dead insurgents in Afghanistan. Top U.S. officials immediately condemned their actions. “The behavior depicted absolutely violates our regulations and, more importantly, our core values,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said. A Pentagon spokesman called the conduct “inhuman,” while White House press secretary Jay Carney yesterday said the troops behavior was “reprehensible.”

But conservative foreign policy chieftain Charles Krauthammer has a different take. Last night on Fox News, he downplayed — but made sure not to excuse — the incident, saying it’s not as bad as people are saying because some of the dead insurgents were suicide attackers and “did not treat their own bodies with respect”:

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, let’s start by stipulating that nobody should treat the body of a dead person with disrespect. However, this is a strange case because the victims themselves, suicide attackers, are people who did not treat their own bodies with respect. They deliberately destroy their own bodies and turn themselves into body parts.

So here we have soldier soldiers in war abusing what is left of the suicide attackers. I find it slightly different from had they been abusing the body of those who died in combat or who died accidentally. It doesn’t excuse them, but I think there is a disconnect here, because suicide attackers are the most criminal of all the war criminals, abusing all the laws of war and generally speaking attacking helpless and unaware civilians.

Watch the clip:

While the soldiers actions are inexcusable, the New York Times reports today that the incident highlights concerns about the breakdown of discipline at lower levels in the chain of command, mainly due to exhaustion and the so-called “stress on the force” from 10 years of war there.

Speaking before the House Armed Services Committee today, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta suggested that, while specific intelligence is incomplete, there might be something to rumors and accusations that China provided equipment for North Korea’s ballistic missile program in violation of U.N. sanctions. Media reports about the possibly Chinese-designed and -made mobile missile carrier come in the same week as a provocative — and ultimately failed — attempt by North Korea to launch a large rocket that portends development of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The Washington Times first raised the latest issue on Monday based on photographs from a parade in Pyongyang that appeared to show a mobile missile carrier that closely matched a Chinese design. On Tuesday, Foreign Policy reported that Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper asking for more information about the allegations.

Today, Panetta was asked about the equipment by Turner and dodged on specifics. He did note, though, that “there is growing concern about, you know, the mobile capabilities that were on display in the parade recently in North Korea.” While he said the U.S. needed to get better intelligence, he added:

I’m sure there’s been some help coming from China. I don’t know, you know, the exact extent of that. I think we’d have to deal with it in another context in terms of the sensitivity of that information. But clearly there’s been assistance along those lines.

Watch the video:

If the allegations are true, they would constitute a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 which prohibits arms sales to North Korea. Asked about the report, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said, “China is always against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

The Nelson Report, a widely-read and well-sourced daily newsletter about Asian affairs by foreign affairs analyst Chris Nelson, reported that a source confirmed the truck was of Chinese origin:

Tonight, sources we absolutely rely on have come forward with information the carrier is new and cannot have appeared in [North Korea] without the explicit permission of [China]. As our source comments, with understatement: “The political implications of the appearance of Chinese missile transporters at the 15 April parade in Pyongyang are huge. ”

And the source’s source claims Beijing is fully aware of the implications of what it’s done, and that, the source argues, is why China approved stronger language than it’s ever before accepted, in Monday’s UNSC President’s statement.

Nelson comments that China’s embarrassment and quick accession to the Security Council’s unanimous but non-binding Presidential Statement that included a threat to ratchet up sanctions undermines criticisms of the Obama administration and the U.N. that the statement was all bark and no bite.

New York Magazine’s Daily Intel blog reported this week that the U.S. Secret Service said it would be talking to Ted Nugent about threatening remarks he made toward President Obama on a radio program at the National Rifle Association conference in St. Louis last weekend. “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year,” Nugent said.

Nugent — who is on the NRA’s board — has since stood by his comments, likening himself to “a black Jew at a Nazi-Klan rally,” adding, “there are some power-abusing, corrupt monsters in our federal government that despise me because I have the audacity to speak the truth.”

But it doesn’t seem that the NRA is too comfortable with what Nugent said. The gun lobby scrubbed the entire 26 minute video from its YouTube page. A Google search shows that on April 15, “NRAVideos,” the NRA’s official YouTube page, uploaded the full video of the interview in which Nugent made the remarks about Obama:

But now the YouTube URL associated with that video no longer works, reading: “This video has been removed by the user”:

Right Wing Watch still has video of Nugent’s remarks here.

Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel rejected all Holocaust comparisons in modern politics.

In his interview with the Hebrew paper Globes and partially translated by the Times of Israel, Wiesel said nothing compares to the Holocaust. Asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s frequent allusions to the Holocaust when talking about Iran, Wiesel responded:

Iran is a threat, but can we say that it will make a second Auschwitz? I don’t compare anything to the Holocaust. …

Only Auschwitz was Auschwitz.

The Times of Israel paraphrased Wiesel as saying that “he did not approve of the frequency with which comparisons with the Nazis were made” and noting that not all genocides are like the Holocaust and such comparisons, “aside from being inaccurate, only belittle the Holocaust itself.”

Yesterday, at Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem to commemorate the Holocaust, Netanyahu brought up Iran and criticisms of his frequent comparisons between Iran and the Nazi-led genocide. He said:

Remembering the Holocaust is not merely a matter of ceremony or historic memory. Remembering the Holocaust is imperative for learning the lessons of the past in order to ensure the foundations of the future….

I know that some people don’t appreciate me speaking such uncomfortable truths. They would rather we not talk about Iran as a nuclear threat, they claim that, though it may be true, this statement serves to sow panic and fear.

Israeli President Shimon Peres also made a similar comparison at the ceremony:

Humanity has no choice, it must learn the lessons of the Holocaust and stand up to existential threats before it is too late. Iran is at the center of this threat, it is the center of terror. It poses a threat to world peace.

Given what is indeed Iran’s record of supporting designated terror groups, a potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, and the nuclear non-proliferation regime — though U.S. and Israeli intelligence has not concluded that Iran has made a decision to pursue a weapon. The Obama administration vows to keep “all options on the table” to deal with the possibility, but the efficacy and consequences of a strike raise serious questions, leading the U.S. to pursue, for the meantime, a pressure track aimed at a negotiated resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis.

But that potential threat hasn’t stopped even Israelis — the subject of the Iranian regime’s heated rhetorical attacks who feel the threat acutely — from criticizing the Holocaust comparison. The Associated Press reported last month that many Israelis say the Holocaust imagery when discussing the Iranian theat cheapens its memory and unnecessarily escalates tensions, particularly when President Obama is urging restraint. Former opposition leader Tzipi Livni called Holocaust imagery when referring to the Iranian threat “hysterical.” Dan Halutz, a former Israeli military chief, said the Holocaust comparison was “out of place.” Retired Israeli brigadier general Shlomo Brom, citing Holocaust comparisons, said last month in Washington that the Iran debate was “plagued with emotion.”

By Ken Sofer and CAP National Security team intern Molly Bernstein

Seventeen years ago today, Timothy McVeigh and co-conspirator Terry Nichols detonated 4,800 pounds of homemade explosives under the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building’s daycare center in downtown Oklahoma City. The explosion resulted in 168 dead, 680 injured and over $652 million in damage. The Oklahoma City bombing was the deadliest terrorist attacks in U.S. history until 9/11.

McVeigh said that he attacked the Murrah building, which held the local offices of the DEA, ATF, Social Security, and the Army and Marine recruiting offices, because of his hatred of the federal government, opposition to gun control laws and anger at the FBI for its actions during the Waco Siege of 1993. McVeigh was found guilty on eleven counts of murder and conspiracy in 1997 and was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001.

Though the terrorist attack on Oklahoma City happened nearly two decades ago, right-wing extremist terrorism remains a significant domestic threat to American security. The Department of Homeland Security released a report in 2009 stating that the economic and political climate bears important similarities to the conditions of the early 1990s when right-wing extremism experienced a dramatic resurgence. These conditions, including the public debate around hot-button issues such as immigration, gun control, and abortion, along with the election of the first African-American president, present “unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment,” the report said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano eventually ordered the report withdrawn because of significant political backlash from mainstream conservatives. But the report, which was originally commissioned by the Bush administration, also found that “lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.”

A look at terrorist incidents since the Oklahoma City bombing, including both successful and disrupted ideologically-motivated attacks, backs up the conclusions of the DHS report:

Fifty-six percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. since 1995 have been perpetrated by right-wing extremists, as compared to 30 percent by ecoterrorists and 12 percent by Islamic extremists. Right-wing extremism has been responsible for the greatest number of terrorist incidents in the U.S. in 13 of the 17 years since the Oklahoma City bombing.

After DHS withdrew the report, the department cut the number of analysts studying non-Islamic domestic terrorism. Daryl Johnson, the primary author of the report and a self-described Republican, soon left his post at DHS and said in July, 2011 that DHS has “just one person” dealing with domestic terrorism. The Department has largely been silent on domestic terrorist threats ever since.

Although current statistics show that right-wing extremism is on the rise through groups like the Sovereign Citizen and Patriot movements, domestic counterterrorism continues to receive few resources and little public attention. Though Islamic extremism remains a significant domestic security threat, current statistics and incidents such as Oklahoma City show that it is far from the only threat. In order to protect American citizens, we need to match our resources to the reality of our threats, not just the politically expedient narratives we have formed.

Public support for keeping U.S. forces in Afghanistan has fallen to a new low. A new poll from the Pew Research Center finds among the all important swing voters, over half, 59 percent, favor withdrawing from Afghanistan as soon as possible. Swing voters make up 23 percent of registered voters.

The numbers in favor of a withdrawal draw even higher among voters who say they will support President Obama’s re-election. Sixty-five percent of Obama supporters say they would favor a quick withdrawal from Afghanistan and Republican voters are also leaning towards removing U.S. troops with 48 percent of Mitt Romney supporters favoring a troop pullout as soon as possible. Only 46 percent of Romney supporters and 28 percentof Obama supporters reported they would favor keeping U.S. forces in Afghanistan until the security situation stabilizes.

Results from the April Pew poll reflected a record-low support for keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan as the U.S. public tires of the decade long war and recent Taliban attacks and U.S. atrocities against Afghan civilians. A new incident made headlines this week when photographs of U.S. soldiers posing with bodies of dead insurgents were published by the Los Angeles Times.

Overall, public opinion on the war has turned more negative in the past month. Since March, the percentage of poll respondents describing the U.S. military’s efforts in Afghanistan as going “very/fairly well” has dropped from 51 percent to 38 percent.

The U.S. public’s war weariness appears to be having an impact on the presidential campaigns where Mitt Romney, who had previously criticized Obama’s war policy as “misguided and naïve” for announcing plans to hand over primary combat responsibility to Afghan forces next year, has accepted, in large part, the White House’s troop drawdown strategy.

Romney now says that he wants to bring troops home as soon as possible but only when “our general think it’s O.K.” or “as soon as that mission in complete.” In an email to the New York Times, a Romney aide acknowledged that despite the campaign’s frequent criticisms of the White House’s 2014 target for a complete U.S. withdrawal, “Pending full review of conditions on the ground, Governor Romney would abide by the 2014 target for transitioning combat operations recommended by the military commanders.”