U.S. News

Drone Strikes Test Legal Grounds for War on Terror

Thursday, 07 February 2013 00:00

Written by Propublica

In his second inaugural address, President Barack Obama declared [1] that “a decade of war is now ending.” White House press secretary Jay Carney later said [2] there was “no question” that the U.S. conflict with al-Qaida was “entering a new phase.”

That day in Yemen, a U.S. drone strike reportedly killed [3] three suspected al-Qaida militants. It was one of several strikes [4] there that week and followed a spate of them in Pakistan [5]. Outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said this weekend [6] that drone strikes “ought to continue to be a tool we ought to use where necessary.”

Like the war in Afghanistan, these and hundreds of other drone strikes [7] have occurred under the authority of a concise law passed one week after 9/11. It reads [8]:

That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

That law – known as the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF – is now more than 11 years old. Will it cover this “new phase” of war?

Obama, like President George W. Bush before him, has claimed that the 2001 authorization is the domestic legal basis of the authority to kill and detain not only [9]members of al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan but also their “associated forces.” Courts have largely agreed with that interpretation, and in 2011 Congress codified [10] it in authorizing military detention.

A Justice Department memo [11] – published Monday by NBC News [12] – repeatedly cites Congress’ authorization in laying out the case for targeting a U.S. citizen “who is a senior operational leader of al-Qaida or an associated force.”

Officials note [13] the AUMF does not have a geographic boundary. Individuals far from the “hot” battlefield in Afghanistan, officials have argued, can still be said to be engaged in an armed conflict with the U.S.

But legal scholars say the AUMF’s authority to detain and kill militants may be undermined if there is no “core” al-Qaida group to speak of, or when active conflict in Afghanistan ends. It may also falter when it isn’t clear exactly how a group or individual is tied to al-Qaida – such as in the web of militant and extremist groups [14] operating in Africa and elsewhere [15] that may claim an affiliation or be ideologically aligned.

“There’s room for shoe-horning them into the AUMF,” says Robert Chesney, a professor at University of Texas School of Law. “But any honest assessment has to concede it’s not obvious that all the more loosely affiliated groups are encompassed.”

The AUMF doesn’t include an expiration date. But the law does have its limits, says Chesney. “It’s not claiming an armed conflict with all terrorism, but with al-Qaida and its associated forces. In theory, there can come an end.”

Last November, shortly before he stepped down as the Pentagon’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson gave a speech [16] on that end. He spoke of a “tipping point,” when the U.S. counterterrorism efforts “should no longer be considered an ‘armed conflict’ against al-Qaida and its associated forces.” Counterterror efforts would then be aimed against individuals and could be handled primarily by law enforcement.

Johnson conceded it was hard to imagine that tipping point. There would be no “peace treaty” to mark it, he said, and he could “offer no prediction about when this conflict will end.”

A preview of the dilemma came in 2011, when the U.S. indicted [17] a Somali man named Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame in federal court in New York. Warsame was a member of Al-Shabaab, a group in Somalia [18], and had ties to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, but he was not connected to any plot against the U.S. He had initially been held by the military, but according to Newsweek reporter Daniel Klaidman [19], the Obama administration was unsure where he fit under the law.

Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School and former head of the Office of Legal Counsel for President Bush in 2003 and 2004, says “the AUMF is losing its efficacy. We’re in a place when we’re engaged in types of warfare that the nation hasn’t openly debated.”

The “shoehorn” approach may eventually run into legal gray area. Chesney points out [20] that court decisions upholding military detention have generally been linked in some way to the conflict in Afghanistan. (So far, U.S. courts have not taken up [21] lawsuits challenging targeted killing.)

“When the war in Afghanistan ends, and if core al-Qaida is decimated, how do we define who we are at war with?” says Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Shamsi argues that the Obama administration is already relying on an overbroad interpretation of the AUMF to justify strikes against alleged militants in Yemen or Somalia without demonstrating precisely how they are associated with al-Qaida or engaged in anti-U.S. hostilities.

Militant groups have emerged [22] as a threat in North Africa – some claiming an affiliation with al-Qaida. The degree to which those groups are plotting against the U.S. or interested in regional control is still being debated [22]. The U.S. is expanding its presence in [23] the region, butat least initially, the government says it is bolstering surveillance and training and assistance for local governments, not taking military action.

A Pentagon spokesman said last week [24] he was “unaware of any specific or credible information at this time that points to an [al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb] threat against the homeland, but, again, I’m not ruling it out.”

The U.S. has provided [25] refueling and cargo planes to assist the French intervention in Mali. That is lawful because France is acting “in response to a request for assistance from the Malian government,” Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told ProPublica.

Administration officials say [13] strikes against al-Qaida and associated forces are permitted under international law on the basis of self-defense, in addition to the authority the AUMF provides under domestic law. The U.N. has been investigating [26] targeted killings and civilian casualties from drone strikes.

In a case where the 2001 AUMF did not apply, the administration could seek a new authorization from Congress or rely on presidential powers to use force against an imminent threat.

Gen. Carter Ham, the head of U.S. Africa Command, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal [27] in December that an authorization to address new threats in North Africa was a “worthy discussion.” But what form that would take is unclear. The Pentagon and White House did not comment to ProPublica on the possibility of a new AUMF.

Presidents have used force without Congressional authorization by invoking presidential powers under Article II [28] of the Constitution.

Obama ordered airstrikes over Libya [29] in the spring of 2011 citing [30] international cooperation and “national interest” as justification. (Several lawmakers subsequently sued [31] the administration for bypassing them, but the case was dismissed [32].) He has also claimed authority to launch pre-emptive cyberattacks, the New York Times reported [33] this weekend. President Bill Clinton cited the nation’s right to self-defense when he bombed Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 [34] in retaliation for the bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Obama officials regularly [13] cite [35] self-defense alongside the AUMF in justifying targeted killing. White House counterterror adviser John Brennan has said [13] that the U.S. uses “a flexible understanding of ‘imminence’ ” in determining what constitutes a threat. The Justice Department memo on targeting U.S. citizens also references [36] a “broader concept of imminence,” which it holds “does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.”

Shamsi and other critics of the drone war have noted that some strikes in Yemen in particular appear to target insurgents [37] acting against local government. The U.S. almost never acknowledges particular strikes or details the specific threat posed by an individual [38].

Johnson, the former Pentagon counsel, told The Wall Street Journal [39] that “the president always has the constitutional authority to protect the nation and important national interests by responding to individual terrorist threats, militarily or otherwise.”

Johnson noted that, for a “sustained armed conflict, the preference should be Congressional authorization.”

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Feds to Publicize Drug and Device Company Payments to Doctors Next Year

Monday, 04 February 2013 08:40

Written by Administrator

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by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber--ProPublica

After years of anticipation, all of the nation's drug and medical device makers must soon begin publicly reporting payments they make to U.S. physicians, according to final regulations announced this afternoon by the federal government.

The release of payments data in September 2014 would mark a milestone in the push to bring transparency to medicine. Once posted, patients will be able to see if their physicians receive money from any of the companies whose products they prescribe. Studies have shown that such payments, however small, bias physicians towards companies and their products.

Until now, ProPublica's Dollars for Docs tool has been the only freely available source for the public to search and analyze the payments made since 2009 by a dozen drug companies. ProPublica gathered the information from the companies' websites into one searchable, sortable database.

Most of these companies were required to post the information on their websites as part of settlements with the federal government over allegations of improper marketing. Companies have paid billions of dollars to settle the lawsuits.

ProPublica is working on an update of Dollars for Docs and in the coming weeks will expand the database to include payments from 15 companies through the end of 2012.

Drug companies, lawmakers and consumer advocates have grown increasingly frustrated by the time it has taken the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to release final rules for collecting and publishing the data under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which was a part of the 2010 health reform law.

The payments were supposed to become public beginning this year under provisions of the law. But federal health officials instead released proposed regulations in December 2011 and since then have been gathering and analyzing comments.

The data to be released in September 2014 will include payments made from August to December of this year, giving companies enough time to gather and report the information. The companies must turn the data over to the government by March 2014; doctors will then have 45 days to review the information for accuracy before it becomes public.

Companies will have to report the information annually afterward.

"You should know when your doctor has a financial relationship with the companies that manufacture or supply the medicines or medical devices you may need," Dr. Peter Budetti, the CMS deputy administrator for program integrity, said in a written statement. "Disclosure of these relationships allows patients to have more informed discussions with their doctors."

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, co-authored the Sunshine Act, which arose from his investigations of drug company payments to doctors. "Disclosure brings about accountability, and accountability will strengthen the credibility of medical research, the marketing of ideas and, ultimately, the practice of medicine," he said in a statement. "I will stay vigilant about how this law is implemented, especially after the delays seen already."

The drug companies that currently post payment information do so in different ways, using different time periods and different definitions that make analysis or aggregation of the data very difficult. The Physician Payments Sunshine Act requires every company to report the same information in the same way.

Drug, device and medical supply companies must report all payments over $10 to U.S. physicians and teaching hospitals. The data must include date of payment, a description of the service provided, the amount paid and which of a company's products the payment involved.

The types of payments to be reported include speaking fees, consulting payments, research, gifts, food, entertainment, honoraria, research grants, royalties and license fees, among others.

Companies that fail to properly report payments can be fined between $1,000 and $10,000 for each payment not reported, but the fine cannot exceed $150,000. A deliberate failure to report can lead to a fine of up to $1 million.

The trade group representing major pharmaceutical companies said it is reviewing the regulations. It had raised a number of concerns to the government. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America "remains committed to the principles of the Sunshine Act" and wants the information to be "usable, transparent, and understandable," Matthew Bennett, the group's senior vice president, said in a statement.

ProPublica's analysis of the payments released so far shows that many physicians receive money from several companies for promotional speaking or consulting on behalf of their products. In some cases, these payments totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One Los Angeles-area doctor, for example, received more than $300,000 in speaking fees in 2009 and 2010 alone just from the companies in our database. Those firms account for only about 40 percent of U.S. pharmaceutical sales.

ProPublica also found that more than 250 physicians chosen to be drug company speakers and consultants had been disciplined by their state medical boards or other regulatory agencies.

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Ed Koch, Mayor Who Became a Symbol of NYC, Dies

Friday, 01 February 2013 07:51

Written by Administrator

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Edward I. Koch, the outspoken three-term New York mayor who led the biggest U.S. city from the brink of bankruptcy in the late 1970s and boosted the spirits of crime-weary residents, has died. He was 88.

Koch died this morning at 2 a.m. of heart failure at New York-Presbyterian Columbia Hospital, spokesman George Arzt said. Koch had been moved into intensive care yesterday afternoon. The funeral will be held on Monday at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.

On Jan. 28, Koch had returned to the hospital two days after being released
following a week-long stay to treat water in his lungs and legs, the Associated
Press reported. Koch also was hospitalized in December 2012 for pneumonia and flu and three months earlier for anemia.

Serving from 1978 through 1989, Koch presided over the Wall Street-fueled economic boom of the 1980s, turning a $1 billion budget deficit into a $500 million surplus in five years. He restored the city’s credit, doubled the annual budget to $26 billion and oversaw $19 billion in capital improvements. His subsidized housing plan produced more than 156,000 new and renovated units.

Koch’s in-your-face style, straight talk and catchphrase “How’m I doing?” endeared him to New Yorkers wracked by the
lingering fiscal crisis, the Son of Sam serial murders and the arson and looting that erupted after a blackout in July 1977.

Commuters walking across the Brooklyn Bridge during the first day of an 11-day transit strike in 1980 were startled to find the bald, 6-foot-1-inch mayor cheering for them. He called critics “wackos,” welfare advocates “poverty pimps,” told visiting Soviet
schoolchildren that their government was “the pits” and said a crack-smoking lawyer accused of killing his daughter should be “boiled in oil.”

It was that style and straight talk that enabled Koch to work both sides of the political aisle and get things done.

"Ed Koch was one of the giants of our generation and respected by Americans across the country who respected his
candor, humor and love of country," Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax and a friend of Koch's, said. Koch was a regular contributor and blogger to Newsmax. "He set an example for other public figures when, again and again, he was able
to rise above party labels for the public good."

‘Eccentric Uncle’

He was “some mad combination of a Lindy’s waiter, Coney Island barker, Catskills comedian, irritated school principal and eccentric uncle,” the writer Pete Hamill said in 2005 during a panel discussion at the Museum of the City of New York, which hosted an exhibition on the recovery since the 1975-76 fiscal crisis. “He seemed to be everywhere at once.”

By 1985, Koch, a Democrat, had become the most popular mayor since Fiorello LaGuardia four decades before, winning 75 percent of the vote in his bid for a third term.

Four years later, after corruption scandals rocked his administration and his criticism of civil-rights leader and presidential
candidate Jesse Jackson angered some black voters, Koch was defeated by David Dinkins in the Democratic primary. Koch maintained his loss had nothing to do with the scandals or accusations that he had become a polarizing figure.

“The real reason was longevity,” he said in a 2004 interview. “You have to know when to get off the stage.”

Bronx Born

Edward Irving Koch was born in the Bronx on Dec. 12, 1924, the second of three children of Russian-Jewish immigrants Louis and Joyce Silpe Koch. His father was in the garment business. Koch attended City College of New York from 1941 to 1943, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II. He was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant in 1946.

After the Army, Koch entered New York University School of Law, receiving his degree
in 1948. He opened a small law practice. Koch became active in Democratic politics, working for presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956 and becoming a member of the Greenwich Village Independent Democrats, a dissident liberal faction of the party. Koch challenged the old-line Democratic organization that was still known as Tammany Hall.

After serving two years on the City Council, Koch in 1968 won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, a victory considered an upset against the Democratic machine. During his nine years in Congress, he spoke out against the war in Vietnam and advocated federal aid for mass transit and health care for the elderly.

Mayoral Race

Koch entered a seven-person Democratic mayoral primary in 1977, beating chief rival and future New York Governor Mario Cuomo for the nomination. The September primary was marred by mean-spiritedness that included posters saying “Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo,” an apparent attempt to say the unmarried Koch was a homosexual. The Cuomo campaign denied it was behind the signs.

Koch took office as mayor in January 1978 after winning the November general election against Cuomo, who ran
on the Liberal Party ticket.

He succeeded Abraham Beame, who in his single term as mayor struggled with the worst fiscal crisis in the city’s history. Beame’s lack of charisma -- his speeches were so bland that many people couldn’t remember what he said, according to the New York Times -- stood in stark contrast to his successor. Koch never seemed to stop talking, about anything.

Publicly Accessible

He was always approachable to reporters and members of the public. On weekends, New York residents could often find the mayor on the porch at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence, chewing the fat with passers-by. He also would call impromptu news conferences.

Saul Pett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the Associated Press, summed up the mayor this way in a 1981 profile:“He’s
the freshest thing to blossom in New York since chopped liver, a mixed metaphor of a politician, the antithesis of the packaged leader, irrepressible, candid, impolitic, spontaneous, funny, feisty, independent, uncowed by voter blocs, unsexy, unhandsome, unfashionable and altogether charismatic, a man oddly at peace with himself in an unpeaceful place, a mayor who presides over the country’s largest Babel with unseemly joy.”

Playboy Interview

In 1982, Koch unsuccessfully challenged Cuomo for the Democratic New York gubernatorial nomination. Koch was hurt by an interview with Playboy magazine in which he described rural life as “a joke.” The line didn’t go over well with residents of the farming communities in upstate New York.

Koch walked out of City Hall for the last time as mayor on Dec. 29, 1989. He said New York was “far better off now” than when he took office.

As a private citizen, Koch worked as a partner in the law firm Bryan Cave LLP, as a radio commentator for Bloomberg News, as a newspaper columnist and movie reviewer and as a lecturer and talk-show guest. He took political stands that angered many Democrats, such as his support for President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.

Koch had a pacemaker implanted in 1991 and suffered a heart attack in 1999. He underwent quadruple bypass surgery
in 2009.

Later that year Koch celebrated his 85th birthday at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan with guests including Cuomo, Henry Kissinger and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Former President Bill Clinton delivered his congratulations by video. A year later, Bloomberg announced that the city’s Queensboro Bridge, celebrated in Simon and Garfunkel’s “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy),” would be named after Koch.

Ethics Campaign

Even in his mid-80s, he refused to stop campaigning. In March 2010 he formed a group called New York Uprising, which sought to tighten ethics rules, overhaul the budget process and force disclosures of income among state politicians in Albany. He visited Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse to make his case.

“I never said I’d solve all the problems,” Koch told reporters on his last day on the job in City Hall. “Who can? Problems are going to be there forever. It’s the nature of the city. Within the confines of what a mayor can do, I did a lot. And I think they will remember that.”

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Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

Tuesday, 29 January 2013 06:45

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by Abraham Lustgarten--Propublica

Mexico City plans to draw drinking water from a mile-deep aquifer, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. The Mexican effort challenges a key tenet of U.S. clean water policy: that water far underground can be intentionally polluted because it will never be used.

U.S. environmental regulators have long assumed that reservoirs located thousands of feet underground will be too expensive to tap. So even as population increases, temperatures rise, and traditional water supplies dry up, American scientists and policy-makers often exempt these deep aquifers from clean water protections and allow energy and mining companies to inject pollutants directly into them.

As ProPublica has reported in an ongoing investigation about America's management of its underground water, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued more than 1,500 permits for companies to pollute such aquifers in some of the driest regions. Frequently, the reason was that the water lies too deep to be worth protecting.

But Mexico City's plans to tap its newly discovered aquifer suggest that America is poisoning wells it might need in the future.

Indeed, by the standard often applied in the U.S., American regulators could have allowed companies to pump pollutants into the aquifer beneath Mexico City.

For example, in eastern Wyoming, an analysis showed that it would cost half a million dollars to construct a water well into deep, but high-quality aquifer reserves. That, plus an untested assumption that all the deep layers below it could only contain poor-quality water, led regulators to allow a uranium mine to inject more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day into the underground reservoirs.

But south of the border, worsening water shortages have forced authorities to look ever deeper for drinking water.

Today in Mexico City, the world's third-largest metropolis, the depletion of shallow reservoirs is causing the ground to sink in, iconic buildings to teeter, and underground infrastructure to crumble. The discovery of the previously unmapped deep reservoir could mean that water won't have to be rationed or piped into Mexico City from hundreds of miles away.

According to the Times report, Mexican authorities have already drilled an exploratory well into the aquifer and are working to determine the exact size of the reservoir. They are prepared to spend as much as $40 million to pump and treat the deeper water, which they say could supply some of Mexico City's 20 million people for as long as a century.

Scientists point to what's happening in Mexico City as a harbinger of a world in which people will pay more and dig deeper to tap reserves of the one natural resource human beings simply cannot survive without.

"Around the world people are increasingly doing things that 50 years ago nobody would have said they'd do," said Mike Wireman, a hydrogeologist with the EPA who also works with the World Bank on global water supply issues.

Wireman points to new research in Europe finding water reservoirs several miles beneath the surface — far deeper than even the aquifer beneath Mexico City — and says U.S. policy has been slow to adapt to this new understanding.

"Depth in and of itself does not guarantee anything — it does not guarantee you won't use it in the future, and it does not guarantee that that it is not" a source of drinking water, he said.

If Mexico City's search for water seems extreme, it is not unusual. In aquifers Denver relies on, drinking water levels have dropped more than 300 feet. Texas rationed some water use last summer in the midst of a record-breaking drought. And Nevada — realizing that the water levels in one of the nation's largest reservoirs may soon drop below the intake pipes — is building a drain hole to sap every last drop from the bottom.

"Water is limited, so they are really hustling to find other types of water," said Mark Williams, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It's kind of a grim future, there's no two ways about it."

In a parched world, Mexico City is sending a message: Deep, unknown potential sources of drinking water matter, and the U.S. pollutes them at its peril.

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Revealed: America’s Arms Sales To Bahrain Amid Bloody Crackdown

Monday, 21 January 2013 00:00

Written by Propublica

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by Justin Elliott-ProPublica

Despite Bahrain’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, the U.S. has continued to provide weapons and maintenance to the small Mideast nation.

Defense Department documents released to ProPublica give the fullest picture yet of the arms sales: The list includes ammunition, combat vehicle parts, communications equipment, Blackhawk helicopters, and an unidentified missile system. (Read the documents.)

The documents, which were provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and cover a yearlong period ending in February 2012, still leave many questions unanswered. It’s not clear whether in each case the arms listed have been delivered. And some entries that only cite the names of weapons may in fact refer to maintenance or spare parts.

Defense Department spokesman Paul Ebner declined to offer any more detail. “We won’t get into specifics in any of these because of the security of Bahrain,” said Ebner.

While the U.S. has maintained it is selling Bahrain arms only for external defense, human rights advocates say the documents raise questions about items that could be used against civilian protesters.

“The U.S. government should not be providing additional military equipment that could make matters worse,” said Sunjeev Bery, Middle East advocacy director for Amnesty International USA.

There have been reports that Bahrain used American-made helicopters to fire on protesters in the most intense period of the crackdown. Time magazine reported in mid-March 2011 that Cobra helicopters had conducted "live ammunition air strikes" on protesters.

The new Defense Department list of arms sales has two entries related to “AH-1F Cobra Helicopters” in March and April 2011. Neither the exact equipment or services being sold nor the delivery timetable are specified.

The U.S. is also playing a training role: In April 2012, for example, the Army News Service reported that an American team specializing in training foreign militaries to use equipment purchased from the U.S. was in Bahrain to help with Blackhawk helicopters.

Bahrain’s ambassador to the U.S., Houda Nonoo, said the country’s military has not targeted protestors. Bahrain’s military “exists to combat external threats,” Nonoo told ProPublica. “[T]he potential for U.S. foreign arms sales to be used against protestors in the future is remote.”

The Obama administration has stood by Bahrain’s ruling family, who are Sunni, during nearly two years of protests by the country’s majority Shia population. Bahrain is a longtime ally and the home to a large American naval base, which is considered particularly important amid the current tensions with nearby Iran.

The itemized arms sales list does not include dollar values but a separate document says military equipment worth $51 million was delivered to Bahrain in the year starting in October 2010. (That period includes several months before the protests began.)

The U.S. has long sold weapons to Bahrain, totaling $1.4 billion since 2000, according to the State Department. The sales didn’t come under scrutiny until security forces killed at least 19 people in the early months of the crackdown in 2011. (Dozens have died since then.)

The administration put a hold on one proposed sale of Humvees and missiles in Fall 2011 following congressional criticism. But Foreign Policy reported that other unspecified equipment was still being sold without any public notification.

The new documents offer more details on what was sold during that period — including entries related to a “Blackhawk helicopter armament” in November 2011 and a missile system in January 2012.

In May 2012, the administration announced it was releasing some unspecified items to Bahrain’s military that “are not used for crowd control” while maintaining a hold on the Humvees and TOW missiles.

State Department spokesman Noel Clay told ProPublica, “We continue to withhold the export of lethal and crowd-control items intended predominately for internal security purposes, and have resumed on a case-by-case basis items related exclusively to external defense, counter-terrorism, and the protection of U.S. forces.”

The U.S. has also sold Bahrain a helicopter fit for the royal family.

In September, Missouri-based aviation services firm Sabreliner reported that, as part of an official government arms sale, it delivered to Bahrain a fully customized UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopter for “a variety of missions including transporting heads of state.” The aircraft was outfitted with a “clam shell door” for ease of entry, a “new VIP interior,” and a “custom Royal Bahraini” paintjob.

In other recent developments in Bahrain, the country’s highest court this month upheldlengthy prison sentences for 13 high-profile activists accused of plotting to overthrow the government.

In a rare occurrence in November, a series of homemade bombs were set off in the capital of Manama, killing two and leading some observers to argue that the opposition is growing more militant. Also in November, an Amnesty International report found that despite government promises, “the reform process has been shelved and repression unleashed.”

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