The Daily Blog

NATO: Libya Warships Sunk.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO aircraft sank eight warships belonging to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in overnight attacks, the alliance said on Friday.

The ships were sunk in coordinated attacks on the ports of Tripoli, Al Khums and Sirte, an alliance statement said.

“Given the escalating use of naval assets, NATO had no choice but to take decisive action to protect the civilian population of Libya and NATO forces at sea,” Rear-Admiral Russell Harding, deputy commander of the NATO mission in Libya, said in the statement.

Big Political Challenges Greet Obama’s Return Home.

WASHINGTON — Returning home to some messy politics, President Barack Obama is confronting a battery of challenges, from a spending standoff that threatens to shut down the government to congressional angst over the U.S.-led attacks on Libya. Foreign crises rage across Africa and the Middle East, and Americans still want the economy to improve more quickly.The president left behind a wave of goodwill in Latin America as he shored up alliances that the White House said would prove pivotal for years to come. Yet the timing made for political and logistical headaches, as his five-day trip to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador took place just as the U.S. and allies launched a U.N.-sanctioned assault against Moammar Gadhafi’s menacing regime.Now lawmakers are questioning the costs and objective of the military action while voicing growing frustration that Obama didn’t consult with Congress more thoroughly before authorizing the U.S. airstrikes. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, encapsulated much of the GOP sentiment by asking in a tweet, “Is Congress going to assert its constitutional role or be a potted plant?”

No sooner had Obama touched down on U.S. soil late Wednesday afternoon then House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, issued a blistering letter demanding more details about the steps ahead on Libya.

“I and many other members of the House of Representatives are troubled that U.S. military resources were committed to war without clearly defining for the American people, the Congress and our troops what the mission in Libya is and what America’s role is in achieving that mission,” Boehner said.

The criticism comes not just from the right. Liberal Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has said he intends to offer legislation to block the U.S. from funding military actions in Libya. Moderate Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., an authoritative voice on military issues as a former Navy secretary, said the U.S. strategy lacks clarity and the endpoint is undefined.

Obama, in news conferences from Santiago to San Salvador, has been adamant in saying the main U.S. military role will be limited and front-loaded as allies strive to keep Gadhafi from killing those seeking to oust him. Insisting the U.S. will soon play a supporting role, Obama told Univision, “The exit strategy will be executed this week.”

Obama will have more opportunities in the coming days to speak about the fast-changing Libya conflict, if he chooses. No specific address to the nation is planned.

The military challenge comes as the threat of a government shutdown looms again.

Federal operations are churning along on another temporary spending bill, this one expiring April 8. That means Obama has just over two weeks to help broker a deal to keep the government running for the six months left in the fiscal year. House Republicans don’t want to budge from the $61 billion in steep cuts they’ve approved, but that won’t fly in the Senate and Obama has threatened to veto it, leaving the path to compromise unclear.

“I can’t remember a more action-packed agenda, with two major, urgent items at the top of the list,” said Norman Ornstein, who studies Congress and politics at the American Enterprise Institute. “Libya, of course, but with the added twist of harsh criticism of the president’s failure to bring in Congress. And the budget battle, which I believe is much more likely than not to lead to a shutdown.”

The pressure will be on Obama to intervene in the budget talks.

Also looming is a fight over the federal debt limit, which Democrats cannot increase without some Republican support in both the Senate and House. The administration has warned Congress that failing to raise the debt limit would lead to an unprecedented default on the national debt and wreck the national economic recovery.

The Treasury Department estimates the government will hit the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling sometime between April 15 and May 31. But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has warned that GOP senators would not vote to increase the federal debt limit unless Obama agreed to significant long-term budget savings that could include cost curbs for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Republican leaders also are pounding on Obama’s policies at the one-year anniversary of his signature health care law, which also occurred just as he returned home. The law divides the nation just as much as it did a year ago.

The administration and its allies celebrated the anniversary, but it came and went without comment from the president.

Obama is operating in a shrinking window of governing until the politics of his 2012 re-election essentially halt cooperation in Washington.

Obama will try to pick up with his domestic agenda of cutting spending but redirecting funding to make the country competitive in the longer term. He spent much of March emphasizing education, and that’s about to resume: He will conduct a Univision-sponsored televised town hall about education at a District of Columbia high school on Monday.

Although Libya dominated news coverage during the president’s absence, it is a broader revolt in the Arab world that keeps bearing down on him. Support for Yemen’s U.S.-backed president is crumbling among political allies. Tensions remain high in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th fleet. The White House now finds itself routinely condemning violent crackdowns on protests.

And there’s this: It won’t be long before Obama is overseas again.

In two months, he’ll be pushing the U.S. agenda on a trip to England, Ireland, Poland and France.

New York City Cops Arrest Suspect in Deadly Rampage.

A New York man was arrested this morning for a series of attacks that left four people dead and several others injured.

Police said Maksim Gelman, 23, killed his stepfather, ex-girlfriend and her mother with a kitchen knife, according to NBC New York.
 New York City Police Department, APMaksim Gelman, 23, was arrested Saturday for a rampage that left four people dead in New York City.
The violence began early Friday morning, police sources told The New York Post, when Gelman showed up at his family’s Brooklyn apartment and demanded to use a car. When his stepfather, Alexsandr Kuznetsov, refused, cops said Gelman stabbed the 54-year-old man to death and fled — killing a 62-year-old pedestrian as he drove off.

Later that day, Gelman allegedly went to the home of former girlfriend Yelena Bulchenko, 20, killing her and her mother, Anna, 56. Both women were stabbed more than a dozen times, according to the New York Daily News.

Officers nabbed Gelman at the Times Square subway station in Manhattan this morning, after a male passenger was stabbed repeatedly on a train.

Police said Gelman also stabbed at least four people during a series of carjackings, the Daily News reported.

Gelman has 10 prior arrests, according to the Post, including a drug bust last week. His mother told police he appeared high when he attacked his stepfather.

“That guy’s got a bit of a reputation around here,” a friend of Telena Bulchenko’s told the Post. “You took one look at him and you thought he was on pills.”

SKorea Vows Action Against North but Flip-Flops on Drills.

(Nov. 29) — South Korea’s president apologized today for failing to better protect his citizens and vowed actions — not words — against what he called “inhumane” North Korean attacks. His comments came on Day 2 of military drills with U.S. forces designed to threaten and deter nuclear-armed Pyongyang in the wake of its deadly barrage on a southern island.

But while the USS George Washington and its South Korean allies rehearse for war in the Yellow Sea, China is calling for “emergency consultations” to calm emotions on the Korean peninsula — seizing a diplomatic role, albeit in a neutral way, that Washington and Seoul have long pushed for Beijing to play.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak gave his first speech on national TV today since the North’s artillery attack killed two South Korean civilians and two marines last Tuesday on Yeonpyeong Island near the Koreas’ disputed sea border. Seoul announced today that more live-fire exercises would take place on the island, but then quickly reversed the decision, saying marines made the announcement without final approval from superiors. The same type of drills prompted last week’s attack.Lee has been struggling to display his government’s leadership while embroiled in the crisis with the North, and today’s flip-flop over more Yeonpyeong drills only exacerbated his critics’ frustration. His defense minister resigned Thursday amid public outrage over Seoul’s failure to prevent the attack, which also wounded nearly 20 people. Hundreds of veterans have been rallying in Seoul’s streets, burning North Korean flags and effigies of Kim Jong Il but also decrying their own government as weak.”Genuine peace will only be possible when we confront any threats and provocations with sturdy courage,” Lee said today, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Any provocations by the North from now on will, without fail, be met with strong responses.”

Naval skirmishes are not uncommon between the two Koreas, technically still at war after their 1950-53 war ended without a peace treaty. But last week was the first time a residential, civilian neighborhood suffered a direct hit.

“North Korea will pay the price in the event of further provocations,” Lee continued, according to Reuters. “Attacking civilians militarily is an inhumane crime that is strictly forbidden in a time of war. … Now is the time to show action, not a hundred words.”

Lee’s speech comes on the second of four days of joint military exercises between South Korean and American forces, which are taking place off the coasts of the Korean peninsula and China.

Beijing said last week that it objects to the drills, which ratcheted up tensions across Asia and speculation about whether all-out war between the Koreas could be coming. Pyongyang said Friday the exercises bring the peninsula “closer to the brink of war,” and its state media said today that the drills mark an “intentional plot” by Washington and Seoul, The Associated Press reported.

Over the weekend, Beijing seemed to embrace the role of mediator that Washington and Seoul have long encouraged, but did so in a neutral way, failing to assign blame to the North for Tuesday’s clashes. Still, China called for both Koreas, the U.S., Japan and Russia to convene for emergency talks in Beijing next month, in a resumption of the talks with the same parties that have so far failed to reach a breakthrough over Pyongyang’s disputed nuclear program.

Beijing also sent one of its top foreign policy officials to Seoul over the weekend and announced that a North Korean official would travel to China on Tuesday, The New York Times reported.

It’s unclear whether China’s actions are a result of pressure from Washington and Seoul, and whether they would prove fruitful. But the U.S. and South Korea have demanded concerted action from China to wield its influence with Pyongyang, more than Beijing has so far taken. China is North Korea’s only real ally and provides the country with desperately needed humanitarian aid.
“North Korea is not the kind of country that if its neighbor severs economic assistance it will bow down and listen to it,” Liu Ming of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences told the Times. “China knows this, so it cannot do much more.”

Japan, meanwhile, voiced reluctance today at China’s suggestion of new six-party talks with North Korea. “We want to respond to [the proposal] cautiously while consulting with the United States and South Korea,” Prime Minister Naoto Kan told reporters in Tokyo, according to The Straits Times.

In the past, Seoul has vetoed the idea of renewed six-party talks over the North’s nuclear program, saying it won’t participate until Pyongyang apologizes for the sinking of a southern warship last March, which killed 46 sailors. The Cheonan’s demise in the Yellow Sea not far from Yeonpyeong Island was blamed on a North Korean torpedo, but Pyongyang has denied any involvement.