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Pakistan links 5 Americans to militants

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Five U.S. citizens who had been reported missing have been arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks, a Pakistani official said.

The arrests came in a police raid on a house linked to a militant group in Sargodha in Punjab Province, American and Pakistani officials told The New York Times.

Tahir Gujjrar, deputy superintendent of police in Sargodha, told CNN the five Muslim men had sought to connect with militant groups but the groups weren't interested.

All five men are from Northern Virginia and their families had contacted the FBI after they went missing last week, The Washington Post said.

One of the men, Ramy Zamzam, 22, is a dental student at Howard University, the Times said, citing his Facebook page.

The information provided by Gujjrar had not been confirmed by U.S. officials, nor was there any indication charges had been filed, CNN said.

The U.S. State Department could not confirm the arrests or whether the men were Americans, and the U.S. embassy in Islamabad was seeking more information.

Pakistan must notify the United States about arrests of Americans under the Geneva Conventions.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a statement Wednesday parents of the missing men, all in their 20s, and Muslim leaders came to the council, which immediately informed the FBI. Nihad Awad, the council's executive director, said one of the men had left a video behind containing references to "the ongoing conflict in the world, and that young Muslims have to do something."

"I was disturbed by the content of it," Awad said.

Poll says 51 percent support troop surge

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- A slim majority of Americans said they support President Obama's plan to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, while 43 percent oppose the move, a poll shows.

In The New York Times/CBS News poll, 51 percent expressed support for the deployment.

But 55 percent said Obama should not have set a date to begin exiting. Obama said he would like to start bringing troops home in July 2011 but withdrawal would not begin before weighing conditions in Afghanistan.

The poll also found many Americans said they were skeptical Afghanistan can be counted on as a partner in the fight.

And 6 of 10 respondents said they did not want U.S. troops to remain there for more than two years.

Slightly less than half the respondents agreed Obama's strategy would prevent terrorists from using Afghanistan as a base of support, while only 39 percent said an increased effort in Afghanistan would make the United States safer from a domestic terrorist attack.

The approval ratings for the president's handling of the Afghan war went up by 10 points from last month, to 48 percent, following the announcement of his Afghan strategy earlier this month, the Times said. The poll, however, noted the support came largely from Republicans and independent voters favoring the troop escalation.

The poll found Obama's overall approval rating as he nears the end of his first year in office stood at 50 percent, the lowest yet from a peak of 68 percent in April.

The poll was conducted by telephone from Friday through Tuesday night, with 1,031 respondents, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Petraeus: Increased Afghan fighting on way

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- There will be an increase in violence in Afghanistan early next year as additional U.S. troops arrive to battle Taliban insurgents, a top U.S. commander says.

Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday that the arrival of 30,000 additional U.S. troops, plus expected efforts by Afghanistan government to combat "corruption and abuses of power," will result "in an increase of security incidents in the summer of 2010."

Because of that, Petraeus said, "It will be important ... to withhold judgment on the success or failure of the strategy in Afghanistan until next December, as (President Barack Obama) has counseled."

The commander also told senators that efforts by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, will be aided by a shake-up of the command structure of the NATO International Security Assistance Force, in which McChrystal has become both "ISAF commander and commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan."

Efforts to train Afghan troops will be stepped up and shared by NATO allies, he said.

"While certainly different and in some ways tougher than Iraq, Afghanistan is no more hopeless than Iraq was when I took command there in February 2007," Petraeus said.

Alleged dinner crashers subpoenaed

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Alleged White House dinner crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi were subpoenaed Wednesday to testify before the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Committee members overwhelmingly voted to issue subpoenas to the Virginia socialite couple, while a similar effort to compel White House social secretary Desiree Rogers to testify failed along a party-line vote, ABC News reported.

The Salahis, who insist they received an invitation to a White House state dinner last month where they met President Barack Obama, said through their lawyer they would invoke their Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer questions should they be called.

"Requiring the Salahis to personally appear for the sole purpose of invoking their Fifth Amendment privilege will result in an unnecessary media spectacle from which no facts relevant to the committee's inquiry will be determined," the letter from their lawyer reportedly reads.

Nonetheless, committee members approved resolutions subpoenaing the Salahis to appear on Jan. 20 to explain why and how they were able to get into the dinner without being listed on the official guest roster, the U.S. broadcaster said.

Napolitano: Screening security not at risk

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the mistaken online posting of an airport screeners' manual did not put security "at risk."

"The security of the traveling public has never been put at risk," Napolitano told a panel of the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. "We have already initiated personnel action against the individuals involved in this. We have already instituted an internal review to determine what else needs to be done to make sure this incident never recurs."

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Tuesday a contract employee posted a redacted 93-page Transportation Security Administration operating manual on a government Web site that was accessible to contractors.

Visitors to the site in May were able to recover blacked-out information in the manual on how TSA screening officers should handle diplomatic pouches, set metal detectors and explosive detectors, use an X-ray system and when to allow police, fire and emergency personnel to bypass screening, CNN reported.

The manual listed 12 countries whose passport-holders would face enhanced airport screening -- Algeria, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and Yemen.

Napolitano said her department's inspector general, Richard Skinner, was conducting an independent review of the incident, which some members of Congress characterized as shocking, embarrassing and a serious leak.

"It increases the risk that terrorists will find a way through the defenses," Stewart Baker, a former assistant DHS secretary, told The Washington Post.