The Hill reported this afternoon that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wants to hear more from Mitt Romney on foreign policy, particularly the Arab Spring:

“It’s an economic-driven election; I can understand his policy team saying stay on the economy,” Graham told reporters.

“I do wish Romney would speak more about how Syria and Iran, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, how all of this comes together to go one way or the other. There’s a lot going on in the Arab world right now, and I would like to hear Romney articulate his vision about how to handle the Arab Spring,” he said.

Romney toyed with talking about Syria but it seems that seeing his policy isn’t all that different from the Obama administration’s, he hasn’t been talking about it much lately.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee used to attack President Obama for “leading from behind” in Libya but Romney hasn’t touched that issue in a while either.

But Graham is right that Romney doesn’t seem to be all that interested in talking foreign policy, as one of his top advisers told the New York Times recently. So unless the trip aboard Romney is reportedly taking pans out, the South Carolina Republican might be disappointed.

With a growing civil war in Syria, Bashar al-Assad’s notorious police state only increases repression and human rights violations against its own people.

A new report from New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) demonstrates just how prolific these violations of basic human rights have become in Syria. The group interviewed more than 200 Syrians and used the information to identify at least 27 detention centers where torture is used. The “archipelago of torture centers,” said HRW, “clearly point to a state policy of torture and ill-treatment and therefore constitute a crime against humanity.”

Syria’s four intelligence agencies, known together as the mukhabarat, employed a variety of torture methods against civilians and anti-government actors. One 31-year-old described the methods used against him:

They forced me to undress. Then they started squeezing my fingers with pliers. They put staples in my fingers, chest and ears. I was only allowed to take them out if I spoke. The staples in the ears were the most painful. They used two wires hooked up to a car battery to give me electric shocks. They used electric stun-guns on my genitals twice.

HRW detailed the methods and published sketches depicting their use. The group also published diagrams showing that, based on the interviews, Syrian authorities were putting up to 70 people in cells that European standards for detention would limit to five occupants.

When two or more interviewees identified a detention center, HRW added the location to an interactive map. Here’s a screen capture of the map showing the ten detention centers HRW identified in the capital Damascus (click here for the full interactive map):

HRW Emergencies researcher Ole Solvang said in a release: “By publishing their locations, describing the torture methods, and identifying those in charge we are putting those responsible on notice that they will have to answer for these horrific crimes.”

The group said that because Syria is not party to the Rome Statute, International Criminal Court proceedings against officials ordering and carrying out the torture would need to be mandated by the U.N. Security Council. Russia and China have so far blocked such measures. Clearly aiming to pressure Russia — Assad’s top international backer — HRW published its findings and recommendations (PDF) in Russian.

Arab Spring protests so far have toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt, led to a government-toppling civil war in Libya, and what looks to become a protracted civil war in Syria where the dictatorial regime remains, by most accounts, firmly entrenched, for now at least.

Now the Arab Spring protests, more than a year and a half after their inception, are hitting another North African country: Sudan. Student demonstrations against Omar Al-Bashir’s government have been bubbling up over the past couple weeks. Activists called for protests on Friday, which so far appear to have drawn hundreds to various towns across the country, according to a map of reported demonstrations posted by The Atlantic.

The protests — referred to in Sudan as “elbow licking,” after a colloquial phrase for doing the impossible adopted by the government — were set off by student objections to austerity measures imposed by the government. As the protests have grown over two weeks, reliable details have been more difficult to come by because of a government crackdown against journalists and bloggers.

Authorities ignored U.N. warnings against “heavy-handed suppression” and used tear gas to break up demonstrations near the capitol Khartoum and in eastern Sudan. The protesters chanted, “freedom, peace, justice and revolution is the choice of the people,” according to the BBC.

Former Defense Secretary William Cohen said in an interview with CNN last night that the U.S. doesn’t want to go to war in Syria, but with tensions mounting between Turkey — a NATO ally — and Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad’s embattled government over a downed Turkish plane, the U.S.’s alliance may require it to:

COHEN: I think that [Assad] wants to be careful. Russia wants to be careful. NATO wants to be careful that we don’t see this spin out of control that suddenly there’s a war declared against Syria by NATO, which I think doesn’t have the power to declare war, but has the power to declare we’re with Turkey if Turkey should respond from a military point of view… We have to be very careful there. We want to avoid that.

I think the shot that’s been fired is a verbal one, saying that Syria, you’re on notice. If you so much as fire one of our aircraft again, we’re going to retaliate, and it won’t be a very low level. So, I think Syria is on notice.

The United States, the other NATO countries, are saying we’re with you politically. We hope we don’t have to be involved in a war, but if war comes, it’s one nation of NATO, it’s all of us.

Watch the video:

Cohen is referring to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty which states that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all members, and each “will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

Turkey’s stance toward Syria’s brutal crackdown on Arab Spring demonstrations last year and, now, military assaults against civilian areas in its civil war with various rebel factions has grown more aggressive. Turkey hosts the main exiled Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Council, and leadership of the largest rebel faction, the Free Syrian Army. According to reports, Turkey sold anti-tank missiles to the rebels, purchased with Saudia Arabian and Qatari money.