After U.S. Says Sorry, Pakistan Reopens Border

NATO troops with Mentoring Task Force 2 unload supplies during a resupply convoy mission in Uruzgan province, Afghanistan. Photo: DoD

For seven months, Pakistan has blocked ground convoys from resupplying NATO troops based in Afghanistan ' wanting an apology for the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers killed in a U.S. strike last November ' and a new fee for every shipping container transiting the country.

Until Pakistan got its apology, the border would remain closed, forcing NATO to transit all supplies through a costly aerial route in Kyrgyzstan.

Just a day before the U.S.'s July 4 national independence holiday, the U.S. apologized, Pakistan has reopened the border, and it even dropped the shipping fee. Trucks could begin transiting as soon as Wednesday.

'I offered our sincere condolences to the families of the Pakistani soldiers who lost their lives,' Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement Tuesday, following a telephone call with Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar. 'Foreign Minister Khar and I acknowledged the mistakes that resulted in the loss of Pakistani military lives. We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military. We are committed to working closely with Pakistan and Afghanistan to prevent this from ever happening again.'

The apology, and specifically saying 'sorry,' was a sticking point for Pakistan. The U.S. would not go that far until today, previously issuing cautious expressions of regret and condolences. The new demand for a $5,000 fee per container was also subject to haggling. Pakistan lowered the demand to $3,000 per container, and now looks to have dropped it altogether.

'Pakistan will continue not to charge any transit fee in the larger interest of peace and security in Afghanistan and the region,' Clinton said. Clinton added that the move is a 'tangible demonstration of Pakistan's support for a secure, peaceful, and prosperous Afghanistan and our shared objectives in the region.'

In recent days, senior U.S. and Pakistani officials have met in a 'flurry,' reported The New York Times. The U.S.'s top general in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, met last week with Pakistan army chief of staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Islamabad. Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides visited Islamabad on Monday. And over the weekend, Clinton telephoned Pakistan's new prime minister, Raja Pervez Ashraf, and the two reportedly discussed the supply routes.

Relations haven't always been this approachable. Last November, a U.S. commando team operating at night one kilometer from the Pakistan border reportedly came under heavy and accurate machine gun fire ' from a ridge in neighboring Pakistan. After supporting F-15s, Apache attack helicopters and AC-130s gunship dropped flares in a 'show of force,' the shooting continued. Then the helicopters and gunships opened fire. Twenty-four Pakistani soldiers were killed.

Pakistan closed the border to 'Ground Lines of Communication' ' or GLOCs ' following the clash, and kicked the CIA out of a Pakistan-based airfield used for launching drones. NATO's supply chain was forced to rely on routes through Russia and Central Asia, which is exorbitantly costly, averaging a shipping cost of $15,800 per container. (That's significantly more than the $6,200 a Pakistan-routed container costs, even when tacking on the $5,000 fee Pakistan wanted.) In total, shifting routes back through Pakistan could save $100 million per month.

As Danger Room reported in December, the U.S.'s investigating officer, Air Force Brig. Gen. Stephen Clark, noted that the U.S.'s 'reliance on incorrect mapping information' helped result in a 'misunderstanding about the true location of Pakistani military units.' Also problematic: the U.S. did not relay certain communications to Pakistan, due to a perception among troops that Pakistan collaborates with the Taliban.

But for now, both sides are playing nice. 'Our countries should have a relationship that is enduring, strategic, and carefully defined,' Clinton said, adding that such a relationship 'enhances the security and prosperity of both our nations and the region.'

Feds Look to Fight Leaks With 'Fog of Disinformation'

Air Force One waits for U.S. President Barack Obama in the fog at London's Stansted Airport, Friday, April 3, 2009. Photo: AP / Kirsty Wigglesworth

Pentagon-funded researchers have come up with a new plan for busting leakers: Spot them by how they search, and then entice the secret-spillers with decoy documents that will give them away.

Computer scientists call it it 'Fog Computing' ' a play on today's cloud computing craze. And in a recent paper for Darpa, the Pentagon's premiere research arm, researchers say they've built 'a prototype for automatically generating and distributing believable misinformation ' and then tracking access and attempted misuse of it. We call this 'disinformation technology.''

Two small problems: Some of the researchers' techniques are barely distinguishable from spammers' tricks. And they could wind up undermining trust among the nation's secret-keepers, rather than restoring it.

The Fog Computing project is part of a broader assault on so-called 'insider threats,' launched by Darpa in 2010 after the WikiLeaks imbroglio. Today, Washington is gripped by another frenzy over leaks ' this time over disclosures about U.S. cyber sabotage and drone warfare programs. But the reactions to these leaks has been schizophrenic, to put it generously. The nation's top spy says America's intelligence agencies will be strapping suspected leakers to lie detectors ' even though the polygraph machines are famously flawed. An investigation into who spilled secrets about the Stuxnet cyber weapon and the drone 'kill list' has already ensnared hundreds of officials ' even though the reporters who disclosed the info patrolled the halls of power with the White House's blessing.

That leaves electronic tracking as the best means of shutting leakers down. And while you can be sure that counterintelligence and Justice Department officials are going through the e-mails and phone calls of suspected leakers, such methods have their limitations. Hence the interest in Fog Computing.

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Belarus Dictator Says He's Totally Not Building a Dynasty

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, left, with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and his 7-year-old son, Nikolai, during an official visit to Caracas in June. Photo: Office of the President of Venezuela

Dictatorship is a hereditary business, because in a dictatorship, it's all about you. And if you can't succeed yourself, at least some of your DNA can, which can work out pretty great for your kinfolk ' though that doesn't always play well with the peasants.

That's probably why Belarus' authoritarian president wants you to know he's totally not serious about statements he made regarding handing over power to his 7-year-old son Nikolai.

'I'm more and more surprised to read and hear about Lukashenko being meant to stay forever and ever,' Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said Monday, according to Russia news wire RIA Novosti. He added that his kids have grown weary of this whole presidency-for-life thing. 'I repeat for the umpteenth time, without making apologies: My children have had more than their fair share of presidency under their father. There cannot be any hereditary transfer of power.'

The 57-year-old potentate ' also commonly referred to as 'Europe's last dictator' ' denied a statement made last week during a meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Accompanied by Nikolai, Lukashenko reportedly said to Chávez: 'You're correct in pointing out that my kid is here alongside us. This shows that we have seriously and lastingly established the foundation for our cooperation, and that in 20 to 25 years there will be someone to take over the reins of this cooperation.'

Nikolai, also known as Kolya, frequently appears at public events with his father. He's met with the Pope, appeared at military events in a camouflage mini-uniform while carrying a gold-plated pistol, and delivered flowers to the scene of a deadly April 2011 bombing at a Minsk subway station. He has also accompanied his daddy to the ballot box. For the record: Belarus' last presidential election was rigged, and pro-democracy protesters were beaten by police. International observers and human rights groups later alleged widespread use of torture against political dissidents during the December 2011 crackdown.

Meanwhile, Lukashenko made an awkward appearance at the Euro 2012 final in Ukraine's capital, Kiev. This is while he's suspected by U.S. officials of aiding Syrian dictator Bashar Assad by supplying 'fiber-optic gyroscopes' to improve the accuracy of Syria's surface-to-surface missiles.

The identity of Kolya's mother 'has never been made public,' according to The Independent, though Kolya's mother has been reported to be Lukashenko's personal doctor, Irina. Lukashenko's two adult sons, named Viktor and Dmitry, were raised by a now-estranged mother 'who it is believed now lives on a cattle farm in rural Belarus,' the newspaper noted. In 2007, when Nikolai was three, Lukashenko said his son is 'unique' and will be groomed to become Belarus' next leader. 'It remained unclear how serious he was at the time,' noted RIA Novosti.

If Lukashenko holds on to power for another 20-25 years, that will mean Belarus' president will leave office while pushing his eighties. A future President Kolya will be in his late twenties, at minimum ' a few years short of the requirement (per the Belarus constitution) that the president be at least 35 years old. That's also slightly older than when warlord Ramzan Kadyrov was declared president of Chechnya.

Kadyrov was decreed president of the Moscow-backed republic at age 30, the minimum age required to hold the office, by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007. The post was filled (until Kadyrov met the requirement) by interim presidents after Kadyrov's father, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed by a bomb blast during a military parade in 2004. And in 20 years, North Korea's 28-year-old leader Kim Jong-un will be middle-aged.

The other question is what Hugo Chávez thinks of all this. Unlike Lukashenko, Chávez has not groomed a potential heir and he's also standing for re-election in October. Perhaps he'll want to adopt Kolya now that Lukashenko says the kid won't be running Belarus.

Pentagon's Brain-Powered Videogames Might Treat PTSD

Soldiers and veterans looking to alleviate the devastating symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder might soon have a new way to help themselves. Strangely, it involves using their gray matter to control a videogame.

The process is known as neurofeedback, or NF, and it's the latest in a long, increasingly out-there list of potential PTSD remedies ' from neck injections to memory-zapping drugs ' being studied by military researchers. This week, scientists at San Diego's Naval Medical Center announced plans for a clinical trial on 80 patients, designed to compare neurofeedback with a sham control procedure. The trial, the first of its kind, is meant to determine whether or not NF can avail soldiers of symptoms like nightmares, anxiety attacks and flashbacks.

'The proposed study could expand treatment alternatives for servicemen with PTSD,' the announcement reads. 'If [neurofeedback] is shown to improve symptom reduction [...] it would offer a non-pharmacological intervention that would avoid undesirable side effects, and accelerate recovery.'

While the idea sounds pretty odd, the process of neurofeedback isn't so intimidating (and I would know, having undergone the procedure myself for The Daily last year). A clinician affixes EEG electrodes to specific regions on a patient's scalp, designed to read the output of the patient's brain activity. Then, as the clinician monitors those brain waves from a computer console, the patient controls the key element of a videogame ' like a car racing through a winding tunnel ' using nothing more than their mind.

If a patient's brain activity remains calm and steady, the videogame responds with enhanced performance ' the car moves more quickly and navigates smoothly. If activity is wonkier and less controlled, that race car will veer out of control and, say, smash into a brick wall. Game over.

The idea behind NF is grounded in the emerging science of brain plasticity, or the ability of the adult brain (previously thought to reach stasis in adulthood) to change throughout life. Neurofeedback clinicians suspect that the brain, in 'seeing' its own activity on-screen, is spurred to fix defects in order to work on a more optimal level. Over a series of several sessions, those repairs then supposedly become more permanently entrenched.

'When the brain sees itself interacting with the world, it becomes interested in that,' Dr. Siegfried Othmer, chief scientist at LA's EEG Institute and responsible, along with his neurobiologist wife Sue, for 'The Othmer Method' ' a specific approach to neurofeedback being used in the military trial ' told me last year.  'Likewise, when it sees the signal on-screen and realizes it's in charge, it becomes interested. You might not notice, but the brain takes notice.'

The realm of brain plasticity is relatively new, but neurofeedback actually isn't. The procedure first gained notoriety in the 1960s as a treatment for everything from migraine headaches to bed-wetting. Still, in part because of a paucity of mainstream scientific research, the approach has long been relegated to the realm of bunk science. 'I think the practice has gotten ahead of the science,' Dr. Andrew Leuchter, a professor at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, told me. 'It wouldn't be surprising ' if much of the benefit was attributable to the placebo response.'

Despite such mainstream skepticism, neurofeedback is already being used by several military doctors and psychologists. Maj. Michael Villaneuva ' nicknamed 'The Wizard' by his patients ' has performed NF on several hundred active-duty soldiers, and even brought his game console and electrodes on a deployment to Afghanistan this year. And Dr. Jerry Wesch, who leads a PTSD recovery program at Fort Hood, describes the results of his own neurofeedback trials on patients as 'jaw dropping.'

Upwards of a thousand former soldiers have also tried neurofeedback, thanks to Homecoming 4 Veterans, a non-profit started by the Othmers that offers free NF to veterans through a network of 200 practitioners nationwide. The two are also responsible for training Villaneuva and other military docs in the art of NF.

Already, the Othmers are confident that the military's clinical trial, expected to kick off in December, will yield positive results. And they hope that the trial, once complete, lends more credence to the therapy they've helped pioneer. 'I think the trial could be huge, not only with [medical] academia, but for clinicians,' Sue tells Danger Room. 'They're often wary of adapting procedures that haven't seen evidence-based study. So this checks off an important box.'

But the trial won't be easy: Controlled tests of processes, rather than pharmaceuticals, are notoriously tough. That's because designing and executing a 'sham' procedure is much more difficult than, say, just doling out sugar pills instead of the real drug.

Then again, for soldiers who credit neurofeedback with their recovery from PTSD, the execution or academic impact of a clinical trial is hardly the most important thing. 'How it works doesn't matter to me,' Staff Sgt. Justin Roberts, who underwent the process at Fort Hood, told me. 'Just as long as it does.'

25 Percent of Troop Deaths Were 'Potentially Survivable,' Study Says

With better medical care and equipment, one in every four troops who died of their wounds in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars could have been saved, according to an unpublished study from the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research.

'This study does not imply we are leaving our warriors on the battlefield languishing,' the study's author, trauma surgeon Col. Brian Eastridge, tells Army Times. ' 'Potentially survivable' implies there are potential improvements.'

Simply put, the military needs to focus on improving its immediate response to injuries ' and get better at treating wounds in the field. Troops are now rushed into trauma care faster than ever before, thanks to improvements in military medicine and rescue operations. But another speed increase could means hundreds more lives saved. The study reveals that 90 percent of the 4,596 deaths happened before the wounded servicemember reached a medical facility. Only 506 made it to a medical center before dying. All of these numbers were presented by Col. Eastridge to the Defense Health Board on June 25.

Studies like this one can have a major impact, potentially. 'There's a tremendous amount of information we can gain and potentially improve clinical care if we know why casualties die on the battlefield,' said Col. Eastridge. He referred to tourniquets as a perfect example. Using tourniquets was previously discouraged to avoid limb loss, until the Trauma Combat Casualty Care strongly recommended their use. It's a policy change that resulted in a significant drop in hemorrhage-related deaths, from 26 a year to 9.

These are the kinds of deaths where there's the most room for improvement; 90 percent of preventable deaths were caused by 'bleed-outs.' And in fact, this is the area where the military has focused the most lately, introducing two new devices meant to prevent 'bleed-outs.'

The Combat Ready Clamp, which is already used in the field, is designed to stop or slow down bleeding in the pelvic region when traditional tourniquets cannot be used. The other device, called Abdominal Aortic Tourniquet, is a belt-like device that is cuffed onto the abdomen and provides pressure to slow down blood flow and prevent deathly loss of blood.

And a new wave of military-funded medical research could prevent even more fatalities. Pentagon-funded scientists at Texas A&M are currently investigating the potential of 'suspended animation' (temporarily halting breathing, heart function and even brain activity) to rapidly thwart blood loss. Darpa-backed investigators have already devised synthetic blood that'd permanently stymie shortages of the real deal during critical transfusions. And let's not forget the plasma knife: A laser-powered cutting tool that seals off wounds ' thereby preventing infection and blood loss ' with a swipe of the medic's hand.

The study also had a breakdown on the types of death suffered by military service-members. Sixty-five percent were due to an explosion, 22 percent to gunshot wounds. Dismemberment was the main cause of instantaneous death, closely followed by brain injury and heart and thoracic injury.

Despite these grim numbers, combat has never been safer. Soldiers have a much higher chance of surviving a wound today than in previous wars. As a way of comparison, in Vietnam and World War II, 16.1 percent and 19.1 percent of all injuries resulted in death. In Afghanistan and Iraq, it's only 10 percent.

Stan McChrystal, Drone Skeptic

Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of the Afghanistan war, briefs his subordinates in Kandahar, 2010. Photo: ISAF

ASPEN, Colorado ' The former commander of the Afghanistan war and the most elite unit in the U.S. military wants to use robotic aircraft 'a lot.' But retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal actually sounded more like a skeptic of the U.S.' robotic arsenal during a talk to an elite audience. McChrystal sounded notes of caution about both the lethal and the non-lethal functions of the U.S. robotic arsenal.

'We can look at things and get an extraordinary ability to see things,' McChrystal told CBS News' Bob Schieffer at the Aspen Ideas Festival, a meeting of U.S. economic, political and media elites. But McChrystal, who revolutionized the Joint Special Operations Command's intelligence operations, said drones provide merely 'one part of an understanding. We need to understand what drones are not.'

Drones are no substitute for information derived from human beings, the former commander emphasized, on the ground in dangerous, confusing places. McChrystal reminded an audience that isn't particularly familiar with the U.S. military that for all hype about the sophisticated drones ' Schieffer, a news anchorman and talk show host, casually asserted that the drones are 'very effective' ' they can't peer inside buildings or assess an enemy's intentions. 'I hope we don't use them to the exclusion of teaching people [foreign] languages, [and] sending people to live' in foreign countries, McChrystal said.

And their ability to expedite killing the wrong people is profound.

'We made a huge mistake one night in Afghanistan,' recounted McChrystal, who's now a lecturer at Yale University. 'We killed a civilian farmer in the middle of the night with an attack helicopter based upon [intelligence] we had from an aerial platform. The guy was digging by the side of the road.' Mistakenly believing that the farmer was planting a bomb, the U.S. military ordered a helicopter strike, only learning later that the farmer posed no threat.

McChrystal remembered apologizing to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who informed the then-commander about Afghan irrigation techniques which sometimes involve tending the soil at night. 'That's the point: you have to know those things,' McChrystal said, as drones do not remove the need to 'get your feet in the mud and understand people.'

McChrystal actually dodged the subject Schieffer wanted him to discuss: the expansive use of killer drones in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. But he subtly critiqued the drone strikes while he praised the May 2011 SEAL Team Six raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. There's a 'perception' that the U.S. prefers to kill from a distance, McChrystal said, which much of the world considers dishonorable for not putting its own servicemembers lives' at risk; the bin Laden raid served as a potent counterexample.

Schieffer didn't challenge McChrystal's points. (Among them: it's time to 'consider a draft' to take the burden of waging the nation's wars off the backs of 1.5 percent of the population; and the greatest threat to U.S. national security is poor education.) The Aspen Ideas Festival ' which, full disclosure, paid for my attendance ' is not a place where people talk truth to power. Before McChrystal spoke, Atlantic magazine owner David Bradley allowed the former Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf to defend his 1999 military coup and even compare himself to Abraham Lincoln. Aspen is a place where elite perspectives gain yet another megaphone.

Still, one of those elite perspectives was an evidently sincere appreciation for one of the U.S. military's most consequential generals of the 9/11 Era. McChrystal stepped off the stage to a rare Aspen standing ovation.

Gallery: The Tattooed, Undead Planes of the Air Force 'Boneyard'

Where do Air Force planes go when they die? To a scrap-metal cemetery in Arizona. But before they fade away completely, some of them decide they need some new ink.

Near the Air Force's so-called 'Boneyard,' a stockade of retired planes on a base outside Tucson, is the Pima Air & Space Museum. It recently hosted an exhibit called Art from The Boneyard, in which artists got to use Flying Fortresses, B-24 Liberators and other World War II-era aircraft as their canvases.

But don't go expecting gauzy, patriotic imagery. These old planes look like they just came out of a Tijuana tattoo parlor. Usually it's people getting tats of planes. Not this time.

And wow, do these photos accentuate the seediness of the artwork. A friend took them, ran them through his Instagram filters, and posted them to his account. He asked to be identified only by his Twitter handle, @meekwire. 'A great collision of three things I'm interested in: art, aviation and military history,' he says.

Here are some of our favorite @meekwire photos from the Boneyard exhibit. There may be more canvases to come: The Air Force is set to retire hundreds of planes under a new budget plan, including all of the C-27J transport planes that trafficked cargo in Iraq and Afghanistan. Take a shot of whiskey if you need it, but getting inked is less painful than a bee sting, and you're a war veteran.