More than three years ago, as former national security officials, we penned an op-ed to raise awareness among the public, the business community and Congress of the serious threat to the nation's well being posed by the massive theft of intellectual property, technology and business information by the Chinese government through cyberexploitation. Today, we write again to raise the level of thinking and debate about ubiquitous encryption to protect information from exploitation.

In the wake of global controversy over government surveillance, a number of U.S. technology companies have developed and are offering their users what we call ubiquitous encryption — that is, end-to-end encryption of data with only the sender and intended recipient possessing decryption keys. With this technology, the plain text of messages is inaccessible to the companies offering the products or services as well as to the government, even with lawfully authorized access for public safety or law enforcement purposes.

The FBI director and the Justice Department have raised serious and legitimate concerns that ubiquitous encryption without a second decryption key in the hands of a third party would allow criminals to keep their communications secret, even when law enforcement officials have court-approved authorization to access those communications. There also are concerns about such encryption providing secure communications to national security intelligence targets such as terrorist organizations and nations operating counter to U.S. national security interests.

Several other nations are pursuing access to encrypted communications. In Britain, Parliament is considering requiring technology companies to build decryption capabilities for authorized government access into products and services offered in that country. The Chinese have proposed similar approaches to ensure that the government can monitor the content and activities of their citizens. Pakistan has recently blocked BlackBerry services, which provide ubiquitous encryption by default.

We recognize the importance our officials attach to being able to decrypt a coded communication under a warrant or similar legal authority. But the issue that has not been addressed is the competing priorities that support the companies' resistance to building in a back door or duplicated key for decryption. We believe that the greater public good is a secure communications infrastructure protected by ubiquitous encryption at the device, server and enterprise level without building in means for government monitoring.

First, such an encryption system would protect individual privacy and business information from exploitation at a much higher level than exists today. As a recent MIT paper explains, requiring duplicate keys introduces vulnerabilities in encryption that raise the risk of compromise and theft by bad actors. If third-party key holders have less than perfect security, they may be hacked and the duplicate key exposed. This is no theoretical possibility, as evidenced by major cyberintrusions into supposedly secure government databases and the successful compromise of security tokens held by a major information security firm. Furthermore, requiring a duplicate key rules out security techniques, such as one-time-only private keys.

Second, a requirement that U.S. technology providers create a duplicate key will not prevent malicious actors from finding other technology providers who will furnish ubiquitous encryption. The smart bad guys will find ways and technologies to avoid access, and we can be sure that the "dark Web" marketplace will offer myriad such capabilities. This could lead to a perverse outcome in which law-abiding organizations and individuals lack protected communications but malicious actors have them.

Finally, and most significantly, if the United States can demand that companies make available a duplicate key, other nations such as China will insist on the same. There will be no principled basis to resist that legal demand. The result will be to expose business, political and personal communications to a wide spectrum of governmental access regimes with varying degrees of due process.

Strategically, the interests of U.S. businesses are essential to protecting U.S. national security interests. After all, political power and military power are derived from economic strength. If the United States is to maintain its global role and influence, protecting business interests from massive economic espionage is essential. And that imperative may outweigh the tactical benefit of making encrypted communications more easily accessible to Western authorities.

History teaches that the fear that ubiquitous encryption will cause our security to go dark is overblown. There was a great debate about encryption in the early '90s. When the mathematics of "public key" encryption were discovered as a way to provide encryption protection broadly and cheaply to all users, some national security officials were convinced that if the technology were not restricted, law enforcement and intelligence organizations would go dark or deaf.

As a result, the idea of "escrowed key," known as Clipper Chip, was introduced. The concept was that unbreakable encryption would be provided to individuals and businesses, but the keys could be obtained from escrow by the government under court authorization for legitimate law enforcement or intelligence purposes.

The Clinton administration and Congress rejected the Clipper Chip based on the reaction from business and the public. In addition, restrictions were relaxed on the export of encryption technology. But the sky did not fall, and we did not go dark and deaf. Law enforcement and intelligence officials simply had to face a new future. As witnesses to that new future, we can attest that our security agencies were able to protect national security interests to an even greater extent in the '90s and into the new century.

Today, with almost everyone carrying a networked device on his or her person, ubiquitous encryption provides essential security. If law enforcement and intelligence organizations face a future without assured access to encrypted communications, they will develop technologies and techniques to meet their legitimate mission goals.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is modernizing its S-300 missile system to supply to Iran, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, RIA news agency reported.

"It has partially been updated, separate elements are still being updated," said Vladimir Kozhin, a presidential adviser on military matters, referring to the S-300 system. "It will be that very S-300 complex that Iran wanted to receive."

Russia says it canceled a contract to deliver the advanced missile system to Iran in 2010 under pressure from the West. But Putin lifted that self-imposed ban in April following an interim nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

Moscow is hoping to reap economic and trade benefits now that a more comprehensive nuclear deal between Iran and world powers has been reached, allowing for an easing of sanctions on the Islamic republic.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed Israel's "dismay" at Russia's decision to supply the S-300s to Iran.

(Reporting by Alexander Winning, editing by Larry King)

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N'DJAMENA (Reuters) - Chad said on Thursday its forces had killed 117 Boko Haram insurgents during a two-week military campaign aimed at clearing islands on Lake Chad used by the militants as hideouts and bases to launch attacks.

Chad has deployed thousands of soldiers alongside troops from neighbors Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger to tackle the militant group whose six-year insurgency has killed thousands.

"We killed 117 Boko Haram fighters during the two-week operation. We lost two men and several wounded," Colonel Azem Bermandoa, spokesman for the Chadian army, said.

"We destroyed their boats and seized various weapons during the operation," he said.

Boko Haram, which calls itself the Islamic State's West Africa Province (ISWAP) since pledging allegiance to the militant group that controls large areas of Syria and Iraq, has stepped up attacks in countries around the lake in recent months in response to a regional offensive.

Last weekend, suspected militants from the group raided several remote localities around the lake.

(Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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The Royal Thai Navy claims it urgently needs more submarines to compete with other Asian countries. The assistant commander made the claim aimed at persauding a skeptical public that the nation should invest in its military in a white paper sent to reporters, the Bangkok Post reported Thursday.

The navy's submarine-procurement committee wants to order three S26T submarines from China. It could take up to eight years for Thailand to acquire a new submarine.

U.S. officials have been closely watching the government's growing ties to China in recent months,DefenseNews reported. At the same time, the U.S. doesn't want to cozy up with Thailand's military leaders. A military junta declared a coup in May 2014 and created the National Council for Peace and Order.

"The U.S. is giving the junta the cold shoulder," said Martin Sebastian, head of the Centre for Maritime Security and Diplomacy, Maritime Institute of Malaysia.

The sub purchase could further increase tensions between Thailand and the United States as Washington tries to keep China from strengthening its military influence in Asia, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

"It is building into a kind of brinkmanship from Bangkok which will require the U.S. to weigh its values and interests carefully," he told DefenseNews. "Having China on its side is hugely important to the Thai military because it confers 'face' and international legitimacy while Western countries generally shunned and downgraded dealings with Thailand."

Thailand's military could use a modern makeover. It purchased a Spanish aircraft carrier in the 1990s but struggled to maintain it. Its nine AV-8 Harrier jump jet fighters are no longer in working condition. Thailand hasn't had a submarine in more than 60 years. It has tried to purchase submarines from various countries, including Germany and South Korea, since the 1990s, the Diplomat reported.

South Asia has been in a submarine race in recent years. Singapore has four active submarines and intends to buy two more from Sweden. Vietnam bought six submarines from Russia to add to its fleet of four subs. Germany and South Korea will bring the number of submarines in Indonesia to five by 2018. Malaysia unveiled two French-designed subs in 2012.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree Wednesday ordering the "destruction" of all food brought into the country against import bans on Western products. The import bans were part of sanctions instituted in 2014 in response to Western sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis, and they have greatly disrupted the daily lives of ordinary Russians who used to be huge importers of European goods.

The order will come into effect on Aug. 6. "[A]gricultural goods, raw materials and food originating from a country that has made the decision to introduce economic sanctions against Russian entities and/or individuals, or has joined such a decision, and which are prohibited from being imported into the Russian Federation ... are subject to destruction," the decree read, according to the Moscow Times.

The sanctions on Russia and those imposed by the country on Western countries have not affected Russia alone. Many European countries who were large exporters to Russia have also taken a hit. French dairy farmers have been protesting unfair prices and a shrinking market since the start of July, and a large part of that problem was due to the disappearance of the Russian market for French cheese.

The new decree does not pertain to the small amounts of Western goods that citizens are allowed to bring back from Europe or the U.S. for personal consumption. The limits of "personal consumption" have often been tested, with Russians attempting to smuggle large amounts of imported cheese or other specialty goods into the country. Earlier this month, a Russian man was caught attempting to smuggle1,000 pounds of contraband cheese into the country.

A large black market for these banned products has quickly emerged in the past year, complete with back room dealings.

Putin's decree was a continuation of policies in the past few months to solidify sanctions with Western nations and demonstrate that Russia has no intention of reversing them. Putin signed a decree renewing the sanctions for at least another year.

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LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria's Defense Ministry has appointed a new general to head the multinational army it is hoped can defeat the Boko Haram Islamic uprising that has killed 20,000 people and driven nearly 2 million from their homes.

Thursday's appointment comes as the West African nation's new president promised deeper collaboration with neighboring states in the fight against Islamic extremism.

President Muhammadu Buhari headed home Thursday after two days of talks in Cameroon focused on Boko Haram.

Its attacks have spread across Nigeria's borders and forced tens of thousands of refugees to flee to neighboring states.

Chad announced Thursday that its troops killed 13 Boko Haram fighters in attacks this week near Lake Chad, where militants slit the throats of three villagers.

It said the extremists had kidnapped about 30 people, and spirited them away on speed boats.

Nigeria's Defense Ministry said Maj. Gen. Iliyasu Isah Abbah will command the 8,700-strong four-nation army based in N'Djamena, Chad's capital.

Buhari has said it is a disgrace that Nigeria needs foreign troops on its soil. But he noted before leaving Cameroon that "none of us can succeed alone."

Relations with Cameroon have been strained by a long-simmering border dispute over the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula, but the two leaders agreed Thursday that demarcation of their border under U.N. auspices should be completed by year's end.

Nigeria's military, poorly equipped with soldiers reporting going into battle without rations and just 30 bullets, last year allowed Boko Haram to take control of a large swath of the northeast.

Chadian troops earlier this year forced the militants out of Nigerian border towns. Nigerian troops trained by South African mercenaries drove the extremists from most other towns.

But suicide bombings and village assaults have increased recently.

Buhari this month fired all the military's top commanders.

The former chief of defense staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, complained in a retirement address Wednesday that "fifth columnists" in the military and security agencies have leaked information to the insurgents, causing the deaths of many troops ambushed by militants who had advance warning.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — After billions of dollars spent and more than 10,000 extremist fighters killed, the Islamic State group is fundamentally no weaker than it was when the U.S.-led bombing campaign began a year ago, American intelligence agencies have concluded.

The military campaign has prevented Iraq's collapse and put the Islamic State under increasing pressure in northern Syria, particularly squeezing its self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa. But intelligence analysts see the overall situation as a strategic stalemate: The Islamic State remains a well-funded extremist army able to replenish its ranks with foreign jihadis as quickly as the U.S. can eliminate them. Meanwhile, the group has expanded to other countries, including Libya, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Afghanistan.

The assessments by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others appear to contradict the optimistic line taken by the Obama administration's special envoy, retired Gen. John Allen, who told a forum in Aspen, Colorado, last week that "ISIS is losing" in Iraq and Syria. The intelligence was described by officials who would not be named because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

"We've seen no meaningful degradation in their numbers," a defense official said, citing intelligence estimates that put the group's total strength at between 20,000 and 30,000, the same estimate as last August when the airstrikes began.

The Islamic State's staying power also raises questions about the administration's approach to the threat that the group poses to the U.S. and its allies. Although officials do not believe it is planning complex attacks on the West from its territory, the group's call to Western Muslims to kill at home has become a serious problem, FBI Director James Comey and other officials say.

Yet under the Obama administration's campaign of bombing and training, which prohibits American troops from accompanying fighters into combat or directing air strikes from the ground, it could take a decade to drive the Islamic State from its safe havens, analysts say. The administration is adamant that it will commit no U.S. ground troops to the fight despite calls from some in Congress to do so.

The U.S.-led coalition and its Syrian and Kurdish allies on the ground have made some inroads. The Islamic State has lost 9.4 percent of its territory in the first six months of 2015, according to an analysis by the conflict monitoring group IHS. And the military campaign has arrested the sense of momentum and inevitability created by the group's stunning advances last year, leaving the combination of Sunni religious extremists and former Saddam Hussein loyalists unable to grow its forces or continue its surge.

"In Raqqa, they are being slowly strangled," said an activist who fled Raqqa earlier this year and spoke on condition of anonymity to protect relatives and friends who remain there. "There is no longer a feeling that Raqqa is a safe haven for the group."

A Delta Force raid in Syria that killed Islamic State financier Abu Sayyaf in May also has resulted in a well of intelligence about the group's structure and finances, U.S. officials say. His wife, held in Iraq, has been cooperating with interrogators.

Syrian Kurdish fighters and their allies have wrested most of the northern Syria border from the Islamic State group. In June, the U.S.-backed alliance captured the border town of Tal Abyad, which for more than a year had been the militants' most vital direct supply route from Turkey. The Kurds also took the town of Ein Issa, a hub for IS movements and supply lines only 35 miles north of Raqqa.

As a result, the militants have had to take a more circuitous smuggling path through a stretch of about 60 miles they still control along the Turkish border. A plan announced this week for a U.S.-Turkish "safe zone" envisages driving the Islamic State group out of those areas as well, using Syrian rebels backed by airstrikes.

In Raqqa, U.S. coalition bombs pound the group's positions and target its leaders with increasing regularity. The militants' movements have been hampered by strikes against bridges, and some fighters are sending their families away to safer ground.

In early July, a wave of strikes in 24 hours destroyed 18 overpasses and a number of roads used by the group in and around Raqqa.

Reflecting IS unease, the group has taken exceptional measures against residents of Raqqa the past two weeks, activists say. It has moved to shut down private Internet access for residents, arrested suspected spies and set up security cameras in the streets. Patrols by its "morals police" have decreased because fighters are needed on the front lines, the activists say.

But American intelligence officials and other experts say that in the big picture, the Islamic State is hanging tough.

"The pressure on Raqqa is significant, and it's an important thing to watch, but looking at the overall picture, ISISis mostly in the same place," said Harleen Gambhir, a counterterrorism analyst at Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank. "Overall ISIS still retains the ability to plan and execute phased conventional military campaigns and terrorist attacks."

In Iraq, the Islamic State's seizure of the strategically important provincial capital of Ramadi has so far stood. Although U.S. officials have said it is crucial that the government in Baghdad win back disaffected Sunnis, there is little sign of that happening. American-led efforts to train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State have produced a grand total of 60 vetted fighters.

The group has adjusted its tactics to thwart a U.S. bombing campaign that tries to avoid civilian casualties, officials say. Fighters no longer move around in easily targeted armored columns; they embed themselves among women and children, and they communicate through couriers to thwart eavesdropping and geolocation, the defense official said.

Oil continues to be a major revenue source. By one estimate, the Islamic State is clearing $500 million per year from oil sales, said Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the Treasury Department. That's on top of as much as $1 billion in cash the group seized from banks in its territory.

Although the U.S. has been bombing oil infrastructure, the militants have been adept at rebuilding oil refining, drilling and trading capacity, the defense official said.

"ISIL has plenty of money," Glaser said last week, more than enough to meet a payroll he estimated at a high of $360 million a year.

Glaser said the U.S. was gradually squeezing the group's finances through sanctions, military strikes and other means, but he acknowledged it would take time.

Ahmad al-Ahmad, a Syrian journalist in Hama province who heads an opposition media outfit called Syrian Press Center, said he did not expect recent setbacks to seriously alter the group's fortunes.

"IS moves with a very intelligent strategy which its fighters call the lizard strategy," he said. "They emerge in one place, then they disappear and pop up in another place."

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - The al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front attacked Western-backed rebels in northern Syria on Friday, rebel groups and an organization monitoring the war said, escalating tension between rival insurgents near the Turkish border.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the monitoring group, also reported that warplanes believed to be part of a U.S.-led alliance had bombed Nusra Front positions in the area near the town of Azaz, north of Aleppo city.

The fighting, which the Observatory said had killed at least 13 people on both sides, points to one of the major complications facing U.S. and Turkish plans to jointly sweep Islamic State militants from northern Syria.

The Nusra Front, one of the most powerful insurgent groups in northern Syria, has a track record of crushing rebel groups that have received support from Western states, including the Hazzm movement that collapsed earlier this year.

Opposition sources say that one of the rebel groups targeted in Nusra's overnight attack, Division 30, has been a participant in the newly launched U.S.-led program to train and equip insurgents to fight Islamic State.

Division 30 says Nusra fighters abducted its leader and several other members earlier this week. The Pentagon has said however that no members of the "New Syrian Force" had been captured or detained.

Division 30 said Nusra Front fighters attacked its headquarters at 4.30 am in the area near Azaz. Five members of Division 30 were killed as they held off the attackers, it said.

The group has accused the Nusra Front of abducting its leader and several other members earlier this week.

Syrian opposition sources say members of Division 30 have been trained under the U.S.-led train and equip program launched in May. The Pentagon has however cast doubt on the report, saying that no members of the "New Syrian Force" had been captured or detained.

Another rebel group in the area said it had also clashed with Nusra Front in Azaz.

Jaish al-Thuwar, a rebel alliance formed earlier this year said in a statement posted on Facebook on Friday four of its members and at least eight attackers had been killed.

The Nusra Front, which Washington has designated a terrorist organization, last year routed the Syria Revolutionaries Front led by Jamal Maarouf, viewed as one of the most powerful insurgent leaders until his defeat.

It was also instrumental in the demise of the U.S.-backed Hazzm Movement, which collapsed earlier this year after clashing with the Nusra Front in the northwest.

Washington and Ankara this week announced their intention to provide air cover for Syrian rebels and jointly sweep Islamic State fighters from a strip of land along the border, with U.S. warplanes using bases in Turkey for strikes.

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One of the most notorious spies in American history will walk out of prison by the end of the year.

On November 20, Jonathan Pollard will be paroled 30 years after being convicted of spying for Israel.

It's not hard to see why Pollard's case has been such a consistent source of controversy over the past three decades.

Pollard was spying on behalf of a US ally and received a life sentence despite pleading guilty and fully cooperating with US investigators. He turned over thousands of classified documents and even allegedly sold documents to Pakistan and apartheid South Africa as well.

For some, Pollard is a victim of what they believe to be the US national-security establishment's discontent toward its close operational relationship with Israel, and that he was used as a blunt tool for bringing an often difficult ally to heel. For others, Pollard was nothing more than a particularly energetic traitor who sold crateloads of secrets to a foreign government.

The debate over Pollard, and what, if anything, his case may still mean for the US-Israel relationship probably won't end any time soon. But news of his release is an opportunity to revisit the US intelligence community's authoritative read on one of the most controversial affairs in the recent history of American national security.

In 2012, the National Security Archive at George Washington University successfully compelled the US government to release a version of the CIA's 1987 damage assessment of Pollard's espionage. The heavily redacted document expands upon an almost entirely redacted version of the study's preface, released in 2006.

The damage assessment is a window into the tangled world of mid-1980s global power politics — as well as into a high-stakes intelligence operation gone horribly and perhaps inevitably wrong.

Here are some of the more startling bits of the CIA's assessment of a spy drama that's still a source of contention 30 years later.

Pollard stole an astounding amount of stuff.

"Pollard's operation has few parallels among known US espionage cases," the damage assessment states.

Pollard stole "an estimated 1,500 current-intelligence summary messages," referring to daily reports from various regions of interest to US national security. He stole another 800 classified documents on top of that.

During the investigation into his espionage, Pollard recalled that "his first and possibly largest delivery occurred on 23 January [1984] and consisted of five suitcases-full of classified material."

He delivered documents to his Israeli handlers on a biweekly basis for the next 11 months, with only a short break for an "operational trip" to Europe.

In contrast, Adolf Tolkachov, who was one of the most valuable US intelligence assets of the Cold War, met with his CIA handlers fewer than two dozen times over the course of seven years.

Pollard and his handlers' tradecraft seemed shoddy.

As the assessment notes, Pollard gave himself away by blatantly accessing documents that were far outside of his professional purview:

But his handlers don't come off looking terrible competent either. One handler wanted Pollard to report on whether US intelligence had any potentially incriminating information about high-level Israeli officials and to help root out Israelis passing information to the US.

After this individual left the room, Pollard's most immediate handler reportedly told him he would terminate the operation if he complied with his supervisor's order, a sign that there were certain disagreements within the Israeli side on how the operation should proceed and what kind of information their asset should target.

Pollard also delivered 1,500 intelligence summaries that the Israelis never explicitly asked him for; despite the potential to expose the operation, Pollard's handlers kept accepting them anyway. And they didn't seem to care that such large, biweekly intelligence deliveries could expose their asset.

And there seemed to be little consideration for the undue harm the operation could do to Israel's relationship with the US. The damage assessment gives a strong impression that Israeli operatives believed that their lack of interest in US weapons systems or capabilities could insulate them from a major incident if Pollard were ever exposed. After all, according to the report, "Pollard's objective was to provide Israel with the best available US intelligence on Israel's Arab adversaries and the military support they receive from the Soviet Union."

But they were wrong.

In some ways, Pollard's espionage took place in an entirely different world ...

The Israelis were primarily interested in getting two things out of Pollard: information about Pakistan's nuclear program and information relating to Soviet upgrades to the conventional arsenals of the Arab states (with a particular focus on Syria). Pollard also provided details of the Palestine Liberation Organization's compounds in Tunis, Tunisia, which the Israelis used during a 1985 raid.

The damage assessment notes that Israel was particularly keen on obtaining an NSA handbook needed to decrypt intercepted communications between Moscow and a Soviet military-assistance unit in Damascus, Syria. Pollard attempted emergency communications with his Israeli handlers on just two occasions: once to provide intelligence on an impending truck-bomb attack and another time to warn that the Soviet T-72M main battle tank had entered service with Hafez Assad's Syrian military.

Israel was eager for information on Soviet weapons systems that would likely be passed to the Arab states, and wanted information on armaments Israel would face if the conflict with the Arab states ever escalated into a hot war.

Today, there's little conventional military threat to Israel's existence, the Soviet Union is defunct, and Syria is no longer a unitary state.

But at one point, Israel was willing to jeopardize its relationship with the US to gain an advantage in all of these areas.

... and, in some ways, it's the same world.

Pollard's Israeli handlers at least tried to make it seem as if the US wasn't the target of their espionage, as Pollard was instructed not to take any information related to US weapons systems or strategic and military planning.

But this is arguably a moot point: Pollard exposed highly sensitive operational details of US intelligence collection, giving invaluable insight into US intelligence methods, sources, and collection priorities. That said, the Israelis at least tried to avoid making the US — rather than Soviet and Arab militaries — the primary target of Pollard's espionage.

Still, it's possible to glimpse fissures between the US and Israel in the damage assessment.

Pollard's espionage was enabled by the US's refusal to share information that the Israelis considered vital to their national security — even though the US is never under any obligation to share the entirety of their intelligence with any foreign state, regardless of how closely allied it may be. The US had perfectly valid reasons to withhold certain intelligence.

For instance, the damage assessment notes that Pollard's spying was damaging partly because what it might have led the Arab states to conclude about the US's strategic posture:

The US and Israel are different countries with interests and objectives that sometimes contradict. Sometimes they diverge in ways that only become visible when a Pollard-type scandal breaks, which is rarely.

And sometimes they diverge on a geopolitical level, as is currently occurring in the controversy over the Iranian nuclear deal, a top US foreign-policy priority that Israel's leadership vehemently opposes.

Israel versus Syria

Like this interesting aside about how long US intelligence believed it would take Hafez Assad's army to retake the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, which Israel seized during the 1967 Middle East War and which Syria had used as a staging area for invasions of Israel in 1948 and 1967:

The name of the agency that gave the more pessimistic assessment is still redacted, strongly suggesting that this was the view of a US entity.

So some office within the US intelligence community believed that the Defense Intelligence Agency had a highly inflated view of Israeli military capabilities — or was underestimating the military strength of the Assad regime.

Read the entire damage assessment here.

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We can all agree that the Nazi Party was a band of terrifyingly cruel, delusional sickos. What you may not know, however, is that Hitler’s SS minions were also sometimes really, really dumb.

From failed propaganda campaigns to ridiculous assassination attempts, the Germans were not short on weird.

1. Operation Holy Hitler (aka let's kidnap Pope Pius XXII)

In some ways, Hitler was kind of an understated guy. He was a vegetarian and didn’t like smoking. But mostly, as we know, he was an egotistical maniac.

One of the best examples of the Fuhrer’s self-love came about in the 1930s, when he decided that local Catholic schools had a shocking lack of Adolf Hitler memorabilia on their walls.

This was quickly remedied by replacing the classroom crucifixes with pictures of his face. How no one thought this was insane is pretty damning of human intelligence as a whole, but maybe the kids were just really tired of having to look at a an emaciated Christ all day.

Once Hitler had figuratively substituted God for himself, he decided to take it a step further.

And since literally pulling Christ from the sky wasn’t an option, he decided to take out the next best thing: the Pope. Did we mention this was part of a larger plan to abolish all religions and declare himself as God of Germany? Because that was also a thing.

Hitler didn’t want to nix the Pope purely for vanity’s sake, however. In 1943, Pope Pius XII started to publicly denounce the Nazi’s blatant abuses of human rights. This did not fly in Germany. Eventually, the Pope’s thinly veiled condemnations of Hitler’s activities went too far, and it was at that point that a real plan was set into action. Hitler brought SS Gen. Karl Wolff into his office, beckoned him closer, and said, “I want you and your troops to occupy Vatican City as soon as possible, secure its files and art treasures, and take the Pope and curia to the North.”

So far this plan sounds like something a Bond villain would cook up: flashy, intriguing, but not completely insane. Then phase two comes into play, and all of that goes out the window.

Here’s the plan in a nutshell: Once Nazi soldiers had captured the Vatican and the Pope, a second group would infiltrate the Holy City, pretending to be a rescue party. But instead of rescuing the Pope, they would claim that the first group of Nazis were actually Italian assassins, slaughter them all and “accidentally” shoot the Pope amid the chaos if he didn’t cooperate. If he kept his head down, they would drag Pius XII back to Germany and lock him in a castle. Then the Nazis would blame the Italians, and everything would be roses.

At least, that was the plan. Luckily, Wolff realized that this was completely psychotic and tipped off the Italians, who were rightfully pissed. He wasn’t very subtle about it either, going so far as to agree to an interview with a local Italian newspaper, the Avvenire, which is owned by the Catholic Church. The Guardian writes that in the newspaper Wolff reportedly announced, “I received from Hitler in person the order to kidnap Pope Pius XII.”

The weirdest part of this story, however, is that according to historian Robert Katz, assassinating Pope Pius XII wouldn’t have benefited Germany or the Axis powers at all. Hitler was prepared to screw up everything just out of spite. Or maybe he secretly wanted the Pope hat, who knows.

2. The “degenerate art” gallery that was actually a massive success

Before the Swastika flew over Deutschland, the soon-to-be Nazi nation was experiencing an incredible art renaissance. Dadaism and the Bauhaus movement were taking the world by storm, and the art community was looking to Germany for the best in cutting-edge modern art.

Then the book-burnings began. Art now had to fit the “Nazi ideal,” upholding Aryan values and praising the brilliance and prestige of the Fuhrer. Movies and plays were censored, operas canceled, and paintings confiscated. The German art scene was being completely dismantled, and people were not happy about it.

The Nazis knew that people were pissed about these new “creative restrictions,” but felt that they were just misguided.

People don’t actually know what they want until you show it to them, right? This was the Nazi strategy.

To redirect the poor, misguided art enthusiasts of Munich, they would first show them what they shouldn’t want — by organizing an art exhibit called “Entartete Kunst,” or “degenerate art.” The gallery was supposed to showcase why modern art was actually awful and not cool at all.

Over 650 sculptures, paintings, prints, and books were confiscated from public German museums to be “shamefully” displayed in the gallery. The Nazis arranged the art pieces haphazardly to make them appear less attractive and wrote up explanations of why they were inferior, undesirable contributions to the art world and the Nazi regime in general.

Then the Nazis simultaneously opened their own art exhibit, the “Great German Art Exhibition,” one with Aryan-approved art only. This way it would be clear to the public which was the superior art genre, and settle the matter once and for all.

This did not go well.

Unimpressed with the perfectly sculpted, tasteful bronze nudes that filled the “superior” art gallery, the German art lovers ditched the stuffy exhibit and headed to — you guessed it — the degenerate art gallery. In the end, five times as many people visited the Entartete Kunst, thrilled to finally have legitimate art on display. In only one day, 36,000 visitors flooded the taboo gallery, completing ignoring the “Great German Art Exhibition” taking place just a few minutes away.

After the degenerate art gallery was closed, the featured pieces were burned, confiscated by Nazi officials, or sold to museums at auction. The pieces that were saved can be found in museums all over the world today, and the Entartete Kunst is considered by many to be one of the most culturally significant art exhibits of all time.

3. That time Hitler’s “Perfect Aryan Baby” ended up being Jewish

When you establish yourself as an extremist war-mongering regime, you need to make sure you have some killer PR to, you know, convince people that you aren’t actually an extremist war-mongering regime.

Joseph Goebbels, the head of Nazi propaganda, learned this fairly early on. So, in order to make the Third Reich appear a little more cuddly (which is ironic, since the dude looked like Dracula), he began a national campaign in 1935 to find the “perfect Aryan baby” — a child so pale and Germanic it could be the measuring stick for all infant beauty.

You would think the chosen Nazi baby would fit the white-blonde, blue-eyed ideal, but for whatever reason Goebbels selected a brunette, brown-eyed baby. Mistake number one if you’re the head of Nazi propaganda.

Goebbels then set about plastering the Nazi-Gerber baby’s picture over all of Germany. She showed up in fliers, newspapers, postcards, and propaganda posters of all kinds.

Most people were pretty unfazed by the doll-faced baby that was suddenly appearing everywhere, accepting her as an unusually cute edition to the militaristic landscape of Nazi Germany.

Jacob and Pauline Levinson, on the other hand, were terrified to see the soon-to-be famous photo on the cover of “Sonne in Hause,” a Nazi family magazine. Why? The Master Race baby was their daughter — and she was Jewish.

Let’s rewind six months. The Levinsons had taken their young daughter, Hessy, to get her picture taken by photographer Hans Ballin, a prominent Berlin photographer.

After the quick photo shoot they thanked Ballin, paid for their prints, and headed home, thinking that was the end of it. For Ballin, it was just the beginning.

What the Levinsons didn’t know was that the talented photographer secretly hated the Nazis — a lot. Like Brad Pitt in Inglorious Basterds a lot.

So when Ballin found out that Goebbels had created a photo contest designed to find the perfect Aryan child — a child that Goebbels would personally select — he couldn’t resist the opportunity to undermine the entire thing.

“I wanted to make the Nazis ridiculous,” Ballin confessed, according to The Telegraph.

So, like the rebel artist he was, Ballin submitted the photo of little Hessy to the contest, hoping that Goebbels would bite. And as luck would have it, he did.

Unfortunately, this put the Levinsons in a lot of danger, and they ended up having to flee to Latvia.

The Nazis later learned of their mistake, but never who Hessy was or where her family was hidden.

In an interview with Death and Taxes Magazine last year, the 80-year-old Hessy (who now lives in the US) confessed: “I can laugh about it now. But if the Nazis had known who I really was, I wouldn’t be alive.”

And who wouldn’t laugh? With Hessy’s picture, Ballin had effectively trolled the Nazis on an international scale.

The Third Reich didn’t learn from its mistake, either: They would later choose a half-Jewish man as the premier example of what a full-blooded Aryan soldier should be.

4. The “Lebensborn” Nazi baby factory

The Nazis really had a weird thing for babies.

During Hitler’s rise to power, thousands of babies were born into “Lebensborn” programs, which were basically Nazi baby-breeding factories created under Heinrich Himmler.

The children were raised to be in peak physical condition and were groomed to emulate the Nazi standard of beauty.

They were given a strict diet, were indoctrinated into the Nazi way of thinking and even had their hair treated with ultraviolet lightif the nurses suspected it was starting to turn anything but Nazi-approved white-blonde. Seriously.

Where exactly did these babies come from, you ask? A few different places. Many of the children were the product of the government encouraging SS soldiers to “get to know” the prettiest girls in the European nations they conquered during Germany’s expansion. Then if the ladies were lucky enough to get pregnant, they would be sent to a Lebensborn house, which literally means “font of life” when translated.

As in these babies would be the “font” that would kick-start the Aryan population of Germany and its captured lands, ensuring a smiling, blue-eyed super race. The unwed mothers were free to stay and live with their children, so long as they complied with the home’s methods and adopted a proper Nazi lifestyle. Orphaned children were adopted out by upstanding German families.

Babies were also abducted from surrounding countries, so long as they were beautiful (Poland estimates that it lost as many as 100,000 children during the war).

The darker, “less desirable” children would be sent to concentration camps with their parents. The same was true of children born in the homes; if a child was particularly non-Germanic looking, or resisted Nazi teachings once he or she was a little older, they would be sent to be gassed at a death camp. The babies that made the cut grew up to be some of an estimated 250,000 children who were Nazified under the Lebensborn program during the war.

Tragically, many parents would surrender their children to the Lebensborn program in an attempt to keep them from the horrors of the concentration camps. Most of them were simply taken, however, despite their Jewish ethnicity. Looking the part was enough for the program as long as you grew up to love Hitler and despise the Jewish race like the Nazi nurses who raised you, apparently.

When the war ended and the Allies invaded, they found several Lebensborn homes still full of children.

Of the estimated hundreds of thousands of children who were part of the program, only about 25,000 were reconnected with their original families.

Many of the parents had been killed during the war, but some children refused to be reunited with their real families, believing themselves to be superior and racially pure after the Nazis’ brainwashing.

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When the USS Indianapolis was sunk by Japanese torpedoes in the final weeks of WWII, around 900 men of the crew jumped into the water to escape the burning ship.

Yet that was just the start of their horror story.

It was 30 July 1945, two days ago the USS Indianapolis delivered crucial components for the first atomic bomb to a U.S. Naval base on the Pacific Island of Tinian, when she set sail for the Leyte Gulf in the Philippines to meet the USS Idaho.

All of a sudden, just passed midnight, a torpedo from the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58, hit the USS Indianapolis in the starboard bow and igniting a 3,500 gallon tank of aviation fuel into a pillar of fire.

Just after the first explosion, a second torpedo hit the ship causing a massive set of explosions and obliterated the ship almost in half. The ship started to tilt to its right side and heading straight down into the ocean. Tons of water rushed in, sinking the USS Indianapolis in just 12 minutes.

“Twelve minutes. Can you imagine a ship 610 ft long, that’s two football fields in length, sinking in 12 minutes? It just rolled over and went under”, a veteran remembered.

Around 300 of the 1,196 crewmen went down with the ship, 900 others jumped into the water – many without lifejackets – and were left drifting in the Pacific Ocean, hoping to be rescued quickly. Only beneath the waves, another danger was lurking, hundreds of sharks would soon become the survivors worst nightmare. The survivors would await the same fate as the survivors from ‘La Seyne‘, a French Liner that sunk in 1909, who were constantly attacked by sharks.

According to sources the animals were drawn by the sound of the explosions, the sinking of the ship and the thrashing and blood in the water. Specialists believe the attacks were done by oceanic whitetips. Oceanic whitetips tend to be scavengers and they’ll investigate anything that could be food floating on the surface. This behavior means that they are likely responsible for open-ocean attacks following air or sea disasters.

One of the survivors Woody E. James remembered: “You’d hear guys scream, especially late in the afternoon. Seemed like the sharks were the worst late in the afternoon than they were during the day. (…). Everything would be quiet and then you’d hear somebody scream and you knew a shark had got him.”

Though not only sharks were the killers, under the scorching sun, without any food or water for days, men were dying from exposure or dehydration day after day. Some starting to hallucinate. Their life jackets waterlogged, many became exhausted and drowned.

Thought Navy intelligence intercepted a message from the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58, describing how it had sunk an American battleship along the Indianapolis’ route, the message was disregarded as a trick to lure American rescue boats into an ambush. It would take four days before any help came a shore and only because a Navy plane flying overhead spotted the survivors and radioed for help.

From the USS Indianapolis’ original 1,196 crewmen, only 317 remained. An estimated number from survivors who were killed by the sharks range from a few dozen to almost 150.

SEE ALSO: Incredible photos a son found of his father in Okinawa

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NOW WATCH: How the US military spends its billions

Turkey's airstrikes on ISIS targets in northern Syria and Kurdish PKK camps in northern Iraq have coincided with a nationwide crackdown on suspected militants and extremists operating within its own borders.

But a recent terror attack in the southeast has drawn attention to the many extremists potentially slipping through the cracks due to gaps in Turkey's legal system.

"There are multiple reports of Turkish IS members who return from Syria and are let go after their trial," Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider via email. "This is largely due to the unclear legal definition of" ISIS (also known as Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh) in Turkey.

Even if the militants are caught by Turkish authorities crossing the border, prosecutors generally can't keep them detained for long, Schanzer notes.

This is because — unlike for members of the designated terrorist organization PKK operating inside Turkey — Ankara has yet to adopt a comprehensive legal framework for how to deal with militants returning home after fighting with ISIS in Syria.

"If the individuals were identified as PKK, for example, they could be detained and convicted for being part of a legally-defined terrorist organization," Schanzer said. "But because these individuals are [Islamic State], they cannot be convicted unless lawyers can prove that they committed terrorism inside Turkey."

"These people could be watched or followed by the police after they are let go, but they are free," he added.

The Turks apparently altered their laws as part of the EU accession process to make it more difficult to detain foreigners for terror activity.

“Because of legal adjustments necessary to harmonize with the European Union, the authority of our security forces to check the identity of suspects and detain them has been restricted," a gendarmerie officer on the Turkish-Syrian border told Al-Monitor. "For example, even if we know for sure that someone is an IS militant, we can’t touch him unless he has been involved in a violent crime in Turkey.”

The legal framework that allows Turkish police to round up members of the PKK was also built to encourage defections from the group, Aaron Stein, Middle East expert and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told Business Insider.

But that Turkey lacks a legal definition for what these returning foreign fighters do that actually breaks the law "seems like a massive oversight," he said.

"There is­ no unified or clear idea across coalition partners about what to do with people who come home, and this is a general weakness in the overall approach to fighting ISIS."

Then again, Stein noted, "history shows that locking these guys up doesn't work either, because they radicalize in prison."

A suicide bombing in the southeastern Turkish town of Suruc — carried out on July 20 by a suspected ISIS-affiliated student — killed 32 young activists who had been calling on Ankara to help rebuild the Syrian border town of Kobani, which was retaken by Kurdish forces from ISIS in January but was attacked again by the militants in late June.

The bombing prompted further outrage across the country as Turks protested what they perceived to be Ankara's soft attitude towards the jihadists. “Murderous ISIL, collaborator AKP [Turkey's ruling party]" was a frequent chant of protesters. 

NATO member Turkey has long been accused by experts, Kurds, and even Joe Biden of enabling ISIS by turning a blind eye to the vast smuggling networks of weapons and fighters during the ongoing Syrian war. A recent Guardian report suggested that Turkish officials had "undeniable" links to ranking ISIS members.

"There have to have been high level ties between ISIS and Turkey," Schanzer said. "The notion that there was no communication between ISIS and Turkey, I can’t accept it."

Of the 1,050 people detained by Turkish police in the last week – including suspected members of the Islamic State, the PKK and the and ultra-leftist DHKP-C — 50-60 of them are foreigners, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Monday.

"Focusing on the PKK threat is misguided," Stein noted, "but it would be very political sensitive to put forward a law that would deal with foreign fighters."

SEE ALSO: Turkey is 'playing a dangerous game' with ISIS — and what comes next could make it worse

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The government of Saudi Arabia has requested several hundred Lockheed Martin Corp.-made Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles and other equipment as part of a potential $5.4 billion deal.

The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency on Wednesday announced the possible foreign military sale after notifying Congress the day before. The State Department has tentatively approved the transaction.

The arrangement calls for supplying the Kingdom with more than 600 PAC-3 missiles, telemetry kits, test targets, computers, launcher modification kits, among other equipment, according to the announcement.

It comes just days after Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed — the world’s largest defense contractor —landed a $1.6 billion defense contract to supply several governments in the Middle East and Asia with the technology, which targets ballistic and cruise missiles and aircraft in the terminal flight phase.

It also comes just weeks after Iran and several Western countries, including the US, reached a landmark accord meant to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Saudi Arabia opposed the agreement out of concern that it would boost the Iranian economy and allow the rising regional power to eventual develop nuclear weapons.

As talks for the pact progressed, Saudi Arabia announced nuclear energy and arms deals with Russia. U.S. Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has criticized the Obama administration for pursuing a deal with Iran that has alienated key allies in the region such as Saudi Arabia.

“The Saudis just purchased $1 billion in weapons systems from Russia,” he said at an event earlier this month at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC. “They think they have to go their own way because they can’t rely on us.”

In a so-called Foreign Military Sale, or FMS, the US buys weapons or equipment on behalf of a foreign government. Countries approved to participate in the program may obtain military hardware or services by using their own funding or money provided through U.S.-sponsored assistance programs.

“The proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a partner which has been, and continues to be, an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East,” the DSCA announcement states.

“The proposed sale will modernize and replenish Saudi Arabia’s current Patriot missile stockpile, which is becoming obsolete and difficult to sustain due to age and limited availability of repair parts,” it states. “Saudi Arabia, which already has Patriot missiles in its inventory, will have no difficulty absorbing these additional missiles into its armed forces.”

SEE ALSO: The Saudi King's vacation in Cannes is enraging locals

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday forcefully condemned the arson attack on a Palestinian family — in which an infant was burned to death — as a “horrific, heinous” crime that is “a terror attack in every respect.”

Two homes in the Palestinian village of Duma, south of Nablus, were set alight, and the Hebrew words “Revenge” and “Long live the king messiah” were spray-painted on their walls, alongside a Star of David, overnight Thursday-Friday, apparently by Jewish extremists.

The child killed in the attack, Ali Saad Dawabsha, was 18 months old. The infant’s parents, as well as his 4-year-old brother, were all injured and evacuated to the hospital. The mother and toddler were in critical condition.

“I am shocked by this horrific, heinous act,” said Netanyahu in a statement. “This is a terror attack in every respect. The State of Israel deals forcefully with terror, regardless of who the perpetrators are.”

The prime minister said he instructed the security forces to “use all the resources at their disposal to capture the killers and bring them to justice as soon as possible.”

Netanyahu offered condolences and a speedy recovery to the members of the Dawabsha family, and said the Israeli government was “unified in its fierce opposition to these awful, base acts.”

The prime minister’s remarks were echoed by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and the Israel Defense Forces on Friday morning, who called it a “serious terror attack,” and by politicians from both sides of the aisle.

The IDF was also beefing up its West Bank presence in anticipation of riots. Hamas had already declared Friday a “Day of Rage” to protest the deaths of several Palestinians by Israeli forces in the past few weeks, and demonstrations were expected to escalate into violence.

“The arson and the murder of the Palestinian baby Ali Dawabsha is a serious terror attack that cannot be tolerated, and we condemn it outright,” stated Ya’alon. “We will chase down the murderers until they are caught.”

IDF Spokesman Moti Almoz commented, “I cannot recall such a serious incident in the past few years.

“It’s a crime, and we are calling it a terror attack for all intents and purposes,” he stated.

The IDF was sweeping the area for the perpetrators.

Thousands of troops were dispatched to the West Bank and the Temple Mount, amid fears of riots.

Condemnations from left and right

The Duma attack was denounced Friday morning by politicians from both sides of the political aisle.

Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett said the attack was not “a ‘hate crime’ or a ‘price tag’ — it’s murder.

“Terror is terror is terror,” Bennett added. “The torching of the house in Duma and the murder of the baby is a shocking terror attack that is unfathomable.”

Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman condemned the “heinous act,” and urged the security forces to do their utmost to track down the killers.

Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid called it an act of war and treason. “We’re at war. He who burns a Palestinian baby declares war on the State of Israel. He who stabs young people on a Pride March declares war on the State of Israel. He who burns down a church declares war on the State of Israel. He who threatens to attack the Supreme Court with a D9 bulldozer declares war on the State of Israel. He who throws rocks at the security services declares war on the State of Israel. The members of ‘Lehava’ are traitors who assist the enemy at a time of war. The young people who attacked Arabs in Jerusalem, traitors. Anyone who chants ‘Death to the Arabs’ at a Beitar Jerusalem match, a traitor to our homeland,” Lapid said.

Lapid said his son had received an emergency IDF call up “because the enemy acted last night in Duma… This time the enemy is from here, from inside, from within us. They are a fifth column. They are the natural partners of Hamas, of Hezbollah, of ISIS. They look like us but they aren’t like us. They are traitors to all that is sacred to us, traitors to the very idea on which the State of Israel was founded, traitors to Judaism. And they’re trying – like the enemy always tries — to destroy the State of Israel … We’re at war. For the future, for Zionism, for our existence. Like in every one of Israel’s wars we cannot afford to lose.”

Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog decried the “terrible tragedy” and “horrifying hate crime.

“This is terror of the worst kind,” continued Herzog, likening it to the brutal killing of East Jerusalem teenager Muhammed Abu Khdeir, 16, last summer by Jewish extremists.

The two homes — one of which belonged to the Dawabsha family, and the other, which was empty at the time — were set on fire by unidentified assailants at around 2:00 a.m. According to some reports, the fire was caused by Molotov cocktails that were thrown into the house. Others claimed the home was doused with flammable material and set alight.

The parents woke up and tried to get their children out of the house, but were unable to save their youngest son. Local residents said four men were seen fleeing the scene in the direction of the nearby Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Efraim.

The Yesha Council settler organization expressed “shock and disgust” at the attack. It said it “hopes they [the perpetrators] will be swiftly caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

Dani Dayan, the former head of the Yesha Council settler organization, told Army Radio he hoped those responsible would be caught.

“Such crimes must be rooted out without hesitation,” he said. “If anyone is inciting to such crimes, they too should be thrown into jail.”

SEE ALSO: What the CIA thought of the most notorious US espionage case before Snowden

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Gen. Joseph Dunford, the commandant of the Marine Corps, has declared an initial squadron of 10 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35B fighter jets ready for combat, sources familiar with the decision said Friday.

The decision, to be announced formally later Friday, makes the Marines to first US military service to declare an "initial operational capability" of the F-35 fighter, a key milestone for the $391 billion program after years of cost overruns and schedule delays.

The F-35B model of the aircraft can take off from shorter runways and land like a helicopter.

The F-35 progam is the single most expensive military program in history. The expected lifetime cost of the program is estimated at $1.5 trillion. The cost reflects the wide range of abilities that the F-35 is meant to possess. 

The aircraft comes in three varieties, each of which is specialized for a branch of the military. While the Marines have the F-35B, which can take off like a helicopter, the Air Force and Navy have the F-35A and C models respectively. 

Although the F-35 is meant to ultimately replace the legacy US aircraft and function as a Jack-of-all-trades combat system, the plane has suffered from multiple shortcomings and delays to date. Aside from massive cost overruns, the aircraft suffers from a plethora of problems including software delays and flight control issues. 

Most recently, a test variant of the F-35A was incapable of effectively dogfighting against an F-16 legacy jet that it was meant to replace. 

(Additional Reuters reporting by Andrea Shalal)

SEE ALSO: Watch the F-35 perform a low-altitude flyby at its first-ever civilian air show

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NOW WATCH: This $200 million plane is called the 'most lethal fighter aircraft in the world'

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - At the Taliban meeting this week where Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was named as the Islamist militant group's new head, several senior figures in the movement, including the son and brother of late leader Mullah Omar, walked out in protest.

The display of dissent within the group's secretive core is the clearest sign yet of the challenge Mansour faces in uniting a group already split over whether to pursue peace talks with the Afghan government and facing a new, external threat — Islamic State.

Rifts in the Taliban leadership are likely to widen after confirmation this week of the death of elusive founder Omar.

Mansour, Omar's longtime deputy who has been effectively in charge for years, favors talks to bring an end to more than 13 years of war. He recently sent a delegation to inaugural meetings with Afghan officials hosted by Pakistan, hailed as a breakthrough.

But Mansour, 50, has powerful rivals within the Taliban who oppose negotiations, notably battlefield commander Abdul Qayum Zakir, a former inmate of the U.S. prison in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay.

Zakir is pushing for Mullah Omar's son Yaqoob to take over the movement, and a sizeable faction also supports Yaqoob.

Yaqoob and his uncle Abdul Manan, Omar's younger brother, were among several Taliban figures who walked out of Wednesday's leadership meeting held in the western Pakistani city of Quetta, according to three people who were at the shura, or gathering.

"Actually, it wasn't a Taliban Leadership Council meeting. Mansoor had invited only members of his group to pave the way for his election," said one of the sources, a senior member of Taliban in Quetta.

"And when Yaqoob and Manan noticed this, they left the meeting."

PEACE TALKS IN JEOPARDY

The leadership shura, or gathering, was held outside Quetta, where many Taliban leaders have been based since their hardline regime in Afghanistan was toppled in a 2001 U.S.-led military intervention.

Afghan Taliban leaders have long had sanctuaries in Pakistan, even as Pakistani government officials have denied offering support in recent years.

Mansour leads the Taliban's strongest faction and appears to control most of its spokesmen, websites and statements, said Graeme Smith, senior Afghanistan analyst for the think-tank International Crisis Group.

But some intelligence officials estimate Mansour only directly controls about 40 percent of fighters in the field, he said.

That could make it difficult for him to deliver on any ceasefire that could emerge from future negotiations.

And Taliban insiders say that by sending a three-member delegation to meet Afghan officials in the Pakistani resort of Murree earlier in July, Mansour sparked new criticism.

Especially riled were members of the Taliban's political office in Qatar, who insisted only they were empowered to negotiate.

"People ... were not happy with Mullah Mansour‎ when he agreed with ‎Pakistan ... to hold a meeting with Kabul," said a Taliban commander based in Quetta.

"The Qatar office wasn't taken into confidence before taking such an important decision."

The Quetta shura has sent a six-member team to Qatari capital Doha to meet with one of its leaders, Tayyab Agha, seeking his support for Mansour, according to another Taliban source close to the leadership.

RELATIONS WITH PAKISTAN

The divisions threaten a formal split in the Taliban. They also provide an opening to rival Islamic State (IS), the Middle East-based extremist movement that has attracted renegade Taliban commanders in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This month, two Afghan militant groups swore allegiance to Islamic State, and more could follow suit.

Despite threats both internal and external, Taliban fighters have been gaining territory in Afghanistan, where they are trying to topple the Western-backed government.

This week another district, this time in the south, fell to insurgents, who have exploited the absence of most NATO troops after they withdrew at the end of last year.

Opponents of Mansour criticize him for being too close to Pakistan's military, which has long been accused of supporting the Afghan insurgency to maintain regional influence.

Pakistan has pushed Taliban leaders based in its territory hard to come to the negotiating table at the request of ally China and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

But many Taliban, and some Afghan officials, fear the recent talks are a ploy by Pakistan to retain control. The Pakistanis deny that.

Still, Mansour cannot afford to alienate Pakistan, said Saifullah Mahsud of the Islamabad-based FATA Research Centre.

"No matter who is in charge of the Taliban in Afghanistan, they will have no choice but to have a good relationship with the Pakistani state. It's a matter of survival," Mahsud said.

"I don't think this agreement to go to the negotiating table is determined by personality; its more about the circumstances."

Despite the opposition, Mansour retains a personal power base within the Taliban, and if he can keep the movement together it could lead to a new era for the insurgents.

Bette Dam, author of an upcoming biography of Mullah Omar, said the supreme leader's absence paralyzed many Taliban officials.

Mansour could provide a more active focus for both the movement's rank-and-file and those seeking to engage the Taliban.

"If he gets the credibility, it might not be such bad news to have Mansour replace the invisible Mullah Omar," she said.

(Additional reporting by Katharine Houreld in Islamabad and Jessica Donati in Kabul; Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of US troops deployed in battle zones is at its lowest level since before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Still, Congress has authorized a 38 percent increase in the war budget over last year.

The contradiction is the legacy of an emergency war fund, started in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, that has become a favorite Washington way to sidestep the impact of fiscal constraints on military spending.

The Overseas Contingency Operations account, or OCO, has been tapped to fund tens of billions of dollars in programs with questionable links, or none, to wars, according to current and former US officials, analysts and budget documents.

The mutation of the fund's original purpose has long been tolerated by Republican and Democrats. But its central role in a looming US government budget showdown has brought fresh focus to the war fund, which is little known outside Washington.

This spring, Congressional Republicans abandoned any pretense that OCO should be used for its stated purpose — the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and related operations. In a maneuver to increase defense spending, they simply approved adding $38 billion in other, non-war Pentagon spending to the account, bringing the total to $89 billion.

In doing so, lawmakers tapped OCO's budget magic: as a contingency fund, it doesn't count against budget caps on defense and non-defense spending imposed in 2011.

Sen. John McCain acknowledged the move was "a contradiction of what OCO was supposed to be all about many years ago, when we started it as a result of Afghanistan and Iraq."

President Barack Obama has threatened to veto defense spending bills over what the White House calls the OCO "gimmick." The administration wants budget caps lifted for both defense and domestic spending. It's one of the major sticking points in a Washington budget struggle that could leave part or all of the US government unfunded after Sept. 30.

More is at stake than an accountants' dispute over different pots of money, officials and analysts say.

"It's the worst thing that could happen to budget discipline," said Gordon Adams, a former White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official.

Pentagon leaders warn that the budget uncertainty will undermine planning as Washington confronts challenges from Islamic State militants to China's expansion in the South China Sea.

Obama campaigned for president in 2008 promising to end what he called President George W. Bush's "abuse" of supplemental budgets to fund wars. He has reined in OCO spending, which peaked in 2008 at $187 billion - but only to a point.

"The difficulty was putting the genie back in the bottle," said a former White House official, particularly after the budget caps were imposed in 2011.

Obama proposed $51 billion in OCO spending for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, along with a regular $534 billion defense budget.

But only about $25 billion of that would directly fund US combat-related operations, essentially the cost of keeping about 9,800 troops in Afghanistan this year, and fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Reuters has learned from US officials.

Another $25 billion represents long-term Pentagon costs that have gradually found their way into OCO, an administration official told Reuters. Those costs, all sides agree, belong in the Pentagon's normal annual spending - called the base budget.

For 2016, Obama requested $789 million in OCO funds to reassure European partners worried about Russia and $2.1 billion for a Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund to boost allies' security forces.

Such programs don't meet the definition of war spending, said former OMB official Mark Cancian, who in 2009 helped write non-binding criteria detailing what the war fund should pay for.

"Both sides, Congress and the Executive, contravened the criteria when it was in their interest to do so," said Cancian, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

Expanding "gray areas"

The United States spent $1.6 trillion on the Iraq and Afghan wars and related operations between fiscal years 2001 and 2014, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) said in December.

But $81 billion of that was spent on "non-war" costs, CRS found. The true figure is likely much higher: OCO money isn't audited to ensure it was used for war operations.

"There's a lot of money in the OCO that should probably be in base (budget)," Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work acknowledged last year. "It just happened over 12 years."

Robert Hale, a former Pentagon comptroller, said budget supplemental bills are supposed to pay "the added costs of war." Special danger pay for troops and replacements for destroyed vehicles could be included legitimately, but not regular salaries or new weapons systems.

Over time, more and more OCO expenditures fell into "gray areas," he said.

Experts say that a complete accounting of questionable OCO spending may be impossible. But based on interviews and budget documents, examples include:

- This year, Congress added $1 billion for a National Guard and Reserve equipment account the Pentagon hadn't requested, as well as $532 million for military construction worldwide. That includes a hangar in Italy for a Navy submarine-hunting aircraft.

- Several billion dollars to transform the U.S. Army beginning in 2004 from a division-based force to a brigade-based one.

- $351 million this year for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense shield.

Former officials and analysts pegged October 2006, as the date the definition of war spending began to be stretched. Then-Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England instructed the military brass to use supplemental budget funds for prosecuting "the longer war against terror," not just the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The message was just think more broadly about what you put in your war budget. Put more in there. And they did," said Todd Harrison, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Gordon could not be reached for comment.

Administration officials dispute they have violated the 2009 war-funding guidelines, arguing that Obama's programs meet OCO's underlying premise of funding unanticipated costs.

In today's uncertain world, some kind of contingency fund will likely be needed for years, experts say. OCO helped pay for the U.S. response to West Africa's Ebola outbreak, for example.

"It's time to step back and redefine OCO," Hale said. But with a budget battle and presidential campaign looming, that's unlikely to happen soon, he added.

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It may seem strange that a meat packing plant received recognition as a UNESCO cultural site of significance, but the Anglo meat packing plant in Uruguay has played a fascinating and vital role in history for years. 

The plant was established in 1859 by the Liebig's Extract of Meat Co. of Germany, and it later changed its name to the Anglo meat processing plant when a British firm took it over in 1924, according to the AP.

It became world-renowned for its production of corned beef, OXO bouillon cubes, and more than 200 other meat products that became staple foods that were exported for soldiers during World War I and World War II. 

Its iconic corned beef cans have become famous worldwide as symbols of the two wars, appearing in the film "Gallipoli" (when cans of the corned beef are shown in the middle of the battle of the First World War) and in "The English Patient."

Today the cans are preserved in the local Museo de la Revolución Industrial. 

The town of Fray Bentos, where the plant is located, became so famous for its meat products that it became known as "The Great Kitchen of the World," and its products became integral to British soldiers during the war.

"Not only did our products fill European stomachs; they also got into European hearts and minds," Rene Boretto, director of the Museo de la Revolución Industrial, said in an interview with the BBC. "In World War I, soldiers would say 'Fray Bentos' to indicate that something was good, the same way we nowadays say OK."

In fact, according to the BBC, during the first World War, British soldiers even named one of their few tanks Fray Bentos because they felt like tinned meat when they were inside it. 

In the 19th century, German chemist, Justus von Liebig, created a meat "tonic," which we know today as the bouillon cube. He moved to Uruguay, where he went into cattle processing with Belgian engineer, Georg Gieber.

Their factory first opened as the Liebig Extract Meat Company in 1859. 

By 1887, the factory had become in such high demand from Europe that it had its own district with houses, cleaning and garbage services, a workers' district and a specialized hospital for staff. 

The plant was eventually taken over by a British firm and it operated day and night until it closed in 1979. Over 5,000 workers maintained the plant everyday, processing around 400 cows an hour and 2,000 sheep per day, making it one of the most advanced meat processing technology developers in South America. 

To honor its history, the plant was recently named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Today, the Museo de la Revolución Industrial stands at the site, displaying antique photos of the working factory and the plant's original machinery.

SEE ALSO: 24 incredible new UNESCO World Heritage Sites

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NOW WATCH: Top chef explains how to make the perfect prime rib

The American Southwest is in the midst a catastrophic drought.

It’s so bad, in fact, that it’s caused Lake Mead — a massive oasis in the middle of Mojave Desert formed by the Hoover Dam — to recede to the lowest levels ever seen. As of June, water levels were 154 feet below normal.

For the adventurous few, the lower water level is a chance to get closer to history than ever before, up close and personal with a B-29 bomber that has sat on the lake bed for over 70 years.

The B-29 “Superfortress” played many roles in World War II, including carrying the atomic bomb, but this particular plane didn’t make it to the Pacific theater, or even out of Nevada ...

In 1948, while on a secret mission high above the Mojave Desert, this B-29 crashed with five crew members on board, all of whom survived. The plane didn't fare as well.

Today, over 70 years later, the plane remains untouched on the bottom of Lake Mead. Thanks to falling water levels, it’s becoming easier to find and explore.

NOW WATCH: People were baffled by 50 sharks circling in shallow waters off the English coast

Washington (AFP) - The United States on Friday condemned what it said was a "vicious terrorist attack" after suspected Jewish settlers burned Palestinian homes and killed an 18-month-old baby.

A statement from the US State Department urged Israel to "apprehend the murderers" and called on both sides to "avoid escalating tensions in the wake of this tragic incident."

SEE ALSO: What the CIA thought of the most notorious US espionage case before Snowden

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