Various right-wing commentators, Mitt Romney, and dozens of congressmen have demanded that the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, be prosecuted for genocide for advocating (in one debatable translation) the destruction of Israel. I wonder if they will be quite so passionate about demanding a similar fate for Tucker Carlson, who earlier today openly advocated the destruction of Iran by the...
My previous post mentioned battlefield robot analogs of dogs, cheetahs, pack animals, even humans. Now behold the synchronized nanobot swarm! Here's what national security analyst John Robb had to say about the tactical benefits of a battlefield drone swarm: •It cuts the enemy target off from supply and communications. •It adversely impacts the morale of the target. •It makes a coordinated defense extremely difficult (resource allocation is...
A fascinating chart, courtesy of Juan Cole at Informed Comment: I don't have any grand political points to make -- other than to point out that Canada better watch its back....
Three quick updates from the "robots and warfare" side of things (largely culled from recent Danger Room posts that caught my eye and I wanted to point out to Opinio Juris readers). I have previously posted about Big Dog, the four-legged beast of burden being developed for use by the U.S. military. DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is now...
Wired's Danger Room has a new piece about law enforcement reform and efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. In particular, it focuses on the work of U.S. and Romanian Special Operations Forces in training Afghan law enforcement. Behind the scenes across the embattled country, a special breed of U.S. soldier is working closely with a new style of Afghan police to enforce law and order in...
That's the conclusion drawn in this blockbuster report -- which, precisely because it is a blockbuster that makes Israel and the MEK's vast number of Democratic and Republican supporters in the U.S. look bad, has been basically ignored in the "liberal" media: Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed,...
Cross-posted at LieberCode. It is becoming increasingly likely that Russia and China are going to block just about any resolution on Syria coming out of the Security Council, regardless of whether it is meaningful or not. They aren’t going to support a resolution that seriously denounces the regime, nor are they going to support an ICC...
By now, most readers have probably seen the following photo, in which Marine snipers in Afghanistan pose in front of a flag with the runes of the SS: I wasn't planning on blogging about the photo, because the insensitivity of the snipers and the awfulness of the symbolism speak for themselves. But then I saw this ridiculous statement by a...
As most readers likely know, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism recently released a 22,000 word report documenting the disturbing U.S. practice of using drones to target individuals attending funerals or attempting to provide aid to individuals wounded in previous drone strikes. Here is the report's central conclusion: A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at...
It's rare that I defend the ICTY, but I feel compelled to do so here. As discussed in this blog post by Laurie Blank, a group of experts in military law have released a report attacking the Trial Chamber's judgment in Prosecutor v. Gotovina for allegedly misapplying basic IHL rules regarding targeting. Unfortunately, the report fundamentally misstates what the Trial...
I don't want to step on the Harvard symposium -- I've moved it back to the top -- but it's worth noting that, on the same day, (1) the Fourth Circuit threw out Jose Padilla's lawsuit seeking damages for his mistreatment while being detained and (2) the U.S. government arrested John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer, for revealing critical aspects...
It's difficult to accuse these guys of being soft on Tehran, so it's hard to quibble with their conclusion: The intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present later this week to Dempsey indicates that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb. The Israeli view is that while Iran continues to improve its nuclear capabilities, it has...
