Blog Posts by Laura Rozen, Yahoo! News

Kim Jong Il ruled the flow of information in North Korea so tightly that even news of his death did not emerge until two days after it occurred.

North Korean factory workers, military cadets, school children, and news anchors erupted in a mass outpouring of grief and wailing to official news Monday of the death of Dear Leader--as the man who has ruled the isolated Stalinist dictatorship since 1994 preferred to be known among his countrymen.

Kim, who was 69, died on a train on Saturday, apparently of a heart attack. But no hint of the Dear Leader's demise leaked in the country until North Korean state television reported it some 50 hours later--Monday morning in Asia, and Sunday night in U.S. time.

"North Korea's state media announced that the 69-year-old leader died of a heart attack during a train trip on Saturday, the same illness that killed his father and national founder, Kim Il-sung, in 1994," Yonhap News Agency, based in South Korea, wrote Monday. "The country's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said an autopsy confirmed 'an advanced acute myocardial infarction complicated with a serious heart shock' as the major cause of death."

The two-day delay in announcing Kim's death is "probably a sign of senior government, military and party officials making sure they reach consensus on what to say on succession," Tim Shorrock, a journalist who has covered Asia, told Yahoo News Monday. "It took several years for [the Communist] party to fully accept Kim Jr.'s succession in the 1990s."

Shorrock noted that the official North Korean Kim death announcement mentioned a 232-member funeral commission chaired by his son and designated heir-apparent. Such elaborately-organized and publicized funeral preparations would seem to signal, he said, that the Pyongyang regime has been "planning a response to show China, the United States, etc. 'continuity.'"

And mindful of the selective basis on which North Korea releases information into the world, the White House greeted the reports of Kim's death Sunday night with some caution, saying it was closely monitoring "reports" of Kim Jong Il's passing, and consulting with Asian allies.

By midnight, however, the White House had apparently confirmed news of Kim's death to its satisfaction; when Obama spoke with South Korean president Lee Myung-bak at that time, they discussed "the situation on the Korean peninsula following the death of Kim Jong Il," a White House readout of the call provided to journalists Monday said.

Perhaps the most isolated country on earth, North Korea remains an anomaly--a nuclear-armed Stalinist dictatorship that has, since its Cold War-ear founding, has always chosen its rulers on the basis of heredity. 

Iranian television on Sunday broadcast a videotaped "confession" of a man Tehran authorities claimed to be an American spy of Iranian descent.

The man, in his late twenties, was identified as Amir Hekmati, and was described as having been born in Arizona of Iranian descent. Hekmati said in the video clip that he had joined the U.S. military in 2001 after graduating high school, and worked as an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq.

"Afterwards, I entered Iraqi soil as an intelligence analyst and in U.S. Army uniform, and my main mission was to identity a number of people among the country's officials," he said, according to a Tehran Times' transcription of the videotaped "interview' on Iranian state television Sunday.

Later, Hekmati said, he worked for a computer gaming company, Kuma, and for defense contractor BAE in Iraq.

The State Department said Monday that it was still checking on the reports.

"Whoever this young American is, he is obviously under duress and in the hands of an enemy," a U.S. official said Monday. "His safety is paramount."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il attends a military parade in Pyongyang Sept. 9. (CNN)North Korea's despotic ruler Kim Jong Il has died, reports citing North Korean state media said Sunday.

Kim, the eldest son of the founder of the Stalinist nuclear state, was believed to be 69 years old. Known as "Dear Leader," Kim has ruled the isolated and impoverished nation since 1994.

The White House said it was consulting with allies in Asia.

"We are closely monitoring reports that Kim Jong Il is dead," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement emailed to journalists Sunday night. "The President has been notified, and we are in close touch with our allies in South Korea and Japan. We remain committed to stability on the Korean peninsula, and to the freedom and security of our allies."

Ali Mussa Daqduq false IDs (Bill Roggio/Long Wars Journal)On Friday, U.S forces transferred the last prisoner they had been holding in Iraq over to Iraqi officials, CNN reports.

Ali Mussa Daqduq, a senior Lebanese militant suspected of helping plot a 2007 ambush in Karbala that killed five U.S troops, was transferred into Iraqi custody, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told CNN Friday.

"We did so because we felt that was the fastest possible way to bring him to justice," Vietor told CNN's Adam Levine. "We are continuing to discuss this case with the Iraqis."

"We take this case very seriously, and for that reason have sought and received assurances that he will be tried for his crimes," Vietor added. "We have worked this at the highest levels of the U.S. and Iraqi governments, and we continue to discuss with the Iraqis the best way to ensure that he faces justice."

The United States has previously sought Daqduq's extradition in order to try him before a military commission, LongWarJournal's Bill Roggio reported last May. But ultimately, American military authorities gave up and handed him over to the Iraqis after "it became clear the Iraqis would not be able to" extradite him, Levine wrote.

Mobile phone footage of Moammar Gadhafi after his capture in October. (Global Post)The murky circumstances surrounding Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi's death in October may amount to a war crime, the top international war crimes prosecutor said Thursday.

"I think the way in which Mr. Gadhafi was killed creates suspicions of ... war crimes," the International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told reporters Thursday, Reuters reported..

"I think that's a very important issue," he continued. "We are raising this concern to the national authorities and they are preparing a plan to have a comprehensive strategy to investigate all these crimes."

The announcement marked a stark turnaround in Moreno-Ocampo's formerly close relations with Libya's interim rulers, the National Transition Council. Moreno-Ocampo had previously stated as fact anti-Gadhafi forces's claims to have captured Gadhafi's son and former heir-apparent Saif al-Islam Gadhafi back in August. Saif later convincingly disproved those claims by appearing at the Tripoli hotel where most foreign journalists were working--thereby forcing the ICC prosecutor to acknowledge that his confirmation of Saif's capture had been based on rebels' mistaken claims.

Saif al-Islam was later captured alive by anti-Gadhafi forces last month in Libya's southern desert en route to Niger, where one of his brothers has taken refuge. Other Gadhafi children have decamped for Algeria.

Libya's interim rulers have resisted pressure to extradite Saif al-Islam to the Hague to stand trial on war crimes charges, saying they prefer to conduct the trial at home in Libya.

Atlantic Council President Fred Kempe, Henry Kissinger, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Jones Dec. 13, 2011. (Atlantic Council)The silver-haired deans of American statecraft—Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Gates and Jim Jones—gathered this week at a high-profile policy council to lament the inanity of political discourse in this presidential election cycle. They also concurred that the fast-vanishing center of American political debate will likely yield perilous consequences for national-security issues.

"I can't help but think when listening to the presidential debates, how unbelievably ignorant are both the candidates and the public listening to them," Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter, told a conference hosted by the Atlantic Council Tuesday to honor former Bush 41 National Security Adviser Scowcroft. "It affects how the world sees us."

"I'm also deeply concerned about the decline of virtues and values  . . . when it comes to how we govern and relate to one another here at home," former Defense Secretary Robert Gates later told the forum. (You can listen to the audio of the proceedings here.) "Civility, mutual respect, putting country before self and country before party . . .  and not demonizing those with whom we differ . . . .  Zero-sum politics and ideological siege warfare are the new order of the day. "

"As a result of these and other polarizing factors, the moderate center, the foundation of our political system, is not holding," Gates said. "So just at a time when this country needs more continuity, more consensus, and above all more compromise, to deal with our most serious long-term problems, most of the trends are pointing in the opposite direction."

The current partisan distemper is "accentuated by a primary season which goes on forever," requiring candidates to play to the base, former Nixon and Ford Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said. "Fifty years ago, candidates asked me what to think. Now they ask me what to say. Those are two major problems."

The elder statesmen outlined a series of looming threats and convulsions that could upend the world order. As the global scene undergoes fundamental changes—the European debt crisis, the rise of China, the Arab awakening revolutions, and growing signs of strain on America's global military predominance--they argued, growing Washington gridlock, dysfunction and partisan demagoguery narrow the options for American leaders to manage such profound shifts--or even to think strategically about them.

Newt Gingrich (Cliff Owen/AP)If Newt Gingrich were elected president, what would his foreign policy look like?

Chris Moody and I take a look here:

"I don't do foreign policy," Newt Gingrich, then the Speaker of the House, told the New York Times in 1995, adding that the proportion of time he spends thinking about domestic policy, compared with foreign affairs and defense, is "90/10." The line was meant as a light-footed dodge from the latest rhetorical bomb he had lit, saying that the United States should recognize Taiwan as a country independent from China. "I was trying to rattle their cage, to get their attention," Gingrich would later say. "I don't think we should recognize Taiwan."

Throughout his political career, Gingrich has demonstrated this pattern--basking in the shocked controversy after a provocative remark and then retreating, when necessary, by dismissing the seriousness of his words. And while he focused on domestic issues during his time in the House, he has positioned himself in the Republican presidential race as a bold leader on the world stage. ...

You can read the whole piece at The Ticket.

The United States lowered its flag in Baghdad as the American military mission in Iraq was officially declared over Thursday.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the top U.S. military commander in Iraq Gen. Lloyd Austin (pictured above) presided over a low-key ceremony at Baghdad International airport Thursday, to mark the end of the almost nine year war, and thank the one million American troops who have served there. "The muted ceremony stood in contrast to the start of the war in 2003 when an America both frightened and emboldened by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, sent columns of tanks north from Kuwait to overthrow Saddam Hussein," the New York Times' Thom Shanker and Michael Schmidt write.