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Search: crossing lines

04 May

...Manual the final word? Can you slap a prisoner to make him think you mean business? Can an interrogation go on for 24 or 36 hours? Lines can be drawn. Yoo drew them in ways that many found unacceptable. Obama has drawn them at the AFM. Forget about law for a moment, where does morality demand that they be drawn? Benjamin G. Davis I like to stay away from the morality part of this because settling moral debates is beyond my limited competence. I focus on law, cases and authorities...
04.05.11 | |

06 Nov

...capture of persons who are DPAA. Jens Iverson Thanks for all of the comments. Marty, that is a great discussion, worth a read (or re-read). Thanks for the link, and your comments there. With regards to Emmerson's report (alternate link here, the UN websites are odd today for me: http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/UN_Drones_Report.pdf ) reading behind the lines, I think he agrees with the ICRC. It's true that statements of law like "If the criterion of continuous combat function is not met, then an individual who is otherwise affiliated with an armed group...
06.11.13 | |

30 Oct

Chris Borgen Roger: I agree with your analysis in your third paragraph. I think that the result is not only jurisdiction stripping (I think that occurs in the part saying that the Geneva Conventions may no longer be argued in the courts of the U.S.) but, more importantly, Congress stepping into the interpretive process. We know that Congress, in certain circumstances, can take jurisdiction away from federal courts but I think that telling courts how to interpret the law will be challenged on Separation of Powers lines. Bills trying to...
30.10.06 | |

15 Mar

...would skirt the CLCS process -- seems farfetched. I really doubt that all other states would agree to any end run around the Convention process that they have so long and so fully endorsed, in name and in practice (via submissions to the CLCS). Nor, I suspect would the U.S. itself regard the outer limits line as something to be agreed upon through a series of bilateral arrangements. States regard the setting of outer limits lines -- lines between the continental shelf and the Area -- as unilateral acts (to...
15.03.10 | |

30 Dec

...a signature strike setting as opposed to an individual strike because of the possibly more problematic intentionality even in LOAC for the criteria used in signature strikes (from what we read). At some point the lines for outrage for the 20 dead children at Newtown and some X number of children dead as collateral damage cross and that equilibrium point is reached. That point might be at 20 (Newtown) and 40 (drone strike). Or 20 (Newtown) and 400 (drone strike). Or 20 (Newtown) and 4000 (drone strike). But if the...
30.12.12 | |

06 Sep

...the Indian Ocean, and the South Pacific, was that an IAC or a non IAC, and what the heck does the South Pacific have to do with Gettysburg? In Vietnam when divisions of the NVA marched down the Ho Chi Minh trail and engaged US forces in the South, was that a NIAC because superficially they pretended to be Viet Cong, or was the an IAC because they were really part of the regular army of a country? When they established supply lines through Laos, and the US bombed those...
06.09.10 | |

15 Jun

...English language is not such that it could not said things were lost in translation here. Criticize Israel's actions in the raid if you want, but this statement of Netanyahu's does not do what you claim it does. Not by a longshot. Elliott To summarize, if he were referring to any forthcoming results he would have said something along the lines of "the results of this commission of inquiry will show that Israel acted legally in the raid on the flotilla...", or "this commission will no doubt conclude that Israel...
15.06.10 | |

14 Sep

...on Ali Soufan's 9/13 interview on PBS Frontlines. http://www.saltlaw.org/blog/2011/09/15/truth-on-torture-2-ali-soufans-fbi-interrogator-913-pbs-frontline-interview-and-more/ I declined to read Cheney's book. The interviews on television of him were quite enough. Best, Ben Benjamin G. Davis The link to the 60 minute interview of Ali Soufan is now up and it is riveting. It is here - http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7380678n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox Cheney in his interviews was so chummy with Rumsfeld. Two civil suits are going forward against Rumsfeld by American citizens. Here is a piece about State Criminal Prosecution of Rumsfeld that might apply as well to Cheney if his...
14.09.11 | |

29 Jun

Mark Kersten I absolutely love Eve of Destruction but will add two more recent anti-war songs by Michael Franti - Bomb the World (with the great line "we can bomb the world to pieces but we can't bomb it into peace) and Light Up Your Lighter (with the great lines "In the Afghan hills, the rebels fighting / Opium fields keep on providing / The best heroin that money can buy an' / Nobody know where Osama bin hidin'") Daragh Murray Great list!A couple of others I like are 'Handsome...
29.06.12 | |

13 Mar

...Afghan armed forces." http://www.janes.com/defence/news/misc/jwa011008_2_n.shtml Jane's Defense 08 Oct, 2001 "Of the 45,000 men available to the Taliban, Pakistani and Arab religious volunteers have played an increasingly important military role. The Arabs, deployed mostly on front lines north of Kabul, number an estimated 500 to 600 and form part of Osama bin Laden's `055 Brigade'. Pakistani volunteers are far more numerous. By mid-1999 as many as 9,000 to 10,000 Pakistanis were believed to be serving in Taliban ranks, some in combat roles and others in rear support, static guard and administrative...
13.03.09 | |

18 May

...it should be subject to derogation during armed conflict. There is much Supreme Court precedent supporting the abridgment of private property rights during war. Milligan suggests that certain circumstances might permit abrogation of even more than property rights. Military necessity for intelligence does not stop with battlefield interrogation. Thus, I am not sure the extent to which we can draw clear lines for the temporal (to capture) or proximal (to the battlefield) applicability of the Fifth Amendment during an armed conflict, assuming it applies at all. What if a simple...
18.05.09 | |

15 Apr

...the threat or use of force to violate international lines of demarcation, such as armistice lines, established by or pursuant to an international agreement to which it is a party or which it is otherwise bound to respect." Though the war may have been between the Koreas, this does not necessarily mean that the Armistice Agreement (see S/3079, available through UN ODS) only binds those States. Of course China also is a party to it, but more importantly General Clark, Commander-In-Chief of the United Nations Command committed the United Nations...
15.04.13 | |