With the holiday coming up, we’ve asked one of our excellent commenters, fatster, to suggest stories and links for a morning post.  Our regular readers have been enjoying fatster’s contributions for a long time, so why not put them in a post?  So . . . here are fatsters hotlinks for today. Goldman Sachs might [...]

Seif al-Islam el-Gadhafi, the son of the former dictator and the most recognizable living face of the old Libyan regime, was captured by Libyan militia fighters today in the southwestern desert, where he was apparently attempting to cross the border.

The action by the collection of Arab states against the Syrian regime followed a so-called peace agreement that the Arab League brokered with Bashar al-Assad, which was supposed to end violence by security forces. However, a day after agreeing to the peace deal, Syrian security killed 10 protesters, and since that time Syria has continued to lay waste to the country, killing 250 protesters in 11 days.

The News Roundup from Monday night, October 24, 2011 — more on the Administration’s refi plan, Tunisian elections, GOP opposes jobs and infrastructure to prevent tiny tax on tiny number of rich, Ambassador Ford comes home, Libya, Occupy coverage, Herman Cain’s campaign, and much more . . .

There are more stories emerging of atrocities against civilians in Libya, the last apparently involving mass graves of pro-Gaddafi loyalits.

In some sense, the Obama Administration has taken the Pentagon strategy of “transformation” put forth by Donald Rumsfeld to its logical conclusion. Rumsfeld sought a light footprint in warmaking, a small, agile force that could quickly move through regions with superior firepower. The innovation from Obama’s Administration has been to get rid of the footprint altogether. Instead of standing armies occupying foreign countries, the move is toward shadow wars, and unmanned flying robots, and special operations forces. That is the new American way of war.

Reports coming from Libya have been notoriously sketchy, so some caution should be exercised. Plus, Seif al-Islam al-Gadhafi got away from capture after the rebels left him in a room with an underground tunnel, so even if this story is correct it may not be the end of the story. But all reports from Sirte today indicate that Moammar Gadhafi, who ruled Libya for over four decades, has been captured and, according to some reports, killed, as the Libyan rebels took control of Sirte, the final holdout among major cities in the country.

As fighting continues in Libya, a disturbing new report reveals that over 20,000 surface-to-air missiles have gone missing in the country. This is a Brian Ross special, so take it with a huge grain of salt, but the White House basically confirmed the report in a morning press gaggle.

The new Libya now straddles these two contrasting scenes, its freedom struggle ruptured by infighting and pressure from foreign forces that have their own designs for the country’s future. Yet viewed from a wide angle, the revolution has cracked open a window for a new political vision, spanning the full spectrum of peril and promise that Libyans have long been denied.

In the aftermath of the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) moved to increase airport security. Passengers flying “non-stop” to the US were subject to enhanced screenings, including in some cases a full-body pat-down. But, immediately, TSA realized that this placed an “extraordinary burden” on airports and airlines and TSA moved to develop a “regime” that would subject a “reduced pool” of passengers to “enhanced screenings.”

On January 13, 2010, it was announced a list of fourteen countries of interest. The list included: Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Iran (four countries on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism) and Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen. The new regime meant all passengers traveling from any of the fourteen countries would, regardless of nationality or US citizenship, be subject to increased security and possible violations of privacy.

Newly published cables from WikiLeaks shed light on reactions from leaders of countries on the list.