A flood of scandals engulfs Obama

From spinning Benghazi to politicizing the IRS to spying on the AP, a raft of embarrassing revelations is crippling the president

President Obama has had a tough week, and it's about to get a lot worse.

The past few days have seen a cascade of evidence that the administration not only feigned transparency, but may have covered up the politicization of the IRS and the response to the terrorist attack on the Benghazi consulate. Whistle-blowers on the Benghazi response moved that story back into the headlines, but not for long. Because on Friday, theIRS admitted that it had targeted conservative groups for aggressive investigations. And that wasn't even the worst of the scandals.

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On top of everything, Obama's Department of Justice spied on the AP, and may have found a way to alienate a national press that had done its best to downplay any hint of corruption in this White House.

Let's start with the Benghazi attack and the issue of what the White House knew and when. This scandal has bubbled below the surface for the past few months, but the embarrassing shift more than a week after the attack from the fiction that the attack started as a demonstration over a YouTube video to a belated acknowledgment that it had been a planned terrorist attack — and that there had been no demonstration at all — had not been forgotten on Capitol Hill.

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Three State Department career employees finally came forward to tell Congress last week that no one had even suggested to the State Department that a demonstration had taken place. Gregory Hicks, who was the deputy chief of mission in Libya, told the House Oversight panel that he personally briefed Hillary Clinton during the attack, and that no demonstration had taken place, and that the supposedly catalytic YouTube film about Mohammed was a "non-factor" on the ground. Hicks also said that his "jaw dropped" when he heard Susan Rice tell five different Sunday talk shows that the attack started with a spontaneous demonstration at the consulate, directly contradicting what Libya's president was telling U.S. news outlets at the same time.

Eric Nordstrom undercut the White House defense of relying on a rather soft scolding from its Accountability Review Board by accusing the panel of deliberately overlooking the role of senior State Department officials in ignoring a string of urgent requests for more security. That has also happened before, and resulted in attacks on American embassies in 1998. Who was in charge of security issues then? Why, the same man who holds the position today — Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, Nordstrom pointed out:

"[The ARB] has decided to fix responsibility on the assistant secretary level and below. And the message to my colleagues is that if you're above a certain level, no matter what your decision is no one's going to question it. I look back and I see the last time we had a major attack was East Africa. Who was in that same position, when the unheeded messengers… were raising those concerns? It just so happens it was the same person. The under secretary for management was in that same role before."

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And this was the least of the scandals that erupted over the last week. The IRS scandal was entirely new, and at first blush bad enough to drive the Benghazi story out of the headlines. Lois Lerneradmitted that her IRS unit overseeing tax-exempt groups had expressly targeted groups with words like "Tea Party," "Patriot," and "9/12" in their names for extra scrutiny. Lerner claimed that this took place only last year among "low-level workers" in the Cincinnati office that handles those applications. Over the weekend, though, it became clear that Lerner left a lot of other information out.

As leaks from an upcoming Inspector General report began on Saturday and rolled through today, a much different picture emerged. The enhanced scrutiny wasn't applied only on the basis of word searches, but also to any groups critical of the way government was being run. The extra scrutiny didn't start in June 2012, as Lerner claimed, but in March 2010 — before the midterms, when Tea Party groups campaigned in opposition to the ObamaCare bill that passed (coincidentally?) in that same month.

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Managers from two different units began coordinating those efforts as early as April 2010. Lerner had learned of it in 2011, not just recently, as her apology implied. So had the chief counsel of the IRS, seven months before then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testified in two different House hearings that no such special scrutiny was being applied. The current commissioner, Steve Miller,found out in May 2012 — but Miller failed to mention it to Congress in testimony given the following month. The activist watchdog site ProPublica announced late Monday that the IRS leaked nine of the applications — which were supposed to be kept confidential — to their reporters late in 2012. All nine files were from conservative groups.

As bad as that was, the IRS scandal wasn't even the worst news for Obama. Just when he needed a sympathetic media to help downplay the politicization of the IRS and the rinsing of the Benghazi talking points (which Obama dismissed as "no there there" in a Monday press conference), theAssociated Press announced that the Department of Justice had seized two months of phone records of as many as 100 of its reporters and three of its offices. The presumed trigger for this was a leak investigation into a May 2012 story about the CIA operation in Yemen that kept an airliner bomb plot from reaching fruition. Rather than alert the AP that it would subpoena the phone records, the DoJ seized them secretly, claiming that notifying the AP would "pose a substantial threat to the investigation" — even though the AP can't bury the records of the phone companies involved, even if it was inclined to try.

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Suddenly, conservative claims of active intimidation and pressure from the White House looked a lot less conspiratorial to the media. Erik Wemple at the Washington Post called the action "a dagger to the heart of AP's newsgathering activity." What source will trust that their identity will remain anonymous if the government can seize the phone records without warning? The ACLU called it "an unacceptable abuse of power," which is what conservative groups had called the IRS's attack on them for most of the past three years.

What does the harmonic convergence of these stories tell us? First, it's clear that at the very least, this administration has allowed abuses of power to run unchecked for years — out of ignorance at best, and malice at worst. The extraordinary attack on the AP and its reporting may get the media's attention, but the attempt to massage the Benghazi attack through 12 sets of talking points and to allow the nation's tax power to harass and attack the administration's opponents present a at least as great an injury to accountability and representative democracy. Perhaps now that the media has also become a target for the administration, they might start taking these injuries a little more seriously.

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Analysis: Syria's savagery will thwart reconciliation

By Oliver Holmes

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian soldiers slowly stab a man to death, puncturing his back dozens of times. A rebel commander bites an organ ripped out of an enemy combatant. A young boy hacks the head off a prisoner. A soldier mutilates the genitals of a corpse.

These are the images of Syrian conflict, the first war in which the prevalence of camera phones and Internet access has allowed hundreds of gruesome war crimes to be broadcast, spreading hatred and fear. They are defining the war that is spilling across Syria's borders and making reconciliation an ever more distant prospect.

Brutality has been used as a tool since the revolt began two years ago, when videos emerged of government soldiers torturing pro-democracy protesters. In response to the crackdown, the opposition took up arms and now fighters from both sides are filming themselves committing atrocities.

Ghoulish footage of violence is not filmed surreptitiously, but with pride by the assailants who often speak to camera.

Rebel commander Abu Sakkar, known to journalists and revered by many rebels, was shown in a video on Sunday cutting organs out of a dead soldier, addressing the camera as he ripped the flesh: "I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers," he warned President Bashar al-Assad's forces as his men cheered.

Sakkar was a founding member of the Farouq Brigade, one of the main rebel units in Syria, but has since formed his own battalion as the opposition fragments. In the mosaic of hundreds of opposition groups, Sakkar's men are seen as neither secular nor hardline Islamists, but as some of the hardiest fighters.

Another picture posted online shows a rebel holding the severed head of a man, supposedly an Assad loyalist, over a barbecue as if to cook it. The fighter smiles and poses confidently, gripping a tuft of hair.

ZERO SUM GAME

Reinoud Leenders, an associate professor in the war studies department of King's College London, says that these brutal displays are used as a tool of war by both sides.

"It's the ultimate expression of disrespect and dehumanizing your opponent," he said.

In the face of an insurgency, he says, Assad's forces have used mass killings and torture to root out rebel fighters hiding among civilians.

"The regime has difficulty in pinning down opposition members, so they scare civilians from the area to get the rebels exposed. It looks irrational and emotional but there are rational reasons," he said.

Nadim Houry, a Syria and Lebanon researcher for Human Rights Watch, has documented abuses since the start of the revolt and says that he is seeing more and more brutal acts.

"Both parties are acting like they are facing an existential threat," he said. The opposition and the government see the war as a zero sum game, both fighting for survival, he says.

This fear of defeat silences condemnation from supporters of both sides, he says. The main Syrian opposition group condemned the video of a rebel commander taking a bite from the dead soldier but many opposition supporters dismissed the brutality.

On some opposition Facebook pages people celebrated the act. Others berated the media for highlighting one particular event, saying they should focus on indiscriminate killing of men, women and children by Assad's war planes and militia.

The Syrian government has never acknowledged brutality in army ranks, instead referring to people killed by soldiers as "terrorists" and areas captured by its forces as "cleansed".

Syria's war started as a popular uprising against the Assad dynasty, which has ruled for over four decades using secret police, intimidation and brute force.

But majority Sunni Muslims lead the revolt, while Assad gets his core support from his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, leading to sectarian fighting and hatred.

International powers have taken sides, with the West and Gulf countries supporting the opposition, while Iran and Russia back Assad. While war crimes are condemned in words, there has been no real deterrent for the perpetrators, which Houry said has allowed atrocities to continue.

"What is particularly troubling is the silence of the international powers," Houry said. He referred to a recent army and loyalist militia attack in the coastal town of Banias in which at least 62 people, including babies, were killed.

"We have been seeing (these massacres) for over a year. What is shocking is the level of indifference. People shrug their shoulders and look away," said Houry.

Since Syria never signed up to the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, the court could only investigate allegations of brutality there with a referral from the United Nations Security Council - something permanent members Russia and China have so far blocked.

RECONCILIATION

The United States and Russia have proposed a peace conference to try to end the war, but savagery from both sides means that the unlikely event of a peace agreement might not stop atrocities and fighting between increasingly disparate militias.

"The ideas of reconciliation are now unrealistic. The conflict is as much about the conflict itself than pro- or anti-regime," Leenders said. "I see a total mismatch between the US and Russian narrative and what is going on in Syria."

In its sectarian nature and big power inertia, the Syrian conflict has drawn comparisons with Bosnia, which was torn apart by Serbs, Croats and Muslims in a 1992-95 war that gave the world the term ‘ethnic cleansing' and was marked by some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War Two.

Almost 17 years since that war ended, the wounds are still raw. Bodies are still being dug up and a cycle of blame and denial weighs on efforts to reconcile communities. Bitterness runs deep and spills into politics, stifling development.

Details of the worst atrocities are coming to light even now. Each side clings to its own narrative of the war.

In March, an ethnic Montenegrin man was jailed for 45 years for killing 31 people and raping at least 13, including a pregnant woman in front of her young child.

The judge in the case said the defendant, Veselin Vlahovic, nicknamed Batko, sometimes forced his victims to kiss his hand as he beat them, and once ordered a man to have sex with the corpse of a woman whose throat had been cut.

In Srebrenica, 8,000 Muslim men and boys were gunned down in five summer days in 1995, their bodies bulldozed into pits, buried and reburied in a bid to conceal the crime. Many Serbs still dispute the figures, despite mountains of testimony at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

The strength of feeling on all sides has made political compromise in the name of peace difficult, at times impossible, and acts as a brake on development.

In Lebanon, which lies next to Syria and fought its own 15-year civil war which ended in 1990, fault lines between religions remain strong and armed militias still come to blows as a weak government looks on helplessly.

Many Lebanese fighters accused of war crimes are now politicians as people support powerful members of their sect to safeguard against the influence of their foes.

"We don't have real reconciliation in Lebanon right now. Reconciliation requires justice," said rights researcher Houry, who lives in Beirut. "There is a tear at the fabric of Syria, similar to what we saw in Lebanon."

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Matt Robinson in Belgrade and Thomas Escritt in The Hague; Editing by Giles Elgood)

(Advisory: The picture previously posted with this story was incorrect and has been removed.)

Boats carrying fleeing Rohingya Muslims capsize

Internally displaced Rohingya girl walks with a sibling in rain at a makeshift camp for Rohingya people in Sittwe, northwestern Rakhine State, Myanmar, ahead of the arrival of Cyclone Mahasen, Tuesday, May 14, 2013. The U.N. said the cyclone, expected later this week, could swamp makeshift housing camps sheltering tens of thousands of Rohingya. Myanmar state television reported Monday that 5,158 people were relocated from low-lying camps in Rakhine state to safer shelters. But far more people are considered vulnerable. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

Internally displaced Rohingya girl walks with a sibling in rain at a makeshift camp for Rohingya people in Sittwe, northwestern Rakhine State, Myanmar, ahead of the arrival of Cyclone Mahasen expected later this week, Tuesday, May 14, 2013. The U.N. said the cyclone could swamp makeshift housing camps sheltering tens of thousands of Rohingya. Myanmar state television reported Monday that 5,158 people were relocated from low-lying camps in Rakhine state to safer shelters. But far more people are considered vulnerable. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

SITTWE, Myanmar (AP) — An overcrowded boat capsized while trying to escape a cyclone bearing down on Myanmar, tossing dozens of Rohingya Muslims into the sea. Eight bodies were found and more than 50 people were missing and feared dead, the United Nations said Tuesday.

More than 100 Rohingya were aboard the boat when it set sail late Monday night, said James Munn, an official with the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The U.N. said tens of thousands of Rohingya were endangered by the storm. About 140,000 people — mostly Rohingya — are living in flimsy tents and makeshift shelters in Rakhine state. They sought refuge in the camps after two outbreaks of Buddhist-Muslim violence last year.

Ashok Nigam, the United Nations' humanitarian coordinator in Myanmar, said nearly 70,000 of the displaced should be moved to higher ground. They are in low-lying areas along the coast that are highly susceptible to tidal surges and flooding. It was raining at the camps on Tuesday.

Cyclone Mahasen is expected to make landfall late Thursday or early Friday. The storm was heading toward Chittagong, Bangladesh, but could shift east and deliver a more direct hit on Rakhine state, according to Myanmar's Meteorology Department. Heavy rains and strong winds are expected to batter Rakhine.

Myanmar state television reported Monday that 5,158 people had been relocated from low-lying camps in the Rakhine state capital Sittwe to safer shelters, and an unspecified number from other areas. The U.N. said the government's plan had been to evacuate 38,000 internally displaced people on Monday and Tuesday.

International rights and aid agencies urged that the evacuations be stepped up.

"If the government fails to evacuate those at risk, any disaster that results will not be natural, but man-made," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Many people in Buddhist-majority Myanmar see Rohingya Muslims as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, even though many have lived in Myanmar for generations, and they are denied citizenship as a result.

Myanmar's southern delta was devastated in 2008 by Cyclone Nargis, which swept away entire farming villages and killed more than 130,000 people.

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Nigeria president declares state of emergency

In this photo taken with a mobile phone, Tuesday, May. 7, 2013, Bakura Ibrahim, a suspected member of Islamic extremist group arrested by soldiers is tied to a tree in Bama, Nigeria. Coordinated attacks by Islamic extremists armed with heavy machine guns killed at least 42 people in northeast Nigeria, authorities said Tuesday, the latest in a string of increasingly bloody attacks threatening peace in Africa's most populous nation. The attack struck multiple locations in the hard-hit town of Bama in Nigeria's Borno state, where shootings and bombings have continued unstopped since an insurgency began there in 2010. Fighters raided a federal prison during their assault as well, freeing 105 inmates in another mass prison break to hit the country, officials said. (AP Photo/Abdukareem Haruna)

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Admitting Islamic extremists now control some of his nation's villages and towns, Nigeria's president declared a state of emergency Tuesday across the country's troubled northeast, promising to send more troops to fight what he said is now an open rebellion.

President Goodluck Jonathan, speaking live on state radio and television networks, also warned that any building suspected to house Islamic extremists would be taken over in what he described as the "war" now facing Africa's most populous nation. However, it's unclear what the emergency powers will do to halt the violence, as a similar past effort failed to stop the bloodshed.

"It would appear that there is a systematic effort by insurgents and terrorists to destabilize theNigerian state and test our collective resolve," Jonathan said.

Jonathan said the order will be in force in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. He said the states would receive more troops, though he will not remove state politicians from their posts. Under Nigerian law, the president has the power to remove politicians from their posts and install a caretaker government in emergency circumstances.

The president's speech offered the starkest vision of the ongoing violence, often downplayed by security forces and government officials due to political considerations. Jonathan described the attacks as a "rebellion," at one point describing how fighters had destroyed government buildings and "had taken women and children as hostages."

"Already, some northern parts of Borno state have been taken over by groups whose allegiance are to different flags than Nigeria's," Jonathan said.

The president later added: "These actions amount to a declaration of war and a deliberate attempt to undermine the authority of the Nigerian state and threaten (its) territorial integrity. As a responsible government, we will not tolerate this."

Since 2010, more than 1,600 people have been killed in attacks by Islamic insurgents, according to an Associated Press count. Recently, Nigeria's military has said Islamic fighters now use anti-aircraft guns mounted on trucks to fight the nation's soldiers, likely outgunning the country's already overstretched security forces.

Meanwhile, violence pitting different ethnic groups against each other continues, with clashes that kill dozens at a time. In addition, dozens of police officers and agents of the country's domestic spy agency were recently slaughtered by a militia.

One of the main Islamic extremist groups fighting Nigeria's weak central government is Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north.

The group has said it wants its imprisoned members freed and strict Islamic law adopted across the multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. It has produced several splinter groups, and analysts say its members have contact with two other al-Qaida-linked groups in Africa.

The Islamic insurgency in Nigeria grew out of a 2009 riot led by Boko Haram members in Maiduguri that ended in a military and police crackdown that killed some 700 people.

The group's leader died in police custody, in an apparent killing. From 2010 on, Islamic extremists have engaged in hit-and-run shootings and suicide bombings. Recently, however, they've begun to use military-grade weapons, some of which they apparently seized from Nigerian military stockpiles.

It remains unclear how much effect Jonathan's announcement will have. In late December 2011, Jonathan declared a similar state of emergency over parts of four states, including Borno and Yobe. The extremist attacks continued despite that.

Nigeria's military and police also have been repeatedly accused by human rights activists and others of torturing and summarily killing suspects, as well as burning down civilian homes and killing civilians in retaliation for militant attacks.

The latest incident, in a fishing village in Borno state along the shores of Lake Chad, saw at least 187 people killed and there are allegations that soldiers are responsible. While the military has denied repeatedly that it attacks and kills civilians, the country's armed forces have a history of committing such assaults.

Separately on Tuesday, an official in the central Nigerian state of Kaduna said gunmen armed with assault rifles and suspected to be Hausa-Fulani cattle herders killed 11 people in a village there. And in Benue state, a government spokesman said an attack blamed on Hausa-Fulani cattle herders there killed at least 12 people.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .