Syrian Civil War Update: Rebels Again Attack Assad's Security Compounds

Despite a relentless pounding from Syrian military and loyalist militias, the rebel forces continue to more than hold their own against a better equipped force. The rebels have once again attacked security compounds in Aleppo and also along the border with Iraq:

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday that one of the assaults in Aleppo sparked a firefight that killed and wounded a number of government troops. It gave no figures.

Last month, rebel forces took control of parts of Syria's commercial hub, sparking fierce fighting there.

Also Friday, the monitoring group said government troops and rebels were locked in battle north of the capital, Damascus, and in Albu Kamal, on the Iraqi border. Internet video appeared to show fighting in Homs, Daraa and Damascus.

The fighting continues to inflict casualties on civilians and the war of words over Assad's backers continues as well. Egyptian leader Mohamed Morsi again attacked Iran over its support for the Assad regime during the meeting for nonaligned nations taking place in Tehran. Iran subsequently attacked Morsi for his calls for the nonaligned nations to act to bring the civil war to an end. Iranian officials have remained steadfast in their support of Assad.

Part of that reason could be that Assad thinks that he's winning. Despite Assad losing control of significant portions of the country, he thinks his military has the upper hand against the rebel forces. That could be due in part to delusions of grandeur, his military leaders telling Assad what he wants to hear rather than what the situation on the ground really is, or that he believes that the crackdown is working to rid himself of the rebel threat via a meatgrinder.

Turkey is calling for a safe haven, which seems to be a step towards establishing a no-fly zone to protect Syrians from the onslaught of air attacks.

UN Secretary General called on Assad to stop using heavy weapons against civilian populations. The call will go unheeded, as Assad has repeatedly shown that his only interest is preserving his power, not human rights or arranging some form of power-sharing with the opposition.

France is looking at ways of funneling aid to those parts of Syria that are controlled by the rebel forces.

What's Really Going On With Camden Police Force

NBC News breathlessly highlights that "one of the most dangerous cities in the nation is ditching its police force". That's not exactly the case in Camden, New Jersey.

The city has decided to cut costs by breaking the police union by calling in the Camden County police force to do the job of the formerly local police department. The county force is not unionized and has lower benefits and compensation than the local unionized police force did.

Camden is broke for all intents and purposes. It can't afford to maintain even its current paltry level of services. It has to look for ways to reduce those costs. One of the ways is to cut duplicative services. The county police force has the potential to do the same job as the existing police department - at a fraction of the cost.

Camden city officials have touted the move as necessary to combat the city’s growing financial and safety problems. The entire 267-member police department will be laid off and replaced with a newly reformatted metro division, which is projected to have some 400 members. It will serve only the city of Camden starting in early 2013.

“It’s not a money-saver, it’s living within the budget you’ve got to get more boots on the ground,” Camden County spokesperson Joyce Gabriel told NBC News. “There has been an uptick in violence this year, and the city decided to go with the county’s police department.”

Camden isn’t the first cash-strapped city to be faced with the decision to eliminate or merge its police department.

Bernard Melekian, director of the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office, told NBC News that as communities around the country recover from the recession, police mergers are part of a new reality that will likely continue through the next decade.

San Bernardino, Calif., files for bankruptcy with over $1 billion in debts
“This really reflects a much broader issue, which is that the economy is changing the delivery of police services profoundly,” Melekian said, “and those agencies undergoing regionalization and consolidation – in particular, smaller ones that are financially distressed – are going to have to find another way of delivering those core services.”

Despite Gabriel's comments, it is intended to save the taxpayers money. It's part of a larger effort across New Jersey to work with shared services or to combine municipalities and their services to reduce costs to taxpayers.

And it's not like the Camden police have done a tremendous job in reducing crime in the city. The city's crime rates exceed those of most other areas of New Jersey and are well ahead of national rates. Violent crimes have been increasing while property crime has declined.

The city needs to change how it deals with quality of life and public safety; this may be how it starts. The county police patrolling the city will end up being about 50% larger at a comparable cost to the current force. More manpower on the street means more officers around to patrol city streets and make their presence felt in high crime neighborhoods. If the city further adopts a CompStat system of policing, the new effort may see even more benefits as manpower is more focused on high crime areas and criminals are taken off the streets with greater effectiveness.

Dealing with the costs of policing aren't confined to high crime areas. Here in Bergen County, the fight is whether to merge the Bergen County Police with the Bergen County sheriff's office. Some opposed to the idea claim that it would politicize the functions previously done by the police since the sheriff is an elected official (whose job includes running the county jail). Bergen county is only one of two counties in the state to still have a county police department - in addition to the sheriff and all the local police departments. Those services should be merged, since it would save the county hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salaries, plus benefits.

More Details Emerge About Anarchist Plot At Fort Stewart

New details have emerged about that Fort Stewart terror plot involving anarchists. It turns out that one of the four soldiers was a suspect in his wife's death before he went and murdered two other people who were "loose ends" that needed to be taken care of before they could carry out their wider plots - to capture an ammo dump, commit mass murder, and assassinate the president.

Isaac Aguigui funded the anarchist militia FEAR, or Forever Enduring Always Ready, with up to $500,000 in life insurance benefits he collected after his wife's death in July 2011, prosecutors said.

Aguigui and three other soldiers stationed at Fort Stewart in southeastern Georgia near Savannah have since been charged with murder and other offenses stemming from the December 5, 2011, shooting deaths of a former soldier and his teenage girlfriend.

Aguigui, 21, and two others were scheduled to appear in court in Long County, Georgia, for a hearing on Thursday. A third co-defendant reached a plea deal with prosecutors on Monday.

The accused militia members had plotted to assassinate President Barack Obama and to attack their Army base and a dam in Aguigui's home state of Washington, Assistant County District Attorney Isabel Pauley said during those proceedings.

They also discussed poisoning the apple crop in Washington state and had purchased $87,000 worth of weapons to carry out their planned attacks, she said.

Prosecutors said the group crossed the line from conspiracy to actual violence when they killed Michael Roark, 19, and Tiffany York, 17, whose bodies were found in a wooded area near the base, in a bid to keep them from exposing the militia.

One of the four charged has already rolled on the other three - taking a plea deal for voluntary manslaughter and avoiding the death penalty as long as he continues cooperating.

Syrian Civil War Update: Even Bread Lines Aren't Safe From Assad's Attacks

Bashar al Assad is feeling the heat on all fronts. His security forces and loyalist goons can't stop the rebel forces from gaining and holding territory despite having a monopoly on air power and artillery. His backers remain at Iran, Russia, and China, and that may not be enough to keep him in power.

Egypt's new President Mohamad Morsi has called for an intervention in Syria and told Iran that it's thwarting a peaceful transition of power in Syria by backing Assad. Morsi called out Iran on Iran's home turf during a meeting of the non-aligned nations.

It's not surprising that Assad's diplomats walked out during Morsi's meeting. They have few friends among diplomats across the globe, and Morsi's criticism came on Syria's primary backer's doorstep.

Assad's regime keeps trying to play down the slow but steady stream of defectors, but the fact is that support for Assad within his regime isn't what it once was. The civil war rages on, the death toll mounts, and there is disillusionment with how Assad has handled everything - namely preserving power for himself at the expense of more than 20,000 lives across the country. The number of refugees is continuing to rise because the violence continues through the heart of Syria's urban areas. Those refugees are a problem not only for Syria, but the countries where they are seeking refuge. That is likely to inflame tensions and could potentially spur those countries, including Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan, to take action - closing down the border, military action against Syria, or demanding that the UN take more resolute action than weak worded resolutions that are teethless because Russia and China are blocking anything more constructive.

But most of all, his incessant attacks on civilians will take its toll. You cannot murder dozens of people by carrying out airstrikes against people queued up in lines for bread without all Syrians taking notice.

Dozens were killed when airstrikes over a period of days hit multiple breadlines in Aleppo.

Syrian jets and artillery have struck at least 10 bakeries in Aleppo in the last three weeks, killing dozens of people as they waited in line to buy bread, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday, accusing the military of targeting civilians.

The U.S.-based group said the attacks were either aimed at or were done without care to avoid the hundreds of civilians forced to queue outside a dwindling number of bakeries in Syria's biggest city, a front line in the civil war.

"The attacks are at least recklessly indiscriminate and the pattern and number of attacks suggest that government forces have been targeting civilians," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.

"Both reckless indiscriminate attacks and deliberately targeting civilians are war crimes."

One attack on August 16 killed around 60 people and wounded more than 70, said HRW, which sent a researcher to the embattled city.

Food shortages in Aleppo - a focal point of the 17-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad - have forced many bakeries to close, meaning huge queues for the food staple outside the remaining shops.

"Day after day, Aleppo residents line up to get bread for their families, and instead get shrapnel piercing their bodies from government bombs and shells," said Ole Solvang, the HRW researcher who visited Aleppo.

That's a textbook example of war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out by the Assad regime. Assad's forces targeted civilian populations and fired indiscriminately on civilian populations. Assad must be held to account for his atrocities.

The Mess That Is the New York Jets

As a New York Giants fan, I can't help but laugh at all the nonsense coming from the Giants' MetLife stadium mates - the New York Jets. The entire offseason has been a circus for the Jets. First, they picked up Denver Quarterback Tim Tebow even though they have a quarterback who has taken the Jets to the AFC Championship twice, but regressed last year. Then, they courted a quarterback controversy.

Throughout the preseason, the Jets offense has been missing in action. Actually, it's been worse than that. The offense has actually turned into points for the opposition while not putting up a single touchdown.

The offense is putrid. Yet, Coach Rex Ryan seems to be pinning the team's offensive success on a wildcat offensive system that has yet to be tested during the preseason.

Ryan keeps claiming that there's no reason to show the offense before the regular season opener against the Buffalo Bills.

Throughout the preseason, the Jets have zealously guarded the Wildcat portion of their offense that coach Rex Ryan has boasted about so much since they acquired Tim Tebow in a trade with Denver in March. Not only did they not use it in any public practices during training camp, they didn’t run it, not even for one play, during any of their first three preseason games.

And Tebow won’t play Thursday night in the preseason finale, Ryan said.

Why all the secrecy? Ryan truly believes it will make the formation and all its wrinkles that much more effective when the Jets finally unleash that Wildcat against Buffalo in the regular-season opener Sept. 9.

“There’s no sense in putting it out there on film,” Ryan said Tuesday. “Let [the Bills] guess and hopefully it messes them up.”

He admitted that he and offensive coordinator Tony Sparano made a conscious decision not to tip their hand at all.

“Yeah, we bounced it back and forth,” Ryan said. “But we made that collective decision that we thought it was in our best interest not to.”

Still, it could be argued that merely a few snaps in preseason game action against an opponent other than the Jets themselves could have helped Tebow and the rest of the players become more familiar with the scheme under game conditions. And really, the Jets could have done that without giving away too much that isn’t already known among NFL defensive coordinators.

The folly of the logic of not testing out the system in the preseason is that the first time they run the system in the regular season, every team they face down the line will be able to recognize it and prepare defenses to counter it. So, instead of preparing the team for how it will operate during the regular season, the Jets have put together an offense that can't score under a standard offensive scheme, and will leave it to wishful thinking that the wildcat will work past the first game.

There's absolutely no reason to believe that the offense will improve. After all, the offensive line can't protect the quarterback, create running lanes for running backs or Tim Tebow, and if they can't vastly improve on either front, the team will disintegrate before your very eyes. It will turn ugly.

In fact, there's already been signs of just how ugly it might get - with the team failing to score a touchdown thus far in the preseason, the first time that the offense sputters in the regular season will open up the possibility of a full-blown quarterback controversy that will only mire the rest of the season as a lost cause.

Yet, despite this self-imposed disaster, picking up Tebow helped sell newspapers and keep the Jets in the headlines.

That's all while the defending Super Bowl champion Giants went to business and are plugging away at getting their players ready for the grind and seeing who will fill the shoes left by the departed Brandon Jacobs and Mario Manningham. In both instances, it seems the Giants have found their men, and their chief concern is mitigating and minimizing injuries.

Hurricane Isaac Surprises With Flooding and Storm Surge

Hurricane Isaac isn't the strongest hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast or near New Orleans, but it's creating havoc because the storm is moving so slowly. The winds aren't the problem with the storm, it's the flooding rains and accompanying storm surge while the storm is progressing at a crawl.

The storm surge is higher than models had predicted yesterday. As Jeff Masters notes:

Isaac is bringing large and dangerous storm surge to the coast from Central Louisiana to the Panhandle of Florida. At 10 pm EDT, here were some of the storm surge values being recorded at NOAA tide gauges:

6.2' Waveland, MS
9.9' Shell Beach, LA
3.0' Pensacola, FL
4.4' Pascagoula, MS
3.4' Mobile, AL

The 9.9' storm surge at Shell Beach, which is in Lake Borgne 20 miles southeast of New Orleans, exceeds the 9.5' surge recorded there during Category 2 Hurricane Gustav of 2008. Research scientists running a Doppler on Wheels radar located on top of the 16' levees in Plaquemines Parish near Port Sulphur, LA, reported at 8:30 pm EDT that a storm surge of 14' moved up the Mississippi River, and was just 2' below the levees. Waves on top of the surge were cresting over the west side of the levee. Needless to say, they were very nervous. Over the past hour, the surge has retreated some, and waves were no longer lapping over the top of the levee. This is probably due to the fact that we're headed towards low tide. A storm surge of 9.5' has moved up the Mississippi River to the Carrrollton gauge in New Orleans. This is not a concern for the levees in New Orleans, since the storm surge has now brought the river up to 2.5' above its normal water level, which was 7' low due to the 2012 U.S. drought. The highest rise of the water above ground level will occur Wednesday morning over much of Southeast Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the western Florida Panhandle, when the tide comes back in. It is clear now that this storm surge event will be as dangerous as that of Category 2 Hurricane Gustav of 2008.

Plaquemines Parish is reporting that levees in the area have been overtopped by the storm surge and caused significant flooding. The levees involved aren't part of the network of levees upgraded or built to protect New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

The parish levees on the east bank are about 8.5 feet high, and some estimates have storm surge at 13 feet. At daylight, the National Guard is expected to launch a larger rescue effort, coming into the east bank through St. Bernard. After the wind subsides, other water and air rescue efforts likely will launch.

While federal levees in the area appear to be holding, problems in Plaquemines Parish are occurring in areas not protected by the federal system, which was revamped after Katrina.

Guy Laigast, director of the parish's emergency preparedness, says that an 18-mile stretch of the parish east bank back levees might be overtopped from Braithwaite to White Ditch and that some points might be seeing 110 miles per hour winds. There are many varying reports of wind speeds, generally ranging between 80 and 110 miles per hour.

"The devastation of my house is worse than Katrina and the flooding in Woodlawn is worse than Katrina, so those things tell me that the damage on the east bank is worse than Katrina," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said this morning.

So far, the New Orleans flood control systems are doing their job and protecting the city from the Mississippi River, the flooding rains, but this storm is going to take a long time before moving away from the region.

Law enforcement has been working to rescue those caught in the flood waters, but private citizens are also busy helping out their neighbors and others stranded by the flooding. One father-son team has already rescued 23 from the rising waters. Parts of the Gulf Coast could see up to 20 inches of rain with 7 to 14 inches falling over a widespread area.

The storm has left hundreds of thousands without power across the Gulf Coast,

Penn State University Priorities Askew

Penn State, which continues reeling from the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal, has decided that it will no longer play Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline at football games.

School officials say that the decision has come after a few years of deliberations about the use of the song and suggestive lyrics.

On Monday, it was revealed that Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” — a Beaver Stadium staple — will not be on the playlist when Penn State opens its season Saturday against Ohio U.

While the school denied the song’s removal had anything to do with the lyrics, “touching me, touching you,” it’s hard to imagine the powers that be at Penn State just decided the song had run its course.

“Sweet Caroline has been brought up in recent years as to whether or not it should remain a part of the playlist,” Greg J. Myford, Penn State’s associate athletic director of business relations & communications, said in a statement. “We hear from fans each year on whether or not we should continue it, given that it happens to be played in so many other professional and collegiate venues and has no real origination here at Penn State.”

It’s nice to see the school has its priorities straight.

The university considered removing the song from regular rotation in recent years? That means that Penn State devoted more attention to the playing of a song that has widespread airplay at sports events around the country - including as a mainstay of Boston Red Sox games - than it did to making sure that Sandusky's alleged sex abuse of minors was properly investigated and handled by law enforcement.

Penn State is more concerned about how it is viewed than in doing the right thing to protect the community.

The song has nothing to do with the scandal, and yet it has everything to do with how poorly school officials have handled the fiasco. It's an innocent bystander hit by the fallout, and the school's excuse rings hollow.

Penn State put more thought into removing the song from a playlist than it ever gave to Sandusky's abuse.

That's a sad state of affairs.

4 US Soldiers Charged In Terror Plot

Four US soldiers have been arrested on multiple charges in Georgia. Prosecutors also believe that the group was ultimately intending on assassinating the President. They were in the process of building up a weapons stockpile from which they could launch a myriad number of attacks:

Four Army soldiers based in southeast Georgia killed a former comrade and his girlfriend to protect an anarchist militia group they formed that stockpiled assault weapons and plotted a range of anti-government attacks, prosecutors told a judge Monday.

Prosecutors in rural Long County, near the sprawling Army post Fort Stewart, said the militia group composed of active duty and former U.S. military members spent at least $87,000 buying guns and bomb components and was serious enough to kill two people - former soldier Michael Roark and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Tiffany York - by shooting them in the woods last December in order to keep its plans secret.

"This domestic terrorist organization did not simply plan and talk," prosecutor Isabel Pauley told a Superior Court judge. "Prior to the murders in this case, the group took action. Evidence shows the group possessed the knowledge, means and motive to carry out their plans."

(snip)

The prosecutor said the militia group had big plans. It plotted to take over Fort Stewart by seizing its ammunition control point and talked of bombing the Forsyth Park fountain in nearby Savannah, she said. In Washington state, she added, the group plotted to bomb a dam and poison the state's apple crop. Ultimately, prosecutors said, the militia's goal was to overthrow the government and assassinate the president.

The Army brought charges against the four accused soldiers in connection with the slayings of Roark and York in March, but has yet to act on them. Fort Stewart spokesman Kevin Larson said he could not comment immediately on the militia accusations that emerged in civilian court Monday.

The group called itself FEAR: short for Forever Enduring Always Ready. The two murders were to eliminate a "loose end". The group recruited disillusioned soldiers or those who were in trouble. No word on the numbers in total recruited. They appear to be anarchist in nature, as members had anarchy-related tattoos.

While the four are in Army custody on the murder charges, these charges are going forward by the local prosecutors' office. Prosecutors note that the group went beyond mere planning or talking - they were already acting upon their plans and were stockpiling weapons and murdered two people to hide their intentions.

Tropical Storm Isaac Spares Florida, But Track Takes It Towards New Orleans

The storm track was great news for Florida, but the worst of all worlds for the Gulf Coast. While much of southern Florida was drenched with soaking rains and strong winds, the damage was minimal compared to what could have been.

The storm is now over the open water of the Gulf of Mexico and that's going to allow the storm to intensify. The tracks are putting it further and further to the west.

In fact, it appears that the track is shifting towards landfall in and around New Orleans. And it would come ashore as a very strong category 1 storm (max sustained winds of 90mph. They're anticipating strenghtening as it churns into the warm open waters of the Gulf.

Guess that New Orleans will see whether the Corps and the levee boards got their acts together and made sure that the levee system around NOLA will pass the test.

Forecasters are also predicting that the storm could drop up to 15 inches of rain locally. That's a tremendous amount of rain, and while the area inland is suffering from drought conditions, that kind of rain in a short time will mean flooding is expected and that runoff will not recharge aquifers and parched lands sufficient.

As with any storms along the Gulf Coast - the trick will be trying to figure out the storm surge. The storm surge is what did in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and much of the Gulf Coast shore communities from Biloxi to past New Orleans. This storm isn't likely to produce that kind of storm surge, but it's best to be prepared and have an action plan ready just in case local governments call for evacuations from low-lying or flood prone areas. Some localities have already called for evacuations near the Louisiana coast.

Several governors have already declared states of emergency, which allows them to better coordinate activities and emergency responses.