Reading a justifiably nasty review of Meghan McCain's Dirty, Sexy Politics, I came across this unintentionally funny gem: The most obvious problem with Dirty, Sexy Politics is that grammatically, the book appears to be the work of a high school sophomore. To be more accurate, it appears to be the first draft of an essay written...
Gerald Steinberg, the head of right-wing propaganda outlet NGO Monitor, is not happy about George Soros' recent $100 million gift to Human Rights Watch: In accepting a huge grant from George Soros, Human Rights Watch has spurned the public advice (and warning) offered nearly a year ago by its founder Robert Bernstein. Rather than grapple with the serious...
I have no desire to have the final word with Ken. But I would like answers to two questions. First, where does Melzer or the ICRC say that armed conflict is a geographically-bounded concept, such that a participant in an armed conflict ceases to be targetable as soon as he leaves the battlefield? I cited pages in Melzer's book on targeted...
Thanks to the independence of two independents -- Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, who come from conservative electorates. That, my friends, is putting the good of the country ahead of short-term political interest. Go Julia! And thank you, Tony and Rob, for sparing us from three years of Tony Abbott....
I have no idea why Ken posted his thoughts on the Washington Post editorial only at Volokh Conspiracy, but I wanted to respond to his post, because I think it is based on a critical misapprehension of the laws of war. Here are the relevant paragraphs (my emphasis): [G]oing to the geographic definition of war as a legal concept. This idea...
Ben Wittes calls attention today to a Washington Post editorial defending the targeted killing of American citizens like Al-Aulaqi: [W]hen a target is hiding in a lawless state or in one which refuses to cooperate in his apprehension, other alternatives must be considered, including targeted strikes. The decision to target an American must be a last resort, used...
Julian noted a couple of days ago that the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights have challenged the Obama administration's "asserted authority to carry out ‘targeted killings’ of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism far from any field of armed conflict.” The lawsuit claims, inter alia, that such killings violate the due-process rights of the targeted citizens. As Anthony Romero...
The Washington Post is reporting that a State Department contractor has been charged with leaking defense information to Fox News: A State Department contractor was indicted Friday by a federal grand jury in the District, becoming the latest target of a series of investigations into unauthorized government leaks to news organizations under the Obama administration. Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, 43,...
Julian's latest snide swipe at the ICC focuses on Bashir's visit to Kenya, which he describes as a "slap in the face to the ICC Prosecutor and the defenders of the Bashir arrest warrant." Not surprisingly, Julian conveniently fails to mention the details of Bashir's visit: Sudanese President Omar al Bashir curiously flew in through Nairobi’s Wilson Airport, and ...
So says a draft UN report that studied events in the Congo between 1993 and 2008: An exhaustive U.N. investigation into the history of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo has concluded that the Rwandan military and its allies carried out hundreds of large-scale killings of ethnic Hutu refugees during the 1990s that amounted to war crimes,...
The report is here. I have neither the time nor the stomach to fully engage with it, but I couldn't let paragraph 82 pass without comment: 82. The United States is currently at war with Al Qaeda and its associated forces. President Obama has made clear that the United States is fully committed to complying with the Constitution and with all...
So reports Reuters: The Dutch prosecutor's office said on Friday it would look into whether Dutch peacekeeping soldiers should face criminal charges over the 1995 massacre in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. About 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed at Srebrenica after Bosnian Serb forces overran the United Nations-protected enclave where Dutch troops were ...
