Joseph Cirincione in Foreign Policy.

New weapons systems should always meet three requirements: They should be feasible, needed, and affordable. The proposed Prompt Global Strike program, which according to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been "embraced by the new administration," does not meet any. Using intercontinental ballistic missiles to hurl conventional warheads at caves is a truly bad idea. It would use technology that doesn't work for a capability the United States doesn't need at a cost it can't afford. Oh, and it could also start a nuclear war.

Reuters report.

The inquests into the deaths of 56 people who died in the 2005 London bombings should be a public inquiry into whether police and security services could have done more to prevent the attacks, a court heard on Monday.

[...]

"In the 15-month period leading up to the bombings, M15 and police were, between them, in possession of a significant amount of information about the bombers," Coltart told the coroner.

John Lanchester on the Guardian's Cif at the polls.

The cuts are going to happen. They will be the most severe that modern Britain has experienced. This isn't a matter of speculation, it's what the numbers clearly imply. Since this issue is going to be at the heart of our politics, it should be at the heart of the election debate. What have we had instead? Guff about fairness and change and the Big Society, accompanied by wishful thinking on the subject of "efficiency savings", as if the biggest fiscal crisis in a generation could be solved by remembering to turn the bathroom lights out and cutting down on Post-It notes.

The Leveretts on Politico.

We do not know who leaked the Gates memo. But the "senior officials" who did so were clearly seeking to use their selective description to catalyze more robust planning for potential military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets -- the very option that Gates has consistently opposed.

[...]

The reality is that a cadre of senior National Security Council officials -- including Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and Dennis Ross, senior director for the central region (including Iran) -- is resisting the adoption of containment as the administration's Iran strategy.

Telegraph report.

The Ministry of Defence has announced it is to return money paid upfront by the former regime of the Shah of Iran for a huge consignment of tanks and support vehicles ordered in the 1970s.

The Iranian side cancelled the contract at the time of the revolution, but the British government said it could not have its money back.

UPI report.

China inaugurated a missile plant in Iran last month, even as the United States and its allies were pressing Beijing to support a new round of tough economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program, Jane's Defense Weekly reports.

From Wired's Danger Room.

The Obama administration is poised to take up one of the more dangerous and hare-brained schemes of the Rumsfeld-era Pentagon. The New York Times is reporting that the Defense Department is once again looking to equip intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. The missiles could then, in theory, destroy fleeing targets a half a world away -- a no-notice "bolt from the blue," striking in a matter of hours. There's just one teeny-tiny problem: the launches could very well start World War III.

Christopher Layne in the American COnservative.

The dollar's vulnerability is the United States' geopolitical Achilles' heel. Its role as the international economy's reserve currency ensures American preeminence, and if it loses that status, hegemony will be literally unaffordable. As Cornell professor Jonathan Kirshner observes, the dollar's vulnerability "presents potentially significant and underappreciated restraints upon contemporary American political and military predominance."

Friday Lunhc CLub quoteing Al-Hayat.

Al-Hayat reports, citing a Russian source, that Russian President Vladimir Medvedev is to visit Syria on May 11 to discuss promoting Syria-Russia military and other cooperation. According to the paper, in accordance with contracts signed between the two, Russia has supplied Syria with S-300 and Iskander missile defense systems, and there are contacts between the sides for the provision of new models of MiG aircraft and air defense systems.

BBC report.

Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian-born British resident, was arrested in the UK shortly after the attacks amid claims that he was a key member of the plot.

He was held in custody for nearly five months before being released when a judge found there was no evidence to link him to any form of terrorism.

Glenn Greenwald comments on Salon.

It requires an extreme level of irrationality to read what happened to Hatfill and simultaneously to have faith that the "real anthrax attacker" has now been identified as a result of the FBI's wholly untested and uninvestigated case against Bruce Ivins. The parallels are so overwhelming as to be self-evident.

[...]

[...] the Obama administration is actively and aggressively blocking any efforts to investigate the FBI's case against Ivins through an Obama veto threat, based on the Orwellian, backward claim that such an investigation "would undermine public confidence" in the FBI's case "and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions."

[...]

As several people noted in comments, Obama's rationale for threatening to veto an anthrax investigation (investigations would undermine the State's credibility and thus dilute its authority) is very similar to the Catholic Church's explanation for why it concealed reports of so many abusive priests (disclosure would undermine the Church's credibility and thus dilute its authority).

New York Times report.

Asked by reporters after his testimony whether he believed that there was any chance that Dr. Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008, had carried out the attacks, the microbiologist, Henry S. Heine, replied, "Absolutely not." At the Army's biodefense laboratory in Maryland, where Dr. Ivins and Dr. Heine worked, he said, "among the senior scientists, no one believes it."

Global Research article by Finian Cunningham.

In this game of high-stakes poker, how is it that Iran can stay so composed? It is because Iran holds the ultimate weapon, not a weapon of mass destruction that the US claims it is seeking, but a weapon of mass disruption firmly within its grasp and ready to trigger immediately -- the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

BBC report.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has again rejected US calls to halt construction in occupied East Jerusalem.

He spoke as US Middle East envoy George Mitchell arrived in the region for separate talks with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Yahoo! news report.

Georgia's president said his country had seized a shipment of highly enriched uranium, blaming Russia for creating the instability that allows nuclear smugglers to operate in the region.

Russia dismissed the claims Thursday and said Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's comments were "unsubstantiated" and amounted to propaganda. Saakashvili gave few details of the seizure during an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, saying only that the uranium was intercepted last month coming into his country in the Caucasus region of southeast Europe.

BBC report.

It comes a day after data showed a worse-than-expected budget deficit of 13.6% of gross domestic product.

Credit rating agency Moody's also cut its rating on Greek debt on Thursday.