You Might Have Missed

- Julian E. Barnes, Adam Entous,  Siobhan Gorman, “U.S. Eyes Covert Plan to Counter Iran in Iraq,” Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2011.

- Dane Schiller, “Mexican Military Flies Over South Texas,” Houston Chronicle, September 5, 2011.

While an array of U.S. federal and state agencies declined to comment, a Mexican government official confirmed that Mexican military helicopters have permission to use Texas as a staging ground for missions into Mexico to fight drug traffickers.”

- Angel Rabasa, John Gordon IV, Peter Chalk, From Insurgency to Stability:Volume 1, RAND Corporation, 2011 (20).

DoD and the services have systemized their own planning for a full range of contingencies, including SROs. Where SROs are concerned, the military’s key contingency planning activity is conducted by geographic combatant commands (COCOMs), organizations that have no direct counterparts in DoS. In contrast, U.S. civilian agencies continue to employ a relatively ad hoc approach to contingency response.”

- Dick Cheney, In My Time, August 30, 2011 (471-472).

“At another session later that month [June 2007] with most of the National Security Council present, I again made the case for U.S. military action against the reactor. Not only would it make the region and the world safer, but it would also demonstrate our seriousness with respect to nonproliferation. It would enhance our credibility in that part of the world, taking us back to where we were in 2003, after we had taken down the Taliban, taken down Saddam’s regime, and gotten Qaddafi to turn over his nuclear program. But I was a lone voice. After I finished, the president asked, ‘Does anyone here agree with the vice president?’ Not a single hand went up around the room. I had done all I could, and I’m not sure the president’s mind would have changed if the others had agreed with me. He had decided to recommend to the Israelis that we take the diplomatic path.”

- United States Government Accountability Office, “Nuclear Nonproliferation: U.S. Agencies Have Limited Ability to Account for, Monitor, and Evaluate the Security of U.S. Nuclear Material Overseas,” September 2011 (8-10).

“DOE and NRC do not have a comprehensive, detailed, current inventory of U.S. nuclear material overseas that would enable the United States to identify material subject to U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement terms.”