Vice President Biden gave an emotional speech to a group of “Gold Star Families” on Friday, those who have lost a loved one in the military, at an event commemorating Memorial Day in Washington, D.C. The vice president told attendees about the death of his wife and daughter when he was 29 years old and tried to assure those who have lost a family member in war that the memory of their loved one will one day bring “a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye”:

BIDEN: Looking at your kids, most you have kids here, and it was the first time in my career, my life, I realized someone could go out and I probably shouldn’t say this with the press here — but it’s more important, you’re more important.

For the first time in my life I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide. Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts, because they had been to the top of the mountain and they just knew in their heart, they never get there again, that there was never going to get — there never going to be that way ever again. That’s how an awful lot you have feel.

There will come a day, I promise you, and you parents as well, when the thought of your son or daughter or your husband or wife brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. It will happen. [...]

So, hang onto each other. Hang onto each other. And I can’t tell you, I can’t tell you how deeply the five of us on this stage feel about the sacrifices you’ve made for this country. That doesn’t — that doesn’t fill the black hole. You should know only 1 percent of you have fought these wars and much less thank God than 1 percent of those that fought the wars are going through what you’re going through.

We owe you more than we can ever, ever repay you. As I said, my prayer is that that smile will come sooner than later, but I promise you it will come. God bless you all and my God protect our troops. Thank you.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow aired a clip of Biden’s speech:

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Journalist, author and publisher Charles Glass has a feature in this month’s edition of Harper’s magazine called “The Warrior Class,” a feature covering the rise of private security contractors after 9/11. The article describes a number videos shown to Glass by a source who had worked for Blackwater. Harpers published clips from the videos yesterday, which show Blackwater guards and other private security contractors operating as if living in the Wild West. One video shows a contractor randomly and “enthusiastically” firing an AK-47 from the turret of an armored vehicle and another shows a private guard yelling obscenities at passers-by and other armored cars smashing into civilian vehicles:

Another video shows what appears to be an American-made SUV running over a civilian without stopping. The car videoing the incident also does not stop:

Harpers reports that “the tape ended with the inscription ‘In support of security, peace, freedom and democracy everywhere.”

In the wake of the senseless killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida, another possible hate crime in California underscored the chasm between American values of equality and non-discrimination and incidents of intolerance.

A 32-year-old Iraqi victim of a brutal beating in her San Diego, California, home died yesterday when, with doctors’ expectations that she would not survive, her family removed her from life support. Shaima Alawadi’s family thinks the beating constitutes a hate crime, and police acknowledge the possibility.

Alawadi, a mother of five children aged 8 to 17, immigrated to the U.S. from Iraq in 1993. On Wednesday, her eldest daughter, Fatima al-Himidi, found Aalwadi “drowning in her own blood.” Al-Himidi said her mother was beaten with a tire iron. The daughter told San Diego’s KUSI television news that a note near her mother read, “Go back to your country, you terrorist.” (Another report said the note read, “Go back to your own country. You’re a terrorist.”)

“We’re not the terrorists,” al-Himidi said, speaking to the news camera, her voice shaky with emotion. “You are, whoever did it.”

Watch the KUSI news report:

Fatima al Hamidi also told KUSI that the family had gotten another similar, threatening note earlier this month, but that her mother dismissed it as a prank by neighborhood kids. No report was filed with the police.

A family friend, Sura Alzaidy, said the al-Himidi and Alawadi family had only returned to San Diego — into their new home — three weeks ago after an unspecified period of time living in Michigan. Speaking with the San Diego Union-Tribune, she described Alawadi as a “respectful modest muhajiba,” denoting that Alawadi covered her hair with a scarf in keeping with traditional Muslim customs.

Police spokesman Lt. Mark Coit said the investigation, in its early stages, was still broad, but did not rule out that the murder was a hate crime:

A hate crime is one of the possibilities, and we will be looking at that. We don’t want to focus on only one issue and miss something else.

He added that the killing appeared to be an “isolated incident.”

The family friend Alzaidy told the San Diego paper that her father and Alawadi’s husband, al-Himidi, worked together for the U.S. Army:

Alzaidy said her father and Alawadi’s husband had previously worked together in San Diego as private contractors for the U.S. Army, serving as cultural advisers to train soldiers who were going to be deployed to the Middle East.

Neighbors said the al-Himidi-Alawadi family left Iraq because they were “running away from war, running away from problems.”

The IAEA’s latest reports on Iran’s nuclear program and congressional testimony from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have all come to the same conclusion. While Iran’s leadership is “keeping themselves in a position to [decide to make a nuclear weapon],” as Clapper testified, there is no strong evidence that Iran has decided to restart its nuclear weapons program.

A special report today by Reuters provides new evidence to bolster the U.S. and IAEA’s assessments that Iran hasn’t yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon and has not reconstituted a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Most strikingly, Reuters has learned of an intercepted phone call in 2006 or 2007 in which Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading figure in Iran’s nuclear program, complains that Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been stopped. The phone call helped form the backbone for a controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in which American spy agencies expressed “high confidence” that Iran had halted its nuclear program in 2003.

The Reuters report finds that intelligence officials have a high-degree of confidence that Iran has no secret uranium enrichment sites and an Iranian decision to enrich uranium to weapons grade levels will be detected by U.S. intelligence and IAEA monitoring mechanisms.

“I think they are years away from having a nuclear weapon,” a U.S. administration official told Reuters.

Intelligence officials tell Reuters that they were aware for “years” of the construction of the secret Fordow uranium enrichment site and that “They had a deep understanding of the facility, which allowed them to blow the whistle on Tehran with confidence,” a U.S. official said. Iran claimed when the facility was exposed that they were not responsible for declaring it until the facility was fitted for and began nuclear work.

“We are very confident that there is no secret site now,” a U.S. administration official said, but admitted that Iran may attempt to construct another covert plant in the future.

Experts speaking to Reuters confirmed the IAEA’s analysis that Iran’s efforts to procure nuclear-related and dual-use equipment and the country’s large cache of ballistic missiles are examples of growing capabilities that could potentially be used for nuclear weapons.

The debate over air strikes, Israel’s anxieties about a nuclear-armed Iran and election-year politics have all contributed to comparisons with the Iraq war, a war justified by inaccurate intelligence data suggesting Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and unsubstantiated claims of significant ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst told Reuters:

There are lots of disturbing similarities. One has to note the differences, too. The huge difference being we don’t have an administration in office that is the one hankering for the war. This administration is not hankering for a war.

President Obama said recently that Iran with a nuclear weapon threatens the nonproliferation regime and U.S. and regional security. The Obama administration has ruled out a policy of containing a nuclear-armed Iran but has emphasized that a diplomatic solution is “the best and most permanent way” to relieve mounting tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.