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Condeleezza Rice heads to Libya today, ending a 55-year dry spell in American visitors to the North African country. The goals look ambitious: set the framework for military and diplomatic agreements, educational cooperation, and more trade. That could mean a fancy new U.S. embassy in Libya, complete with ambassador -- a role unfilled to date.

Quite a change from the old days, when U.S. presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush portrayed Muammar el-Qaddafi as a terror-sponsoring boogeyman, particularly for his role in downing Pan Am flight 103 in 1988. Back then, Libya's leader lived and breathed his self-authored Green Book of political philosophy, an odd mix of populism and his own cult of personality.

So what happened? As FP highlights in this week's photo essay, most days of the week, Qaddafi looks like a changed man. Nearly four years ago, he relinquinshed his weapons of mass destruction, prompting world leaders to lift sanctions on his regime.

But on other days, he looks like the same old Qaddafi and one might wonder exactly what Rice hopes she can accomplish. He has promised to pay compensation to victims of the flight he downed, but funds have been slow to arrive in the designated Swiss bank account. According to Human Rights Watch, life for Libya's people hasn't changed one bit:

Scores of Libyans are still in prison – some of them disappeared – simply for expressing peaceful criticism of the government and its leaders."

In short, no one is sure just how 'changed' the new Qaddafi is. Rice looks eager to push this as one of the administration's foreign policy successes, so overlooking the details might be a necessary evil. Qaddafi has promised that his new capitalist reforms will result in "creative chaos." Yet that is precisely the language he has always used to describe his country: a chaos over which only he can preside.

Whatever reservations Rice might have about visiting Libya, Qaddafi certainly seems excited to see her, if this Al-Jazeera interview is any indication:

I support my darling black African woman," he said. "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders ... Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. ... I love her very much. I admire her, and I'm proud of her, because she's a black woman of African origin."

FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. foreign-policy establishment has always been a little queasy about Pervez Musharraf. The question of whether the now-former Pakistani president could be trusted -- and if so, how much -- has dominated conversations around Washington since the war on terror began. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid summed it up today when he told the NYT that since 9/11 Musharraf "continued to provide cover to the Taliban, but still managed to convince the Americans for many years that it was not a double game." Neat trick.

For all the uncertainty over the years about Musharraf's true colors, his country's future today is even more unclear. His successor might not put U.S. priorities at the top of the to-do list, and moveover, the machinations going on in Islamabad right now are opaque. And with the next Pakistani president having to contend with a growing insurgency in the tribal regions, a powerful intelligence service run amok, and a wary (and entrenched) military, the one thing we know is that he (or she, if you believe ruling coalition leader Asif Zardari) can count on a lot of headaches in his or her future.

So, does establishment Washington have a good handle on what the United States can or should do in Pakistan if everything goes to hell?

In a word, no. In the latest FP/Center for American Progress Terrorism Index, released today, the only consensus about Pakistan, according to more than 100 of America's top foreign-policy experts, is that the country is going to pose a problem going forward. More than half now consider Pakistan the next al Qaeda stronghold:

But while they agree that Pakistan is now a main front in the war on terror, they have little idea what to do about it. Asked whether the U.S. military should go into Pakistan without permission to arrest top al Qaeda leaders, a whopping 65 percent of the experts -- who have served as national security advisor, director of the CIA, and in top-leve posts at the Pentagon -- said they were unsure what the United States should do. With so much at stake, that level of uncertainty is alarming.

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I see that the good folks at Little Green Footballs are outraged about Thursday's photo essay on a Hamas-affiliate's graduation ceremony in Gaza. The LGF author writes of FP, "They're currently running a light-hearted slice-of-life photo essay on a Hamas terror training camp."

At issue is this bit of text:

Photo Essay: Are You Tough Enough for Hamas Boot Camp?

Think you have what it takes to join the Islamic resistance? Here’s how Hamas militants in Gaza have been spending their summer.

Commenter Tazzerman writes,

This is beyond the pale. I'm sorry but it sounds like a Hamas training brochure. Do these people at FP understand or realize what they're doing here? This is an out and out BLATANT advertisement for Hamas recruiting.

"It makes me sick to my stomach that someone actually is trying to glorify these cowards," says FldDoc.

"[W]hy is a reputable magazine giving positive propaganda to these ersatz stormtroopers?" Outrider asks.

Mosse wonders, "Is this postmodern drollery or something more sinister?"

Let's all take a deep breath, people. As the person who put this thing together for ForeignPolicy.com, let me make one thing clear: Nobody here is trying to glorify Hamas, which is duly listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and others. It's pretty newsworthy, though, that the Hamas-affiliated Popular Resistance Committees (PRCs), also widely considered a terrorist organization (though not explicitly listed by State), are training in this way and so openly, and the captions tell a broader story of the rising tensions that threaten to destroy the fragile Gaza cease-fire. As for the photographs themselves, I think we can all agree that they make for compelling viewing.

It's clear, however, that LGF commenters are furious that this photo essay doesn't take a strong, anti-Hamas line. Do they really fear that somehow, FP readers will be motivated by these photographs to join the "Islamic resistance"? I'm not worried.

One final note: Analytically speaking, I'm not so sure about using the term "terror training camp" to describe what is going on at this facility. I don't think the PRCs aren't terrorists, mind you -- of course they are -- but from these photographs it doesn't look like they are learning terrorist methods such as firing rockets at civilians or blowing up buses (and the PRCs have certainly done such things in the past) but rather learning how to fight like an irregular army. Other Palestinians are probably just as much a target as Israel. If anyone has any information to the contrary, please send it my way. But the real terrorist training happens far away from the cameras, I'd wager. This stuff is all just for show.

FBI

I'll admit that the FBI has put together some very suggestive information about Bruce Ivins, the anthrax researcher who committed suicide last week. The key document is this one (pdf), an affadavit for a search warrant, in which Postal Inspector Thomas F. Dellafera informs us that Ivins was under suspicion for the following reasons:

(1) At the time of the attacks, he was the custodian of a large flask of highly purified anthrax spores that possess certain genetic mutations identical to the anthrax used in the attacks; (2) Ivins has been unable to give investigators an adequate explanation for his late night laboratory work hours around the time of both anthrax mailings; (3) Ivins has claimed that he was suffering serious mental health issues in the months preceding the attacks, and told a coworker that he had "incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times" and feared that he might not be able to control his behavior; (4) Ivins is believed to have submitted false samples of anthrax from his lab to the FBI for forensic analysis in order to mislead investigators; (5) at the time of the attacks, Ivins was under pressure at work to assist a private company that had lost its FDA approval to produce an anthrax vaccine the Army needed for U.S. troops, and which Ivins believed was essential for the anthrax program at USAMFUID; and (6) Ivins sent an email to [redacted] a few days before the anthrax attacks warning [redacted] that "Bin Laden terrorists for sure have anthrax and sarin gas" and have "just decreed death to all Jews and all Americans," language similar to the anthrax letters warning "WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX . . . DEATH TO AMERICA . . . DEATH TO ISRAEL."

I'd like to hear some scientific experts weigh in on #1, which is the only non-circumstantial piece of evidence here. The Feds have more damning stuff, too, such as this bit about the anthrax letters noted by the New York Times:

[S]earches of Dr. Ivins's home in Frederick, Md., turned up "hundreds" of similar letters that had not yet been sent to media outlets and members of Congress.

But here's something Bloomberg caught about Ivins's late-night work habits:

The spike in his evening hours began in mid-August, almost a month before the Sept. 11 attacks, investigators said.

So, he was working on all this before 9/11? What's that all about?

Violence in Iraq might be declining, but a recently, there's been a troubling rise in the number of female suicide bombers in the country. Women account for 23 of the country's suicide bomb attacks so far this year, including two last week in Baghdad and Kirkuk that left nearly 60 people dead and 250 wounded.

One anonymous Iraqi woman explained the motivation:

The Americans took my husband. They destroyed our home. We've got nothing. We're living by the grace of God. We will not stay silent, and everything, including bombings, we can do in response."

Iraqi insurgent groups have taken advantage of this grief, benefitting from some tactical advantages women bombers offer: They can easily hide explosives under their robes, and cultural protocol means male guards are less likely to fully frisk them. Cultural norms also mean women are forced more easily into the act by a male recruiter or even a family member.

One woman recently entered police station seeking protection from a close relative -- an al Qaeda member -- who had tried forcing her into an explosive belt. She's now in protective custody, but too many other grieving and victimized women -- many of whom have lost not only a spouse, but their source of income -- are out there, ready to destroy themselves and others in the name of justice and revenge. Given the Iraqi government's budget windfall, there's no excuse for not helping them.

JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images

During the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many social scientists have decried the U.S. Defense Department's lack of cultural sensitivity. Now, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a former president of Texas A&M University, is doing something about it. He has announced Project Minerva, which will fund research by social scientists on topics such as the influence of religion and economics on terrorism.

Rather than welcoming Project Minerva, however, many academics, particularly anthropologists, oppose it. In the recent FP Web exclusive "When Professors Go to War," anthropologist Hugh Gusterson wrote that many anthropologists -- who are in a largely left-leaning discipline -- simply won't stomach being funded by the Pentagon. Thus, those social scientists who do apply for funding will be a thin slice who have no qualms about accepting the Defense Department's money. This will lead to "selection bias," in which only a narrow range of perspectives end up being funded.

In response, Duke University professor Peter Feaver argues this week in "Pentagon Funding? Bring It On." that the challenge of selection bias can be overcome and that Gates is committed to openness and academic freedom. Proposals will be selected on the importance of the topic being investigated and the quality of the methodology -- and not on whether the results will end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy for the military.

What do you all think? Should social scientists be funded by the Defense Department in an effort to bring more cultural sensitivity to the military's methods? Who's right? Gusterson or Feaver?

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Turns out the wine and cheese set isn't as "civilized" as one would think. At least that's the case in France's Languedoc-Roussillon region, which happens to be the world's biggest wine-growing area by volume, Time reports:

Hurting from overproduction and cheap imports and punished lately by the rising cost of gas, a small group of local winegrowers has resorted to "wine terrorism" in a violent attempt to shock the French government into helping them.

Targets have included "public and private buildings, supermarkets, tanker trucks hauling cheap imported wine, and businesses accused of gouging growers with ever shrinking prices." So far, only one of the guerrilla grape growers has been hurt, but the violence and destruction have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of damage.

While the rising cost of gas has exacerbated their situation, the wine terrorists aren't exactly a new phenomenon. Last summer, the guerrilla growers released a video threatening "blood will flow" unless the French government moved to raise wine prices. And in 1907, the French army shot six demonstrators during a revolt of winemakers in the region. These grape gripes, it appears, go back a long way.

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Am I the only one who finds the FBI's steady drumbeat of leaks in the anthrax case a bit unseemly and, well, downright suspicious?

Since Fort Detrick scientist Bruce Ivins committed suicide last week, "law enforcement officials" and other anonymous sources have been feeding information to the press about his alleged responsibility for the anthrax mailings of 2001, which killed five postal workers and sent the country into a panic.

Here's what we've learned about Ivins, through anonymous leaks:

• He had an alcohol problem
• He was obsessed with the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority
• He used a PO box, listed under a false name, to receive pictures of naked, blindfolded women
• He spilled anthrax and didn't report it
• He had a financial stake in anthrax vaccines
• He threatened to kill a social worker and his coworkers
• He wrote strange letters to newspapers
• He had access to an anthrax dryer

Sounds like a creepy dude, yes. But it's the kind of suggestive information you leak if you don't want people to notice that your hard evidence -- scientific proof that Ivins was the guy -- is lacking and won't stand up in court. The FBI insists that they've got the goods, and they'll make their findings public tomorrow. We shall see.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has much, much more.

Osama bin Laden once said that his goal is "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy." Maybe he should have gotten into the mortgage business instead of becoming a terrorist.

Zubin Jelveh blogs a new IMF working paper by Hui Tong and Shang-Jin Wei, who look at the responses by economic forecasters and consumers to 9/11 vs. their reactions to the subprime mortgage crisis. As you can see, everybody pretty much shrugged off 9/11 (at least when it comes to the economy; emotional grief is, of course, beyond measure) after about six months, but subprime has brought a steady decline in confidence:

Xinhua reports on a new manual that China's Ministry of Public Security has put together to educate citizens about terrorism:

What to do after being abducted? Please try your best to stay calm. Don't fight back, don't meet kidnappers' eyes, don't talk, move slowly and try your best to hide your communication devices," the manual said. "Lie face down on the ground when the police attack the terrorists."

"When you notice something suspicious, you need to check it first, then listen, then smell, but try to avoid touching it," the manual adds.

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

In recent interviews and speeches, Barack Obama has been painting himself a pragmatic realist on foreign policy. As we noted yesterday, such an approach seems somewhat curious for a candidate running on the theme of change.

With that in mind, I found a line from Eli Lake's recent essay in The New Republic on Obama's foreign policy particularly galling. Lake quotes Susan Rice, an Obama advisor likely on the short list for a high-profile position in his administration:

She described Obama's opinion of America's historic involvement with insurgency and counterinsurgency. She applauded the 1980s arming of the mujahedin resistance to the Soviets: "[S]upport for the Afghan resistance to Soviet aggression was the right decision in the 1980s."

While that policy may have shaken up the Soviets when they withdrew in the late 1980s, let's not forget that the United States is paying the price in Afghanistan now. As violence grows in Afghanistan, two familiar faces, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, are showing up on the other side, U.S. News reports:

Ironically, these two warlords—currently at the top of America's list of most wanted men in Afghanistan—were once among America's most valued allies. In the 1980s, the CIA funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to help them battle the Soviet Army during its occupation of Afghanistan. Hekmatyar, then widely considered by Washington to be a reliable anti-Soviet rebel, was even flown to the United States by the CIA in 1985.

As Obama continues to iron out his foreign policy, which has targeted Afghanistan as "a war we have to win," he should be loth to forget how we got there to begin with. Or has he been too busy on the campaign trail to watch "Charlie Wilson's War?"

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Meet David Remes, a partner at the law firm Covington & Burling and pro bono attorney for 15 Yemenis held at Guantanamo. Since 2005, Remes, who is half Yemeni, has been a high-profile member of the legal team challenging captives' detention at Gitmo.

And now, click here -- if you dare -- to see Remes at a recent news conference where, for some inexplicable reason, he decided that dropping trou' was a good way to show the assembled press corps just what his clients have had to endure.

Just what comparison was he trying to draw? That his clients were made to stand around in their underwear? It's an utter mystery. But one enigma has been cleared up: He's not a boxers man.

Colombian politican and recently freed hostage Ingrid Betancourt has some interesting words for her FARC captors on a recorded message being blasted from helicopters flying over the Colombian jungle:

Hey guerrillas, I'm Ingrid Betancourt. I want you to recover your liberty like I have. I'm waiting for you!" she shouts in one of the recordings, which includes Colombian pop star Shakira singing her hit "Estoy Aqui" or "I'm Here."

I'm not sure how the FARC rebels feel about Betancourt these days, but Shakira is a nice touch. Betancourt also made headlines yesterday by encouraging Colombian President Álvaro Uribe to tone down his aggressive lanugage directed toward the FARC.

El Espectador/Getty Images

Colombia announced today that it has rescued 15 hostages held by the country's notorious FARC guerillas, including former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. The rescued group also includes three American military contractors who were seized when their plane went down in FARC territory during an antinarcotics mission.

Fans of Betancourt worldwide are thrilled. A dual citizen of Colombia and France, she became a venerated figure during her six-year captivity, her frail figure and willfull words focusing the world's attention on a hostage crisis in a remote part of the Andes. Yet the celebration is bittersweet. As Betancourt and 14 others go free, largely because of their status as "bargaining chips" used by the FARC to gain political concessions, hundreds of others reportedly remain behind in the guerrilla group's hands.

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Nelson Mandela turns 90 on July 18. This morning, President Bush gave the former South African president and anti-apartheid leader an early birthday present by signing into law a bill removing Mandela and other members of the African National Congress from a three-decade-old terrorist watch list.

The bill had been sponsored by Sens. John Kerry, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Bob Corker:

It's high time we honored his message of human dignity and valor by removing unjustified travel restrictions placed on him and other members of the ANC," said Kerry. Whitehouse added, "This problem has caused injustice to South African leaders and embarrassment to the United States, and I'm glad it will be repaired."

Prior to the bill's passage, Mandela had been subject to travel restrictions and required special certification to visit the United States. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had called on Congress in April to remove the restrictions, deeming them "rather embarrassing."

A great post on Neatorama lists the 10 strangest anti-terrorism patents you'll ever see. Among them are an airplane trap door (shown above), a railroad missile launcher and -- best of all -- a biohazard suit with a built-in toilet. We'll hopefully never see any of this stuff in action, but during the final year of a second-term president with dismal approval ratings? Stranger things have happened.

Via Danwei, here's a great photograph of Chinese counterterrorism police training on Segways:

I don't know about you guys, but I find the Segways detract from the intimidating aura of the black masks and guns.

TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/Getty Images

Late last week and into the weekend, it seemed as if Taliban militants and other extremist groups had infiltrated the Pakistani city of Peshawar -- a city of three million located at the mouth of the Khyber pass, a critical entry point into Afghanistan. Truckloads of bearded men with guns had been roaming the streets of Peshawar, kidnapping residents, ordering barbers not to shave men's beards, and threatening music and DVD shop owners.

But a strong offensive by the Pakistani security forces over the weekend seems to have cleared out the extremists -- for now. According to Pakistan's Daily Times, no government casualties were reported. Militants (not affiliated with the Taliban) were ordered to refrain from fighting the government. Nevertheless, Washington must be happy with Pakistan's aggresiveness in the tribal areas, as this is the first time that the new coalition government has opted for the military approach.

In the grand scheme of things, this "battle" may mean little save its symbolic importance for both sides. The Pakistani government seems to be indicating it will take a more hard-line stance towards the Taliban and other groups, but militants continue to infiltrate key regional towns and cities at will -- seen recently across the border in Kandahar -- and al Qaeda is feeling quite at home in the tribal areas. Watch this space for updates.

Tim Boyle/Getty Images

Fear of terrorism contributed to higher vacancy rates in and around tall office buildings in Chicago after the 9/11 attacks, according to a recent working paper.

The study examined vacancy rates of office space from 1996 to 2006 in Chicago's central business district. Chicago was selected because it has three landmark buildings: the Sears Tower (the tallest building in the United States), the Aon Center (the third tallest), and the Hancock Tower (the fourth tallest).

Controlling for all sorts of variables, the researchers (Alberto Abadie of Harvard University and Sofia Dermisi of Roosevelt University) compared office space in the three landmark buildings and in buildings within a 0.3-mile-radius "shadow area" of those buildings, with office space in the central business district that was more than 0.3 miles from those buildings.

In the five years before 9/11, the vacancy rates in the shadow areas and non-shadow areas tracked one another closely. After 9/11, however, vacancy rates in the shadow areas increased significantly more than those in the non-shadow areas. The finding suggests that fear of terrorism contributed to higher vacancy rates in and around tall landmark buildings.

For those of you who work in cities with skyscrapers, do you think people still have reservations about working in tall buildings? (In June 2006, seven men were arrested for allegedly plotting to destroy the Sears Tower.) Could a higher perceived risk of terrorism really be causing firms to shy away from high-rises?

Berkeley law professor and former Bush administration official John Yoo weighs in on Boumediene v. Bush, last week's Supreme Court ruling granting Guantánamo detainees the right to challenge their detention:

In World War II, no civilian court reviewed the thousands of German prisoners housed in the U.S. Federal judges never heard cases from the Confederate prisoners of war held during the Civil War. In a trilogy of cases decided at the end of World War II, the Supreme Court agreed that the writ did not benefit enemy aliens held outside the U.S. In the months after the 9/11 attacks, we in the Justice Department relied on the Supreme Court's word when we evaluated Guantanamo Bay as a place to hold al Qaeda terrorists. [...] Incredibly, these five Justices have now defied the considered judgment of the president and Congress for a third time, all to grant captured al Qaeda terrorists the exact same rights as American citizens to a day in civilian court.

I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that the key problem here is using the phrase "captured al Qaeda terrorists" to refer to accused al Qaeda terrorists. Shouldn't you have to prove that someone is, in fact, a terrorist? Yoo says no:

A judge's view on how much "proof" is needed to find that a "suspect" is a terrorist will become the standard applied on the battlefield. Soldiers will have to gather "evidence," which will have to be safeguarded until a court hearing, take statements from "witnesses," and probably provide some kind of Miranda-style warning upon capture. No doubt lawyers will swarm to provide representation for new prisoners. [...] So our fighting men and women now must add C.S.I. duties to that of capturing or killing the enemy. Nor will this be the end of it. Under Boumediene's claim of judicial supremacy, it is only a hop, skip and a jump from judges second-guessing whether someone is an enemy to second-guessing whether a soldier should have aimed and fired at him.

Judging from the scare quotes, Yoo seems to have little time for legal terms of art when it comes to terrorism. It's an odd stance for a law professor to take. But there's an easy way to solve his problem: Put arresting terrorists back in the hands of law-enforcement officials who are actually trained to handle the kinds of thorny questions Yoo outlines. Soldiers can focus on fighting wars.