From Karen DeYoung, the Washington Post:  With war fatigue growing and an election looming, the Obama administration has bumpily embarked on its endgame in Afghanistan.

From the State Department:  The United States will host back-to-back G8 and NATO Summits May 19-21, 2012, in Chicago.  The White House has the overall lead for summit planning through various working groups chaired by the National Security Staff.

From Susan Cornwell and Jim Wolf, Reuters:  The United States has invited Russia to use its own radars and other sensors to size up one or more U.S. missile-defense flight tests as part of a new push to persuade Moscow that the system poses it no threat, a Pentagon official said on Tuesday.

From Slobodan Lekic, the AP:  Terrorist groups have expressed interest in obtaining some of the thousands of shoulder-launched missiles that have gone missing in Libya and the issue has become a priority for the Obama administration, a senior U.S. official said Friday.

From Kimberly Dozier and Bradley Klapper, the AP:  It's a polite faceoff of spies vs. diplomats, as the Obama administration debates how aggressively to pursue Libya's vast weapons stores, including tons of caustic mustard agent and thousands of anti-aircraft rockets

From Bill Gertz, Inside the Ring:  President Obama recently rejected a proposed missile-defense agreement with Russia that was developed by the State Department with the hope of coaxing Moscow into cooperation on countering Iranian missile threats.

From President Barack Obama, POLITICO:  With the passing of former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, our nation has lost a distinguished diplomat and public servant.

The predictable round of American finger-pointing over the crisis in Egypt has already begun. Senator Dianne Feinstein and others are demanding to know why the CIA did not warn the president that such a crisis was about to happen. Perennial critics of the intelligence community are busy recalling such failures of the past.