There is a must read piece on Guantanamo in the New York Times magazine yesterday by Tom Golden. Golden interviewed more than 100 military and intelligence officials, guards, former detainees and others. I came away from the article with the impression that there are continuing struggles between intelligence investigators interrogating the detainees and the commanders who are seeking...
The Sunday Times (UK) reports today on efforts by one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers, BAE, to develop a new generation of "green" weapons that minimize environmental harm. The company's efforts include: Bullets with lower lead content because, as the company states on its website, “lead used in ammunition can harm the environment and pose a risk to...
John Yoo's op-ed in the Sunday New York Times left me scratching my head on a number of points. I'm most mystified by his claim that the presidency of the last 30-35 years has been weakened as an institution (he's got Dick Cheney to quote here, but that might not persuade everyone on the question). Were the Reagan,...
Last month I wrote a series of posts, chained below, concerning the separatist conflict in Moldova. At issue is who should control Transnistria, a strip of land between the Dniestr River and the border of Ukraine. Transnistria contains Moldova’s key industrial infrastructure, power plants, and, importantly, a significant stockpile of Soviet-era arms. Since 1992, it has been under the effective...
You have to appreciate the sophisticated foreign-relations analysis provided by American TV news. Here's how Brian Williams opened the NBC Nightly News last night:Good evening from Havana, Cuba, the host city for what is called the Summit of Non-Aligned Nations--in short, all of the enemies of the United States, really, gathered in one room.The Non-Aligned Movement includes, of course,...
One of the nice things about my time visiting here at William & Mary School of Law is the opportunity to attend conferences like the "Supreme Court Preview" sponsored by W&M's Institute for the Bill of Rights Law. Tonight I attended a panel which included both Georgetown Law professor Neal Katyal, the attorney who argued and won the Hamdan...
Last week, the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. allowed some of the claims in a lawsuit brought by U.S. citizens alleging injuries caused by the Saddam-era Iraqi government during the 1991 Gulf War to continue. The ruling in Vine v. Iraq is mostly a win for the new Iraqi government, which has been diligently defending these and other...
Amnesty International has just released a report concluding that Hezbollah is guilty of war crimes for its indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians. The report is available here. Here is an excerpt from the press release: "The scale of Hizbullah's attacks on Israeli cities, towns and villages, the indiscriminate nature of the weapons used, and statements from the leadership confirming...
See Akhil Amar's column yesterday for Findlaw's Writ, complete with an oceanic theory of the Constitution. ...
One of the crucial weapons used by the U.S. government in the war on terrorism has been the freezing of financial assets linked to or believed to be related to Al Qaeda. This is one U.S. anti-terrorism policy that has generally received wide support within the U.S. (unlike some other policies) as well as broad support from the U.N....
Former State Department Legal Adviser William H. Taft IV has this essay on the US and IL in the current issue of the Yale Journal of International Law. It’s pretty tough talk, perhaps not surprising from someone who was on the losing end of internal executive branch deliberations regarding detainee treatment issues (this as Colin Powell more prominently parts...
Perhaps one of our intrepid readers could explain to me why this is a good idea: The US ambassador to Nicaragua has issued a vigorous warning to this small Central American country's electors against supporting Daniel Ortega, the veteran leftwing Sandinista leader and the frontrunner in November's presidential election. [snip] "It's one thing to be truly democratic. It's another thing to do what...
