The Obama Administration has opened the door a crack to the possibility of arming the Syrian rebels. The biggest problem with arming Syrian rebels is that there is no unified opposition to arm. If little was known about the Libyan rebels, we seem to know even less for Syria. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey said on CNN this weekend, “Until we’re a lot clearer about who they are and what they are, I think it would be premature to talk about arming them.”

Was Abu Faraj al-Libbi the “high value detainee” that pointed the US to OBL’s compound in Pakistan?

Much of the coverage of the disaster in Japan (including ours at FDL) has been focused on the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. As troubling as those reactors are, however, they are only part of the story. While the Fukushima Fifty and their colleagues work on the reactors, thousands upon thousands of other relief workers are laboring elsewhere — and they’ve got a LOT to do.

While the lack of evidence makes it difficult to swallow what sounds like character assassination, we do at least have the list of panel members by which to examine the neutral disinterest the forensic psychiatric examination should demand of those who are investigating the background of Dr. Ivins. Instead, what a brief review of the panel’s bona fides reveals is an overwhelming stacking of this “expert” panel by doctors and others who are deeply beholden to government interests, and in particular to security agencies, including those involved in bioterrorism security. For such individuals, it is difficult to see that they would buck the position of the FBI and DOJ that Ivins was guilty.

A brief look at what’s happening in the news on Tuesday, May 11th, 2010.

Tonight Toby Warrick and Julie Tate at the Washington Post report that earlier this evening at the New York Review of Books Mark Danner posted the Red Cross’ secret February 17, 2007 report to CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo. Danner’s account, like Warren and Tate’s earlier work, reveals what the Red Cross saw in America’s gulags.