Must Reads!!

• Iran claims to take secret data from downed US drone
• UN authorizes 300 cease-fire observers for Syria
• US, Afghanistan complete partnership agreement drafts
• GsGf: Sudan  versus South Sudan
• Reports cast doubt on Phased Adaptive missile defense
• Kyl, Corker, Ayotte: Restore commitment to nuke modernization
• Wings Over Iraq: World Updates and Daily Defense Briefing
• Reuel Marc Gerecht: The Islamist road to democracy (WSJ sub)
• Yoo: Obama’s reliance on UN limits American power
• Militants and politics bedevil Yemen’s new leadership
• N. Korea ready for 3rd nuke test, launcher may not work
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President Obama will issue an executive order Monday that will allow U.S. officials for the first time to impose sanctions against foreign nationals found to have used new technologies, from cellphone tracking to Internet monitoring, to help carry out grave human rights abuses. – Washington Post

America is heading into an increasingly tumultuous decade in the Middle East, punctuated by repeated popular uprisings that will continue to dismantle long-standing power structures in the region, according to the Pentagon's top uniformed officer. – DEFCON Hill

Washington should be under no illusions: [Fundamentalists] will be neither our friends nor allies. But their debates with each other and with the region's still-kicking nationalists, socialists, communists and liberals will get evolution rolling. Down that tortuous path lies the possibility of less angry relations between Islam and the West. Dictatorship nostalgia, on the other hand, will take us right back to the cul-de-sac where Osama bin Laden was born. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)