Before his death, Osama bin Laden boldly commanded his network to organize special cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack the aircraft of President Obama and Gen. David H. Petraeus.

"The reason for concentrating on them," the al-Qaeda leader explained to his top lieutenant, "is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make [Vice President] Biden take over the presidency. . . . Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour . . . and killing him would alter the war's path" in Afghanistan.

Administration officials said Friday that the Obama-Petraeus plot was never a serious threat.

The scheme is described in one of the documents taken from bin Laden's compound by U.S. forces on May 2, the night he was killed. I was given an exclusive look at some of these remarkable documents by a senior administration official. They have been declassified and will be available soon to the public in their original Arabic texts and translations.

The man bin Laden hoped would carry out the attacks on Obama and Petraeus was the Pakistani terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri. "Please ask brother Ilyas to send me the steps he has taken into that work," bin Laden wrote to his top lieutenant, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman. A month after bin Laden's death, Kashmiri was killed in a U.S. drone attack.

What is socialism?

Socialism is an economic system characterized by public ownership and centralized planning of all major industries (manufacturing, services, and energy), banks and insurance companies, agribusiness, transportation, the media, and medical facilities. Under capitalism, these giant enterprises dominate the economy but are privately owned and operated for the purpose of generating wealth for their owners by extracting it from working people who are paid only a small fraction of what their labor produces. Socialism turns this around so that the class that produces the wealth can collectively decide how it will be used for the benefit of all.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest paved the way for a goal that had long eluded the political career of 57-year-old French Socialist Francois Hollande: to square off against President Nicolas Sarkozy in next month's election.

PARIS - The break that had long eluded the political career of 57-year-old French Socialist François Hollande finally surfaced with a text message in the wee hours of May 15 last year.

His girlfriend, 47-year-old journalist Valérie Trierweiler, read it and nudged Mr. Hollande awake: Dominique Strauss-Kahn - then-chief of the International Monetary Fund - had been arrested by police in New York on suspicion of sexual assault. "François did not grill me for more details about the arrest," Ms. Trierweiler said. "He was already thinking of his next move."

International law permits justifiable self-defense. Targeted killings are prohibited, especially premeditated ones like America and Israel repeatedly commit for reasons other than claimed.

These incidents constitute cold-blooded murder. US drone killings and rampaging death squads, as well as Israel's deplorable history and latest ritual slaughter highlight the issue. International law prohibits anticipatory self-defense. It amounts to using force to deter it.

Under the UN Charter's Article 2(4):

"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."

Only two exceptions apply. Article 51 permits "individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security."

In addition, a nation may anticipate self-defense in situations where verifiable, compelling evidence shows imminent or already initiated armed attacks.

By his own account, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Washington this month with two goals. One was to continue his 15-year campaign to push Iran's nuclear program to the top of the world's agenda. That mission was accomplished, Netanyahu declared to the Knesset on Wednesday. The other aim was to hear Washington acknowledge that Israel has the right to launch a military operation on its own against Iran if it sees fit. "This position was positively received in the United States, I would even say in the most profound way," he said.

With that, the Israeli Premier launched an extended argument for defying American requests for restraint and going ahead with a strike on Iran. He cited as precedent the bold calls of three of his predecessors: David Ben-Gurion's decision to announce independence in 1948 despite the U.S. Secretary of State's advice to wait; Levi Eshkol's decision to launch the 1967 Six-Day War despite President Lyndon Johnson's warning; and Menachem Begin's 1981 decision to strike Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor at Osirak (though Ronald Reagan appeared mostly amused when he heard about that strike, famously remarking, "Boys will be boys!").

"I presented the example I just gave you to my hosts in Washington," Netanyahu reported, "and I believe that the first goal I set -- to strengthen the recognition of Israel's right to defend itself -- I think that goal was achieved."

The Obama administration is threatening to impose sanctions on India over its continued economic ties with Iran amid disagreements between Washington and New Delhi over how much and how soon the latter is reducing oil imports from the (in US eyes) pariah nation.

India has "failed" to reduce its purchase of Iranian oil and if it doesn't do so, President Barack Obama may be "forced" to impose sanction, unnamed administration officials were cited as telling Bloomberg wire service. A decision in this regard could come as early as June 28, they added, implicitly offering New Delhi a ten- week window to show a decline in Iranian oil imports.

Indian officials have contested the US assessment by insisting New Delhi is scaling down Iranian oil imports with more reduction in the pipeline, but that concession has been offset by India's commerce ministry's well-publicized efforts to ramp up trade with Iran in other areas, a move that has not gone unnoticed by the powerful pro-Israeli lobby in US.

Buenos Aires, Argentina - Argentina is intensifying its campaign to block oil development in the Falkland Islands, announcing on Thursday it will pursue "administrative, civil and criminal" penalties against the dozens of companies involved.

"We are going to defend the resources of the South Atlantic, which are the property of all the Argentines," Foreign Minister Hector Timerman said at a news conference. He said that includes any oil found off the shores of the islands they call the Malvinas, which have been controlled by Britain since 1833.

Once the colonial subjects of Britain, the roughly 3,000 islanders now determine their own fate. Already, they have collected millions of dollars in licensing fees for oil exploration, and they've had their first major offshore oil discovery - last year's Sea Lion strike that promises to deliver as much as 450 million barrels of oil.

It was found by Rockhopper Exploration PLC, which has been seeking a $2 billion investor to fund production starting in 2016. The company has yet to announce such a deep-pocketed partner, but if and when it finds one, industry analysts estimate that a total of $10.5 billion in taxes and royalties would start flowing into the Falkland Islands treasury from the Sea Lion find alone.

Argentina, which lost a brief and bloody war against Britain for the islands in 1982, aims to keep that production from starting by any means possible short of violence or war, Timerman said, adding that his government will always follow international law.

US, Seattle - The lawyer representing a U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians has only appeared in military court a handful of times in a career spanning 40-plus years, but he's no stranger to high-profile clients.

John Henry Browne has represented serial killer Ted Bundy as well as Colton Harris-Moore, known as the "Barefoot Bandit."

The 65-year-old said he has handled only three or four military cases. The soldier, whose name still has not been announced, will also have at least one military lawyer.

Browne is known equally for his zeal in representing his clients and his flair before television cameras.

In addition to being a lawyer for Bundy, he helped Benjamin Ng avoid the death penalty following his conviction in Washington state's worst mass killing, the massacre of 13 people at a Seattle restaurant.

Goldman Sachs employee Greg Smith's very public resignation, replete with a pointed letter published in the New York Times yesterday, has landed upon the investment bank like a bomb. Slamming a "toxic and destructive environment" within Goldman Sachs, Smith says the firm's internal culture has devolved to the point where the entire staff not only tolerates, but expects workers at all levels, from senior partners to associates, to pursue nothing but ever-more sophisticated means of "ripping their clients off."

Apologists for the financial sector - including the editors of the major business newspapers and television networks - predictably have shot back with a flurry columns and reports, mostly designed to discredit the former vice president by making fun of Smith and his concerns. If you strip away the ad hominem layers to these responses though, the core problems raised by Smith remain, and the reaction of the business press seems all the more absurd, for Goldman's pesky turncoat isn't saying anything that's news to the public: Goldman Sachs is characterized by a toxic culture of greed? Stop the presses!

There is much more to be said about Goldman Sachs' derivatives operation, however, and Smith's provocative resignation provides an opportunity because he was working in the belly of it.

At the center of Smith's critique are derivatives, the arcane financial instruments that transformed the world's splintered national economies and regional banking systems into a single, if complicated, global system. Evangelists of derivatives claim they have made new heights of economic growth, trade, and prosperity possible. Critics have pointed out since the beginning of the derivatives boom in the 1980s how perfectly suited they are to fraud and systemic catastrophe via the greed of the few and the powerful.

I remember being a young Marine recruit at Parris Island, August of 1966, running, running, boots thumping on the grinder, exulting in the sense of power and communion that comes of men acting in unison, shouting, "Luke the Gook comes marching by, stick your bayonet in his eye, lef rye lef rye lef...." Only an idiot goes to PI - Third Batallion, Disneyland, in my case - in August. I was one. It goes with being nineteen.

Under a leaden sun that beat down like a soft rubber truncheon, we unlearned civilization. How to clap a hand over a sentry's mouth while inserting your Kbar in his kidney; agony, shock and instant blood loss prevent a struggle. We ran in formation shouting Kill! Kill! Kill! We learned that it is better to shoot an enemy in the bowels than the head because trying to keep him alive would strain the enemy's medical resources, and the man would probalby die anyway. Peritonitis is your friend, we learned. The other guy's peritonitis.

Months later at Lejeune we slogged day after day, on three and a half hours sleep, through the greasy clay mud of a North Carolina autumn, from range to range. We learned flame throwers, which if you haven't you don't know what hell is, and how to burn the enemy alive. Again, that sense of power. We learned to use white phosphorus, WP, Willy Peter or other names less printable, to cover enemies in burning goop that you can't put out. We learned to be what human beings shouldn't be. We felt an exhilarating freedom, of not being subject to moral constraints. We learned to suppress conscience, morality, and empathy. This, more than the use of weapons, is the goal of military training.