Yesterday on Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney’s radio show, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) appeared to endorse Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) paranoid quest to root out the Muslim Brotherhood’s alleged infiltration of the U.S. government.

Gaffney himself is best known for promoting this particular conspiracy theory but Bachmann picked it up last month and sent letter to various federal departments’ inspectors general asking to them to investigate.

Gaffney asked Rogers about the Brotherhood’s “influence operation” within the government and Rogers — who has previously espoused quite reasonable views on issues like Iran and Syria — took the bait, saying that Bachmann’s witch hunt is “very important”:

ROGERS: Well we are revisiting some of those decisions and a member of my committee Michele Bachmann is kind of taking the lead on this particular issue and going through and trying to figure out what they took out of the training materials and what they left in and why did it get changed? And why the agressive language change and how we teach about the Islam religion and radicalism in Islam.

All of that stuff is very, very important to go through and determine if they have been politicized or not. It certainly at first blush you look at what they’ve done and you think, hmm, boy that seems political correctness versus trying to prepare an agent for what they might deal with in a radical Islamist environment.

Listen to the clip:

Rogers and Gaffney were referring to Islamphobic teaching material the FBI had used to train its agents. Based on information contained in the materials, the FBI was teaching counterterror officials that, as Wired reported, “‘main stream’ [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a ‘cult leader’; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a ‘funding mechanism for combat.’” And the work of well-known Islamphobes like Robert Spencer — who claims that “Islam is not a religion of peace,” permeated the FBI’s training culture and the internal reference resources available to FBI agents. (The FBI has since removed most of these training materials.)

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) has criticized Bachmann for her conspiracy theory-laden witch hunt (which includes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aide). “If she has sources for this type of information, she owes it to the country to reveal them to the proper authorities,” he said.

In a newly-declassified Pentagon report about Iran’s efforts to improve its missile systems, Defense Department analysts came to a conclusion that Iran’s military posturing is aimed at extracting diplomatic concessions from its adversaries — and hinted that their gains might pose problems for military attacks against the Islamic Republic.

The report found that Iran “boosted the lethality and effectiveness of existing systems by improving accuracy and developing new submunition payloads,” according to Bloomberg News. Iran has short- and medium-range ballistic missiles that are, according to the report, now effective over a wider area, though not to the range of intercontinental missiles.

A declassified version of the report, signed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in June, was released in full (PDF) by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). On the FAS blog, Steven Aftergood noted the conclusion by the analysts about Iran’s posture. The report said:

Iran’s military doctrine remains designed to slow an invasion; target its adversaries’ economic, political, and military interests; and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities while avoiding any concessions that challenge its core interests.

The report also noted the focus — and apparent progress — of Iran’s capabilities to defend itself through unconventional means:

Iran’s unconventional forces are trained according to its asymmetric warfare doctrine and would present a formidable force while defending Iranian territory.

In the Bloomberg item, Congressional Research Service analyst Kenneth Katzman said the mention of Iran’s capabilities served as a warning to advocates of military action against Iran:

Katzman said the language about Iran possessing a “formidable force defending Iranian territory” seemed to be a “signal to advocates of military action against Iran, suggesting any action on Iranian soil will carry risk.”

Though the report focused on Iran’s ballistic missile capability, it also, according to Bloomberg, “summarizes what’s been said publicly about the status of Iran’s nuclear program.”

A potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. U.S., U.N. and Israeli intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and potential consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.

Since the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti the demand for private security in Haiti has surged, says a new report [PDF] from the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a Canadian think tank. The study finds that while many countries rely heavily on private security companies to protect people and property, Haiti stands out for its heavy use of private contractors while providing little effective government oversight.

Indeed, the security companies’ biggest clients include international organizations like the U.N., Western embassies and NGOs. But while international efforts have emphasized building and strengthening the Haitian infrastructure, the police force remains under staffed with 10,000 officers in a country of 10 million. About 12,000 guards work for private security firms.

The report, “From Private Security to Public Good: Regulating the Private Security Industry in Haiti,” observes that the growth in private security has been driven by “the critical lack of public police personnel,” leading to a 7 to 8 percent anticipated annual growth rate for private security firms. And while private security guards, often armed with shotguns or handguns, are now a commonplace sight in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, private security firms are a surprisingly recent presence in Haiti.

Private security services were not even permitted during Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s dictatorship which ended in 1986. President Prosper Avril issued a decree two years later permitting for such businesses to set up shop. The report’s author, Geoff Burt, writes:

Haiti’s extreme economic inequality and fears of kidnapping for ransom have left wealthy Haitians anxious to protect their property and their homes. The presence of armed security personnel in the streets — whether public or private — may give some citizens a greater sense of security and order. At the same time, the most vulnerable populations — those living in refugee camps — do not benefit equally from private security provision.

The report urges the Haitian government to impose laws stipulating the roles of private security companies, create strict guidelines for the licensing and storage of firearms, and provide mechanisms for the state to oversee the industry.

In a rare extended interview with the U.K.’s New Statesman, according to multiple outlets, an anonymous Taliban commander says the group was “naïve and ignorant of politics and welcomed Al Qaeda into their homes.” That came back to bite the group when Osama Bin Laden’s militants attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, leading to a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and shattering the Taliban’s hold on the country.

According to the New York Times, the interview can be seen as a Taliban assessment that the group is unlikely to take all of Afghanistan by force. “It would take some kind of divine intervention for the Taliban to win this war,” the commander said, according to The Guardian. “The Taliban capturing Kabul is a very distant prospect. Any Taliban leader expecting to be able to capture Kabul is making a grave mistake.” But that doesn’t mean the group is ready to negotiate with the central government.

On Al Qaeda, the Taliban commander called the late Osama Bin Laden’s group a “plague” and said:

At least 70 percent of the Taliban are angry at Al Qaeda. Originally, the Taliban were naïve and ignorant of politics and welcomed Al Qaeda into their homes.

…To tell the truth, I was relieved at the death of Osama. Through his policies, he destroyed Afghanistan. If he really believed in jihad he should have gone to Saudi Arabia and done jihad there, rather than wrecking our country.

In 2010, Ahmed Rashid reported that Taliban leader Mullah Omar pledged that a Taliban return to power in Afghanistan “would pose no threat to neighboring countries — implying that al-Qaeda would not be returning to Afghanistan.”

In the New Statesman interview, with a former U.N. envoy to Kabul during the Taliban’s rule, the commander also said his group does not expect to take the capital. Nor do the fundamentalists, however, intend to negotiate with President Hamid Karzai’s government there. The commander said:

The Taliban have observed that NATO does everything to prop up the Karzai regime. The regime’s political power is entirely dependent on the military backing provided by NATO.

The Kabul regime has no authority in the issues that matter in a war — power and control of the armed forces. There is little point in talking to Kabul. Real authority rests with the Americans.

Those are mixed messages for American forces, who plan on leaving Afghanistan in 2014 and ending a decade-long war there. While the Taliban, according to this commander, does not seem eager to negotiate with Karzai’s government — the U.S. client there — the disdain for Al Qaeda could serve to bolster Obama’s pledge to keep the terror group from establishing a base in Afghanistan after the U.S. leaves. “In pursuit of a durable peace, America has no designs beyond an end to al Qaeda safe-havens, and respect for Afghan sovereignty,” Obama said in Afghanistan in May.

A Pentagon-funded study by the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah has found evidence that emotional distress is likely the top reason American soldiers commit suicide, USA Today reports:

When researchers asked 72 soldiers at Fort Carson, Colo., why they tried to kill themselves, out of the 33 reasons they had to choose from, all of the soldiers included one in particular — a desire to end intense emotional distress.

“This really is the first study that provides scientific data saying that the top reason … these guys are trying to kill themselves is because they have this intense psychological suffering and pain,” said Craig Bryan, co-author of the study by the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah that will be published in the coming months.

The Associated Press reported last month that the suicide rate in the military is at its highest level in more than a decade. According to Pentagon data, an average of one military suicide occurred per day in the first six months of 2012 and military deaths from suicide outweighed combat deaths by a two-to-one ratio, a dramatic uptick since 2010 and 2011 when military suicides decreased from previous years.

“The core of the issue is that it’s not that people who attempt suicide … want to harm themselves as much as they want the pain they’re currently in to stop, and they don’t see any other way out,” said Army Col. Carl Castro, who is spearheading the military’s effort to study suicide prevention and treatment.

USA Today added that the new study “also found that the soldiers often listed many reasons — an average of 10 each — for suicide,” including “the urge to end chronic sadness, a means of escaping people or a way to express desperation.”