Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic and a Bloomberg News columnist, today criticized the Obama administration for publicly discussing the consequences of war with Iran.

Goldberg emailed Mitt Romney wondering if his Iran policy had changed given his relatively moderate tone during last week’s foreign policy debate and published Romney’s response in a Bloomberg piece published today. Romney replied with some of his standard boilerplate answers on Iran but criticized “the president’s top advisers and cabinet secretaries broadcasting the risks of the military option, therefore conveying to Iran’s leadership that the threat is simply not real.”

Goldberg agreed with this latter assessment, writing, “it doesn’t help the American negotiating position to publicly telegraph to the Iranians these sorts of doubts” (although he didn’t say how exactly discussing the consequences of war with Iran would undermine the U.S. negotiating position). But in a follow-up article for the Atlantic, Goldberg went a bit further, saying that having a public discussion of the repercussions of attacking Iran is a “relief” for Iran’s leaders:

President Obama has been undermined from time to time by his own team on the Iran question — whenever a senior official of his administration analyzes publicly the dangers of a military confrontation to the U.S., we should assume the Iranian leaders breathe a sigh of relief, and make the calculations that Obama is bluffing on military action.

Again, Goldberg doesn’t explain how having an open and public discussion about the consequences of war with Iran harms the U.S. negotiating position or how exactly it means President Obama is not sincere that “no options are off the table” when dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. We asked Goldberg on Twitter but he has yet to respond.

Joel Rubin, Director of Policy and Government Affairs at the Ploughshares Fund, pushed back on Goldberg’s assertion. “Does this mean that the administration, if it disagrees with Congress or other critics, has to be silent?” Rubin asked. “Are we not a democracy? Is the only voice that’s allowed the one that calls for military action?” Rubin said, adding, “This implies that there’s only one correct policy towards Iran, and that any debate about it is counterproductive.”

And in a twist to Goldberg’s comments, Iran’s leaders might actually “breathe a sigh of relief” if the U.S. or Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities. From the Green Movement protests in 2009 to the strains on Iranians caused by tough international sanctions, Iranian society is currently deeply divided. An attack could end all that and cause ordinary Iranians to rally around the regime. We know this precisely because this administration has fostered a public discussion of the consequences of war with Iran. But it’s not just the Obama administration saying this. Meir Dagan, the former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, said an attack “would galvanize Iranian society behind the leadership and create unity around the nuclear issue.”

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On Friday, the FBI announced a new initiative to track down and identify hackers. The program is an attempt to respond to hacking that had led to “malicious software in two million computers” in early 2011. The FBI describes the program as a way to “uncover and investigate web-based intrusion attacks and develop a cadre of specially trained computer scientists able to extract hackers’ digital signatures from mountains of malicious code.” Besides its relevance to individual computer users, hacking and the need for cybersecurity is becoming increasingly relevant to national security.

Word of the FBI’s new initiative comes on the heels of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s strong call for action earlier this month, when he said that cybersecurity is at a “pre-9/11 moment.” The FBI will share the information it gathers with the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and the National Security Agency.

Earlier this month the military announced similar efforts to counter cyber attacks directed at the U.S. But Panetta said there should be more emphasis on cybersecurity. “We know of specific instances where intruders have successfully gained access to these control systems,” he said. “We also know they are seeking to create advanced tools to attack those systems and cause panic, destruction and even loss of life.” Panetta added that the private sector and government should share information about cyber threats.

In the past year alone there have been several reports of international hackers targeting and attacking U.S.-based agencies and organizations like NASA and the Chamber of Commerce.

In July, John Arguila, a defense expert and professor, told the Guardian that the U.S. needed to recruit more hackers to join its side, adding that finding them through traditional means probably wouldn’t work because “most of these sorts of guys can’t be vetted in the traditional way. We need a new institutional culture that allows us to reach out to them.”

The Obama administration, hoping to circumvent a stalled Congress, is finalizing its draft executive cybersecurity order. The Associated Press, which received a copy of it last week, said the order “would put the Department of Homeland Security in charge of organizing an information-sharing network that rapidly distributes sanitized summaries of top-secret intelligence reports about known cyberthreats that identify a specific target.”

Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, described the security relationship between the U.S. and Israel as “deeper and stronger than it has been in recent years” in a statement to Israeli media today. Barak met with U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, who is in Israel to oversee a joint military exercise between the two countries.

The record-setting exercise features: “as many as 3,500 U.S. personnel in the region along with 1,000 members of the Israel Defense Forces.” The Times of Israel says the goal of the exercise is to test: “multiple Israeli and American air-defense systems against incoming missiles and rockets from as far away as Iran.” An Israel-based professor told Bloomberg the exercise is a sign of deep cooperation between the two countries:

“This drill sends a message that the pressure will continue, and that despite strategic disagreements between Israel and the U.S. the alliance remains strong, particularly with respect to any Iranian effort to retaliate.”

This isn’t the first time Barak has praised the U.S.-Israeli relationship under President Obama. In July, he told CNN:

“I should tell you honestly that this administration under President Obama is doing, in regard to our security, more than anything that I can remember in the past.”

Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, echoed Barak’s comments in July, saying:

“When I look at the record of President Obama concerning the major issues, security, I think it’s a highly satisfactory record, from an Israeli point of view.”

Efraim Halevy, Israel’s former spy agency head, said two weeks go in Washington D.C. that the Israel’s relationship with the U.S. is “very good.” He added, “in the last four years we have had a relationship with the U.S. on the practical issues which are important to Israel; the like of which we have never had with almost any other administration.”

The record-setting exercise and the comments by current and former-high level Israeli officials continue to contradict Mitt Romney’s statement that under President Obama there is “turmoil with Israel.”

In July, President Obama signed a $70 million military aid package to Israel. The money was designated for Israel’s “Iron Dome,” a rocket-defense system. Obama also requested over $3 billion in military aid to Israel in his FY 2013 budget.

While U.S. media coverage today will focus on the impact Hurricane Sandy will have in the states and on the coming election, the storm has already ravaged locations throughout the Caribbean. The majority of the 65 reported deaths came from Haiti, where over fifty were reported killed by rampant flooding.

Rains finally abated there after pummeling the island since Friday:

As the rains stopped and rivers began to recede, authorities were getting a fuller idea of how much damage Sandy brought on Haiti. Bridges collapsed. Banana crops were ruined. Homes were underwater. Officials said the death toll might still rise.

“This is a disaster of major proportions,” Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe told The Associated Press, adding with a touch of hyperbole, “The whole south is under water.”

Tropical storms and hurricanes have so far this year killed more and done greater comparable damage to island nations than they have once reaching the United States. Hurricane Issac, at the time a tropical storm, killed 29 in Haiti in August, compared to six deaths in the U.S. from the same storm system.

These storms can prove more devastating to Haiti and the surrounding states, despite often gaining strength as they move north, due to lower level of infrastructure development and mass deforestation. The amount of trees cleared to use in building shelters, cook-fires, and farm land wipes out natural barriers to flooding and landslides. Adding to the problem, hundreds of thousands of Haitians still live in tents and make-shift shelters as part of the ongoing aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.

While the United States pledged billions to help rebuild Haiti following the earthquake, the effect of what money has been delivered is lacking, and has done little the strengthen the island’s ability to weather hurricanes. Recent cuts of $8 billion dollars to international development funding by Congress is also unlikely to help Haiti and other states’ resilience against natural disasters in the future.