As the last of the “surge” troops leave Afghanistan, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called for Mitt Romney to back an extended presence in Afghanistan. President Obama plans to bring all American troops home from Afghanistan by 2014. But Graham said that Romney should say he wants to keep U.S. troops there past that deadline.

The Hill reports:

They should, instead, pursue a war plan focused on “what we leave behind” in the country, not just ending the war as soon as possible, according to Graham.

“It’s about getting it right,” the South Carolina Republican said. Getting it right, he added, almost certainly means keeping U.S. forces in country past the administration’s deadline.

“On the first day of a Romney administration,” the presumed president-elect needed to call a meeting of the top U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and chart a different strategic course for the country, Graham said. “And if [they] need to change the timetable in Afghanistan, that is what we will do.”

Romney has so far avoided laying out a specific foreign policy plan, and an adviser said in May that the candidate would not “engage these issues until he is in office.” And while Romney has said he’ll stick with Obama’s withdraw plan, his Afghanistan plan has been muddled at best. Most recently, leading Republicans criticized him for failing to mention Afghanistan or the troops in his convention speech. However, distancing himself from Obama’s timetable is not only ill-conceived policy, but could hurt him politically as well; half the country wants Obama to speed up the withdrawal of troops. Taking this position would also put Romney at odds with most Republicans, who have mostly backed off supporting the war.

The Senate passed a resolution early on Saturday by a vote of 90-1 “joining” President Obama in rejecting any policy that would seek to contain Iran “as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.” However the non-binding measure — which all but two Democrats voted for — breaks significantly with the president’s policy on containment’s threshold.

In passing the resolution, the Senate is now on record as “reject[ing] any United States policy that would rely on efforts to contain a nuclear weapons-capable Iran.” The wording of “nuclear-weapons capable” is important because many non-proliferation and nuclear experts have said that Iran is currently capable of building a bomb.

President Obama, however, has said his policy is to not contain an Iran with a nuclear weapon:

And what I have said is, is that we will not countenance Iran getting a nuclear weapon. My policy is not containment; my policy is to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon — because if they get a nuclear weapon that could trigger an arms race in the region, it would undermine our non-proliferation goals, it could potentially fall into the hands of terrorists.

What’s more, the Senate resolution did not define “capable” and various lawmakers in favor of this language have offered a wide array of meanings.

Therefore, the Senate’s threshold for military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons (experts and U.S. and Israeli officials have argued that a military strike would only delay, not prevent, an Iranian bomb) is more immediate than Obama’s and dangerously vague.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said recently that the United States would know if Iran decides to push for a nuclear weapon and in that case, there would be time for an appropriate response. The Obama administration has indicated that it takes no option off the table in its effort to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, including military force.

As Ali Gharib noted over at the Daily Beast, passing the measure puts the Senate in league with Mitt Romney and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who lost his a recent public relations battle on Iran to the Obama administration — over the president.
Read more

Though many Americans have become worried about the trajectory of Libyan politics after the killing of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in what was purportedly an anti-American riot, Libyans today turned out in massive numbers to call for the disbanding of the militias that may have been responsible for the ambassador’s death. According to the AP, 30,000 Libyans marched in the Benghazi demonstration, the same city where Ambassador Stevens was killed:

The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, in which at least one militia is suspected of participating, has sparked a backlash among many Libyans against the multiple armed factions that have run rampant for months in cities around the country. The militias have become more powerful than the regular security forces, and successive governments since last year’s fall of Moammar Gadhafi have been unable to rein them in. ..

Friday’s march targeted in particular Ansar al-Shariah, a militia of Islamic extremists who officials and witnesses say participated in the consulate attack. The group is also accused of attacking Muslims who don’t follow its harsh interpretation of Islam.

“No, no, to militias,” the giant crowd chanted as it marched along a lake in the center of Benghazi, filling a broad boulevard. They carried banners and signs demanding that militias disband and that the government build up police to take their place in keeping security. “Benghazi is in a trap,” signs read. “Where is the army, where is the police?”

Al-Jazeera also reported that rally organizer Muhammed Abujanah said the protestors were demonstrating against extremism, as it was “part of the [militia] problem.” Libyans soundly rejected Islamist parties at the ballot box and Libyan public opinion is strongly pro-American after a U.S.-led intervention toppled dictator Moammer Qaddafi last year.

Mitt Romney told a group of rabbis and other Jewish leaders on a telephone call on Thursday that an Iranian nuclear weapons capability would be his threshold in which he would launch a military strike on the Islamic Republic, Foreign Policy reports:

“With regards to the red line, I would image Prime Minister Netanyahu is referring to a red line over which if Iran crossed it would take military action. And for me, it is unacceptable or Iran to have the capability of building a nuclear weapon, which they could use in the Middle East or elsewhere,” Romney said. “So for me, the red line is nuclear capability. We do not want them to have the capacity of building a bomb that threatens ourselves, our friends, and the world.”

Romney’s new so-called “red line” represents a shift from what he said just last week, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that his red line is the same as President Obama’s.

A nuclear weapons capability is not easily defined and as many experts have observed, Iran currently has the capability to produce a nuclear weapon. Before Romney’s interview with ABC, his campaign aides had said that an Iranian nuclear weapons capability would be the GOP presidential nominee’s “red line.” But they would not specify their definition of “capability.”

President Obama has said that he won’t allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. The Obama administration is aware, not only of the threat an Iranian nuclear weapon poses, but also the potential negative consequences of a military attack on Iran, such as those outlined in a new bipartisan expert report released last week. And that, coupled with U.N., U.S. and Israeli assessments that Iran has not yet decided on whether to build a nuclear weapon, leads the administration to pursue a diplomatic solution with Iran, a track the it deems the “best and most permanent way” to solve the nuclear crisis.

The Washington Post reports Iran has put in place the basic infrastructure for a closed intranet, with researchers uncovering more than 10,000 devices connected to the system. Some sites, primarily government and academic, and email and other service providers are already in place. This puts Iran a step closer to disconnecting from the global internet — a move the head of Iran’s Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Reza Taqipour, suggested in August could take place as early as 2013.

A nation-wide intranet would give the government new means to control access to information, especially in the event of domestic discontent:

“Having the infrastructure for a skeleton Iran-only internet in place would give the Iranian government greater power to shut off access to the Internet at times of civil unrest, such as the anti-government protests that swept Iran in 2009.

During the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak’s regime tried to stall its spread by shutting off access to the Internet — a move that largely backfired when it caused panic. Having a national network operational could help prevent a similar outcome in Iran.”

Internet access in Iran is already heavily controlled via a filtering system similar to the Great Firewall of China that blocks around 27 percent of all internet sites. Switching to an intranet approach would bring Iran’s networked communication system closer in line with those of other regimes with tightly controlled freedom of speech, including North Korea. Kwangmyong, the North Korean intranet started in 2000, is the only networked access available to the general population with the exception of the similarly closed cell phone network. Reports indicate ”only central party, national security units, and some Cabinet-level government organizations, as well as foreign diplomatic missions, joint ventures, and foreign individuals staying in Pyongyang can have ‘full but monitored’ access” to the real deal.

But Iran is not North Korea: as of 2009 Iran had 8,214,000 internet users. Millions of Iranians, many of them savvy enough to use officially outlawed virtual private networks to mask their behavior and avoid filters, are already familiar with the world wide web and use it in their daily lives for school, work and their own entertainment. Even with a domestic structure in place to mimic the global internet, it’s hard to imagine cutting off those users from a resource they have come to know and rely on would be met without resistance. But it appears that Iran is now closer to replacing the Information Super Highway with an Information Cul de Sac.

The Republican chairpersons of the House’s top security and fiscal committees wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder expressing concern that the Obama administration may release Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, aka the “Blind Sheikh,” as part of a deal with Egyptian officials in the aftermath of the attacks the U.S. Embassy there and the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Abdel Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in a federal prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.

In the letter dated September 19, 2012, GOP Reps. Lamar Smith, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mike Rogers, Howard “Buck” McKeon, Peter King, Hal Rogers, Frank Wolf and Kay Granger write:

We are concerned about recent reports that the Obama administration is considering the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman. … Succumbing to the demands of a country whose citizens threaten our embassy and the Americans serving in it would send a clear message that acts of violence will be responded to with appeasement rather than strength.

The Obama administration has already said this report is false (“utter garbage” in the words of a Justice Department spokesperson). Yet these top Republicans ran with the charge anyway. So where did it come from?

It seems that the conspiracy theory started in part with a post on the Weekly Standard’s website last week, quoting a USA Today story reporting that the protests in Cairo may have been planned by a group the blind sheik formerly led.

But Glenn Beck’s website the Blaze reported on Sept. 17 that according to an anonymous source, “the transfer of the Blind Sheikh to Egypt is something that is being ‘actively considered’ by the administration as a solution to the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.” The Blaze also reported DOJ’s denial and did not corroborate the anonymous source’s claim.

Right-wing blog Red State then picked up the story on Sept. 18. Yet Obama administration officials continued to say the story is false. “To my knowledge, it hasn’t come up,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said on that day. On Sept. 19, a reporter pressed the issue, and Nuland was a bit more direct. “Let me say as clearly as I can, there is no plan to release the blind sheikh,” she said. “There is no plan.”

Despite the very direct denials, Ros-Lehtinen, Rogers, King and the other top House Republicans ran with the Glenn Beck-inspired accusation and issued the letter. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post picked up on the story today, reporting the Obama administration officials’ denials. Yet the right won’t let the conspiracy theory die.

“There’s no way to believe anything they say,” said documented conspiracy theorist and leading Islamophobe Andrew McCarthy. (McCarthy was the the former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Abdel Rahman). “I believe there may already be a nod-and-wink agreement in place.”

ThinkProgress intern Nate Niemann contributed to this post.

Our guest blogger is Peter Yeo, Vice President of Public Policy at the United Nations Foundation and Executive Director of the Better World Campaign.

With less than two months before Election Day, not an hour will pass without pundits and bloggers weighing in on the process. While campaign season can become tiring at times and the negativity gruesome — come Election Day, we get to exercise our right to vote and that in itself is a monumental gift we must cherish.

In many nations around the globe, a free, fair and democratic election is anything but assumed. Consider South Sudan, where last year, a young man who fought for his country’s independence, saw a dream become reality when he placed his ballot into the voting box in support of granting independence to the new nation. He stood in the grueling heat, surrounded by armed guards for his safety and became part of history. He witnessed the transformation from dictatorship into democracy.

This man will remember this election for the rest of his life, and likely each one that follows it. It is a unique event, one that has been made possible only through multilateral support, and notably the United Nations and its 120,000 peacekeepers around the world. They are on the front lines of promoting peace and security every day, making democracies like South Sudan’s possible. From protecting voters as they cast their ballots, to ensuring the acceptance of democratic outcomes, U.N. Peacekeepers work side-by-side with governments to promote, and, in some cases, successfully transition to democracy.

In recent years, U.N. peacekeeping has provided crucial technical and logistical assistance in milestone elections in many countries, including not only South Sudan but also the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Afghanistan and Liberia.

Every year, the Better World Campaign along with the United Nations Foundation and United Nations Association of America (UNA-USA) ask Americans to thank these men and women who have made democratic elections possible in 100 countries over the last two decades. They not only put their lives on the line in some of the most dangerous places around the world, they also promote values that are important to Americans: human rights, strong security, and of course, democracy.

As I enter the voting booth this fall, our nation will continue its great debate and dialogue over who will lead our nation through our next four years, and I will be thankful for the ease with which this conversation occurs. I will be thinking about elections in Côte d’Ivoire, Timor-Leste and Democratic Republic of Congo that were conducted smoothly thanks to peacekeepers. I will think of those in Haiti who were supported by U.N. peacekeepers offering security and stability during the election process after the devastating earthquake. I will think of those who cast their democratic vote in South Sudan, granting them a new nation, thanks to peacekeepers, and I will be grateful for the democracies that are growing each day worldwide.

As you remind your friends and neighbors to get out the vote this election season, take a moment to also thank U.N. Peacekeepers who are getting the vote out around the world and ensuring democracy is a strong pillar of our global success. Click here to learn more about our Thank a Peacekeeper campaign.

Pentagon policy chief and Undersecretary of Defense Jim Miller told Foreign Policy’s E-Ring blog that the United States’ position and policy on Iran has not changed despite public blistering from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The timeline, from our perspective, includes the question of how long it takes to enrich, and then how long it would take to go from a certain level of enrichment to weapons grade, and other steps in that process,” Miller said. “And so, as we look at that potential timeline we certainly believe, as I said, that we have time.”

Netanyahu has been publicly pressuring the Obama administration to set so-called “red lines” that would trigger an American military response to Iran’s growing nuclear program. And the prime minister kicked his campaign into overdrive after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s publicly rebuked his request. “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel,” Netanyahu said last week in response to Clinton. And after President Obama rebuffed him on Iran red lines last week, Netanyahu took his case to the Sunday political talk shows here in the U.S.

It turns out that Netanyahu’s campaign isn’t having a lasting impression on Israelis either. The Wall Street Journal reports that a plurality of Israelis polled (41 percent verses 39 percent — and 20 percent who “don’t know”) in a new survey said their prime minister is mishandling relations with the United States on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has echoed Miller, saying last week that the United States would know if Iran decides to push for a nuclear weapon and in that case, there would be time for an appropriate response. The Obama administration has said that it takes no option off the table in its effort to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, including military force.

But also, the Obama administration has repeatedly said that the United States is committed to Israel’s security, evidenced in economic, diplomatic and military assistance. Indeed, Israel’s leaders, including Netanyahu himself, have said this publicly. “President Obama spoke about his ironclad commitment to Israel’s security,” Netanyahu said last year. “He rightly said that our security cooperation is unprecedented.” Israel’s president and defense minister have echoed that sentiment, as recently as July.

“To fully appreciate the audacity of Netanyahu’s demand for still more open-ended American security assurances,” Notre Dame fellow and professor of political science Michael C. Desch said in Foreign Affairs this week referring to Netanyahu’s “red lines” campaign, “it is crucial to recognize just how committed to Israel’s security the United States already is.”

President Obama has said that he won’t allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. The Obama administration is aware, not only of the threat an Iranian nuclear weapon poses, but also the potential negative consequences of a military attack on Iran, such as those outlined in a new bipartisan expert report released last week. And that, coupled with U.N., U.S. and Israeli assessments that Iran has not yet decided on whether to build a nuclear weapon, leads the administration, as Miler told Foreign Policy, to pursue a diplomatic solution with Iran, a track the it deems the “best and most permanent way” to solve the nuclear crisis.

An anti-Muslim ad campaign is about to start a new run in the New York City subway, in spite of protests from Metropolitan Transit Authority officials. The ads, which also ran in San Francisco last month, have garnered much criticism from community activists.

The MTA refused to approve the ad campaign earlier this year, but, citing the First Amendment, a federal court ruled that the MTA must run the ads. Now, in the wake of tensions over mocking depictions of the Prophet Mohammad, 10 more NYC subway cars will soon have to display the ad posters, which imply that Muslims are “uncivilized” and call upon commuters to “Support Israel…Defeat Jihad.”

The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), founded by Pamela Geller of the group Stop Islamization of America, created the ads. (Geller is featured prominently in CAP’s recent report on the Islamophobia network in the United States.) AFDI celebrates their new campaign on its website, calling MTA “craven quislings.”

AFDI bought ad-space in Washington, DC to run the same campaign, but the the DC metro transit authority delayed running the ads ads “out of a concern for public safety, given current world events.” In New York, the MTA is looking at changes to their advertisement policy to allow for similar protections. For now, spokesman Aaron Donovan says “our hands are tied.” The ads are due to appear next week.

– Nate Niemann

David Horowitz’s anti-Muslim rhetoric has been well-docmented as he is featured prominently in CAP’s report last year on the Islamophobia network in the United States. So it’s no surprise then that on Fox News today Horowitz pushed the right-wing conspiracy theory that Huma Abedin, top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is a Muslim Brotherhood plant.

Fox Host Megyn Kelly referred to Horowitz as a “civil rights activist” and asked what he thought of the police questioning of the man behind the anti-Islam film that caused recent protests in the Middle East. “This is one of the most disgraceful moments in the history of the American presidency,” Horowitz said (the filmmaker, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, answered police questions voluntarily). Horowitz then brought up Abedin:

HOROWITZ: An American ambassador has been raped and tortured and murdered and the White House is focusing on or the Justice Department is focusing on a filmmaker. And you have to ask yourself, isn’t it not the fact that the chief adviser on Muslim affairs for Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State is a Muslim Brotherhood operative and the Obama administration has turned over Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood which is a Nazi organization –

At this point, Kelly interrupted Horowitz, not to say he was wrong about Abedin but only to say “there are questions” as to whether she is a Muslim Brotherhood plant. Watch the clip:

No, Huma Abedin is not part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot to take over the U.S. government and no, David Horowitz is not a civil rights activist.

Senate Republicans prevented a veterans’ jobs bill from coming to a vote today by forcing a budget point of order vote. Democrats came up 2 votes short of the 60 needed to defeat the GOP’s budget measure.

The Veterans Jobs Corps bill — which is part of President Obama’s push to secure jobs for veterans — would have provided $1 billion over five years to hire 20,000 young veterans for public lands jobs and prioritize vets for first responder jobs such as police, firefighter, or EMT. The measure would have also provided young vets access to the infrastructure with which to assist in job searches, such as access to computers, internet and career services advisers.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a vets group that supported the legislation, called the GOP move “a huge disappointment,” adding, “Today, politics won over helping vets.”

While only five Republicans voted with the Democrats to waive the GOP budget point of order measure, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) led the GOP opposition. “When we find ourselves in $16 trillion of debt and we pay for a five-year bill over 10 years, we make the problem worse,” he said.

However, Veterans Jobs Corps bill co-sponsor Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said on the Senate floor today that “this bill is fully paid for and does not violate pay-go rules.” (The New York Times said Murray’s aides say “say the program will be paid for by recovering more money from tax-delinquent Medicare providers and forcing big tax deadbeats to pay up before receiving passports.”)

Murray even tried to include most of the provisions of a competing Republican bill but Democrats still ran into opposition. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he would block the measure until the Pakistani doctor that aided the CIA in looking for Osama bin Laden was freed, while Coburn claimed the bill would have no chance of passing the House so it wasn’t worth the effort.

“I’ve been surprised at the many obstacles and weird arguments that have been thrown at us,” Murray told the Washington Post.

The jobless rate for Iraq and Afghanistan war vets, while steadily declining, is still higher than the national average, yet congressional Republicans remain “resolute in their commitment to deny the Democrats anything that looks like an accomplishment in an election year.”

In an editorial last weekend referring to today’s vote, the New York Times said, “We’ll know then whether good sense prevailed, or the wheels have come completely off the Congressional machine.” It looks like the Republicans have made sure of the latter.

A Republican congressional nominee laid the blame for turmoil in the Middle East on “girly men” in the White House.

North Carolina State Sen. David Rouzer (R), the GOP nominee in the state’s 7th congressional district, levied the charge during a speech at a Tea Party Express rally in Wilmington on Sunday. If Romney is elected, Rouzer said, those perpetrating recent violence in the Middle East are going to “cut it out a little bit [...] because now we have real men in the White House.” An audience member shouted “No girly men!” prompting Rouzer’s approval: “That’s right, no girly men.”

ROUZER: When we get [Romney and Ryan] in you are going to see a big change, you’re going to see number one that America is going to be respected again around the world. You’re going to see all this turmoil that’s taking place, you’re going to see them look up and say guess what, the American people have spoken and maybe we need to cut it out a little bit, maybe we need to tone it down a little bit, because now we have real men in the White House.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: No girly men!

ROUZER: That’s right, no girly men.

Watch it:

When President Obama was asked by reporters in December about GOP charges that his foreign policy isn’t tough enough, he responded curtly, “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement.”

Rouzer first earned notoriety in June when he pushed a bill through the North Carolina Senate that banned the state from using scientific predictions of upcoming sea-level rise. Stephen Colbert lauded the move in a Colbert Report segment: “If your science gives you a result you don’t like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved.”

Republican chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. C.W. Bill Young (FL) told the Tampa Bay Times editorial board on Monday that he can no longer support the American war in Afghanistan:

“I think we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as we can,” Young, R-Indian Shores, said during a meeting with the Times editorial board Monday. “I just think we’re killing kids that don’t need to die.” … “It’s a real mess,” he said.

Young — the longest serving Republican in the House — said the death of a local Army Ranger in Afghanistan last month pushed him to change his mind. Young said the Ranger, Staff Sergeant Matthew S. Sitton, wrote him a letter before he died “and told me some things I found hard to believe”:

Young said he did not want to detail all of Sitton’s criticisms, but he listed two. In the letter, Sitton told Young about “being forced to go on patrol on foot through fields that they knew were mined with no explanation for why they were patrolling on foot,” the congressman said.

Sitton also explained that local streams and rivers were contaminated by pollution, creating a strong risk of bacterial and fungal infection, Young said. Yet when a flood soaked their uniforms, Young said, “they were required to continue patrols without changing their clothes.”

Young said Sitton predicted his own death, “and what he said would happen happened.” He stepped on an improvised explosive device and was killed, leaving behind his wife, Sarah, and their 9-month-old son, Brodey.

Americans’ support for the war in Afghanistan, including from Republicans, is at an all-time low. A recent poll found that 60 percent of Americans said the U.S. should not be involved there and a poll from May found that only 27 percent support the war. A majority of Republicans in a poll from April said the war has not been worth the effort.

While some House Republicans, such as Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), have been vocal in their opposition to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, Young said many privately tell him they no longer support it. “[T}hey tend not to want to go public” about it, he said.

Reuters reports researchers at anti-virus makers Symantec Corp and Kaspersky Labs have uncovered evidence of three previously undocumented computer viruses on systems in Lebanon and Iran, possibly developed by the United States for espionage or cyber warfare. Previous reporting from the New York Times tied the development of another virus,  Stuxnet, to a joint U.S.-Israeli campaign against the Iranian nuclear program code named Olympic Games.

The new viruses are linked to another previously identified virus also allegedly connected to Olympic Games, Flame, via a program called Newsforyou that masquerades as a web content management system:

“Newsforyou handled four types of malicious software: Flame and programs code-named SP, SPE and IP, according to both firms. Neither firm has obtained samples of the other three pieces of malware.

Kaspersky Lab said it believes that SP, SPE and IP were espionage or sabotage tools separate from Flame. Symantec said it was not sure if they were simply variations of Flame or completely different pieces of software.”

The digital era has dramatically changed the tactics available to countries engaging in espionage and sabotage, but cyber warfare raises it’s own set of new moral questions.

Deploying targeted malware to crash centrifuges is arguably preferable to more destructive and life threatening military strikes or targeted assassinations, but it raises other key questions: by developing these kinds of cyber weapons is the U.S. providing intellectual cover to hostile nations developing similar programs? And what happens when these weapons make their way into the digital wild?

The latter has already happened: While there isn’t any known damage due to domestic infections, as early as 2010 Symantec reported 1.56% of Stuxnet infections were to U.S. computers. At least one Stuxnet infection to a critical infrastructure system resulted in the deployment of the Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial Control Systems Computer Emergency Readiness Team (ICS-CERT).

As to the first question: The Department of Homeland Security’s emergency cyber-responder team has “seen a three-year surge in cyberattacks” on American critical infrastructure, reporting in June “a 20-fold leap in the number of incidents since the team was created in 2009.”

During a fundraiser with wealthy donors earlier this year, Mitt Romney didn’t appear to know how much the United States spends on its military, saying it’s “about twice as much as China.” Mother Jones released video of the entire event this afternoon, after reporting yesterday that during the event, Romney said he’s not worried about the 47 percent of Americans who support President Obama.

Seeming to argue for more military spending, Romney warned the audience not to “over think how strong we are”:

ROMNEY: [The U.S. spends] about twice as much as China, not 10 times as much like is reported. And we have responsibility for the whole world. They’re only focused on one little area of the world, the South China Sea and East China Sea that’s it. And they’re building a military at a rapid rate so this idea that we’ve always spent so much money on the military, it’s like guys, don’t over think how strong we are.

You probably know this was a couple years ago we had one of our aircraft carriers by Japan and the Chinese pulled up behind it in a diesel sub, a super quiet diesel sub pulled up behind it, it could have torpedoed and where did that kind of — our Navy is smaller in number of ships at any time since 1917.

Watch it, which appears at the beginning of this video Mother Jones posted today:

The United States spends about six times more its military than China. Romney said he wants to boost the Pentagon’s budget by $2.1 trillion over 10 years without a plan to pay for it. A recent CAP- National Security Network report warned against “exaggerat[ing] the possible threat posed by China” in arguing for more military spending back home: “Conservatives’ military-first approach, which assumes the two nations are destined for conflict, is more likely to create that reality.”