Former vice president Dick Cheney on May 21 defended the national security policies of the Bush administration. Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Cheney criticized many of the security policies of President Barack Obama and described how the 9-11 attacks affected subsequent decisions. Maintaining that accurate intelligence is necessary to any strategy, Cheney defended the use of force to obtain timely information as being granted by Article II of the US Constitution and the Sept. 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Four men in Newburgh, NY, are arrested by federal agents in a supposed plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at Stewart International Airport with Stinger missiles. The men are apparently all Black converts to Islam; one is a Haitian immigrant; most have drug convictions and converted in prison. (NYT, May 21) The (disabled) Stinger missile, of course, originated with the FBI infiltrator. We wonder how much more of the plot originated with the FBI infiltrator.

Former US soldier Steven Green was sentenced May 21 to life in prison for the rape and murder of an Iraqi teenage girl and the murder of her family in Mahmudiya. A federal jury in the US District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, which convicted Green earlier this month, was instructed to decide "whether justice requires imposition of the death penalty or life imprisonment without any possibility of release."

Spanish National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz Gómez reinstated charges May 21 against three US soldiers for their involvement in the death of Spanish cameraman José Couso, which occurred when the soldiers opened fire on a Baghdad hotel frequented by Western journalists in 2003, allegedly without provocation.

Authorities in Burma on May 21 closed the trial of pro-democracy advocate and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi after briefly opening it to 30 foreign diplomats the previous day. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said he plans to visit Burma "as soon as possible" to urge the release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners. In an interview with CNN, Ban said that he was "deeply concerned" about the detention of "an indispensable patron for reconsidering the dialogue in Myanmar."

Rwandan Hutu militant Desire Munyaneza was convicted by the Superior Court of Quebec May 22 on seven counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes under Canada's new Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. Munyaneza is the first person to have been charged under the act, which Canada ratified in 2000 in order to fulfill its obligations to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

More than a dozen Ethiopian military trucks crossed the border into Somalia May 20, setting up a checkpoint at Kalabeyrka, according to the governor of Hiran region, Sheik Abdirahman Ibrahim Macow. Ethiopian forces, which had withdrawn from Somalia in January, returned days after an Islamist militia took over three towns, expanding its control over a large part of the country. (NYT, May 19)

A Libyan militant whose false information about ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda was used by the Bush administration as part of its justification for war in Iraq died in a prison in Libya, a newspaper in the North African country reported. The militant, Ali Mohammed Abdel-Aziz al-Fakheri, known by his nom de guerre, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, hanged himself late last week, according to the newspaper, Oea.