Search: battlefield robots
15 Dec Still a Bad Idea: Military Commissions Under the Obama Administration
...without formal precedential value, it is predictable that other federal judges would reach the same result. The idea that military commission rules offer any legitimate advantage over federal courts is simply wrong. While Ghailani’s judge did exclude one witness the government desired to use on the basis that he had been identified through coercive interrogation, military commission rules should have produced the same result. In general, military commission rules for handling classified information are now very closely based on those used in federal courts, while issues such as battlefield intelligence...09 May Bellinger Concludes Testimony Before UN Committee Against Torture
...for perpetrating the acts of abuse at Abu Ghraib. That finding had been supported in the 12 other major reviews conducted by the Department of Defense, the delegation said. There had been a total of 120 deaths of detainees in Department of Defense control in Afghanistan and Iraq. There had been no deaths in Guantanamo. The vast majority of deaths were caused by factors such as natural causes, injuries sustained on the battlefield, or detainee-on-detainee violence. In only 29 cases had abuse or other violations of law or policy been...21 May Some Freed Gitmo Detainees Return to Ill Ways (Then Again So Do Many Criminals)
Details here. Assuming that we’re talking foot soldiers, this seems a pretty thin argument for keeping the rest under wraps, even through a cost-benefit/national interests optic. The equation: How much does keeping Gitmo up and running hurt US interests v. how much damage can released detainees cause if they return to the battlefield. I’m betting that for all but the very few high-level detainees, the former presents a much more serious (if diffuse) continuing hit. The proportion of Gitmo recidivists (assuming that’s the right description) is much more favorable than...30 Sep Case of the Month: Padilla v. Hanft
...return of combatants to the battlefield during conflict.” International law, consistent with Charming Betsy, was imported into the statute in Hamdi, and now the plurality in Hamdi controls Padilla. The statute implicitly authorized detentions of enemy combatants consistent with the laws of war, and the Executive branch, the Fourth Circuit held, is acting consistent with those obligations. No meaningful distinction was made between an American and non-American enemy combatant. Nor was there any meaningful distinction made between the conventional war at issue in Hamdi (the ongoing war in Afghanistan) and...
10 Jan Moral or Legal Responsibilities? Protection in Afghanistan Once a Party Leaves
...the foreign forces were still present in Afghanistan and party to the ongoing armed conflict at the time. What might be made of the remedial obligation – that is, if IHL duties of protection are not met, what follows – that the applicants raised? In short, we typically think of the protection of civilians as actions taken on the battlefield, but in such special circumstances where there is an acknowledged special connection between the civilians in question and the state, could bureaucratic actions taken at home such as the proper...12 Jan Alito (Again) on NSA Wiretapping and Youngstown
...of guidance as to the interpretation of the authorization of the use of military force in the Hamdi case, where the court interpreted that enactment and determined that the detention of an individual who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan fell within the scope of that. And they relied there, I think, on customary practices in the conduct of warfare in determining what fell within the scope of the authorization. FEINSTEIN: Let me stop you right here, because that’s right. Because detention is a necessary following of an authorization...05 Feb The DoJ White Paper’s Fatal International Law Flaw — Organization
...the Tadic test: the organization requirement. The White Paper simply assumes that “al-Qa’ida and its associated forces” constitute a single organized armed group for purposes of IHL — “a transnational, non-state actor” that is “one of the parties” involved in “the non-international armed conflict between the United States and al-Qa’ida that the Supreme Court recognized in Hamdan” (emphasis mine). Indeed, the White Paper must make that assumption because, by its own admission, what justifies targeting a “senior operational leader” away from an active battlefield is precisely that, as a member...02 Mar Prince Harry and Jimmy McCain
Last year the British media entered into a voluntary agreement with the British Ministry of Defence to have a news blackout of Prince Harry’s deployment in Afghanistan. Harry had been serving there about ten weeks when the news broke on the Drudge Report of his whereabouts. The BBC is now defending the news blackout. From the sounds of it, in exchange for extensive filming of Harry on the battlefield, the British press would keep mum about his deployment to Afghanistan. “So, for the past ten weeks, the BBC, ITV and...
18 Dec The War on Drugs is not a War (Part I): Foreign Military Interventions Against Drug Cartels
[Dr Chiara Redaelli is a research fellow at the University of Geneva, IHL and ICL expert with the International Development Law Organization Ukraine Office and co-editor in chief of the on the Use of Force and International Law] From Drug Boats to Battlefields? The United States’ Case for Using Force against Cartels Since early September 2025, the United States has carried out a series of lethal strikes against suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, publicly framed as a campaign against so-called “narco-terrorists.” The operations, announced by the Trump...