This just gets more and more interesting. Lt. Col. Vandeveld has said he will testify for the defense -- but only if he is given immunity from prosecution: Defense attorneys asked the judge to give Vandeveld immunity. "The suggestion he may have something criminal to hide is intriguing and suggests there is something very, very important this commission needs to get...
I wish I could say I was surprised: Long before Mr. Hussein was hanged on Dec. 30, 2006, with supporters of Iraq’s new Shiite-led government taunting him as the noose was tightened around his neck, a pattern of intervention by powerful Iraqi officials had been established. The court’s first chief judge was dismissed under government pressure for giving Mr. Hussein too...
Shocking: An Army prosecutor has resigned from the Guantánamo war court in a crisis of conscience over plans to try a young Afghan accused of throwing a grenade rather than settle the case out of court, according to an affidavit filed with the court Wednesday. Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, a reservist from the Pittsburgh area, becomes the fourth known prosecutor to...
The trial of Charles Taylor's son, "Chuckie," for acts of torture committed in Liberia began today in Miami: Chuckie Taylor is the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is on trial for war crimes by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. The son is accused of responsibility for torture committed between 1997 and 2003 while he headed Liberia’s...
Paul Kennedy’s book on the history and future of the United Nations, Parliament of Man, appeared in 2006. A Spanish translation appeared in late 2007, which I review in a (very) long essay (some 10,000 words, be warned) appearing in Spanish in the Revista de Libros (Madrid), November 2008 issue. The Revista, for which I serve as political science advising editor is one of the best...
Two months ago, I predicted that the Security Council would not have the votes necessary to defer the ICC's prosecution of Bashir. Nostradamus I'm not: In a last-ditch attempt to prevent ICC judges from issuing an arrest warrant for Bashir in the next few weeks, Bashir's supporters - the Arab League, the African Union, China and Russia - will use the...
I don't watch television, so I wouldn't actually know, but I take it there was some sort of dustup in a Sarah Palin ABC interview in which Governor Palin was asked about the so-called Bush Doctrine. I don't know exactly what the discussion was about, but I did get an email from a friend a little while ago that said,...
I hereby nominate all Kenyans for US citizenship: All 22 countries in a BBC World Service poll would prefer Democratic nominee Barack Obama elected US president instead of his Republican rival John McCain. Obama is preferred by a four to one margin on average across the 22,000 people polled. The margin in favour of Obama ranges from just 9 per cent in...
On behalf of all of us at Opinio Juris I would like to thank Tom Farer for joining us this week in the first Oxford University Press/ Opinio Juris book symposium to discuss his new book Confronting Global Terrorism and American Neo-Conservatism: The Framework of a Liberal Grand Strategy. We would also like to thank Kristen Boon and Mark Shulman for joining us...
Ken, since I have commitments most of today, I can answer only briefly and perhaps a little too abruptly, the surprising, even astonishing remarks in your last post, remarks so surprising, given their source, that I am wondering whether someone pretending to be you actually made the post. Let’s begin with the granular. In my post on the Israeli-Palestine conflict I...
I want to thank Tom for participating in this discussion; I have re-read the book as we have had this discussion, and it has provided great illumination on what the text is about. I have learned a great deal from the discussion and from the book. I apologize for coming late with this entry; it was hard to get to...
In this final substantive post of my Warholian week as guest blogger I offer a necessarily telegraphic summary of my long chapter on the conflict. Being telegraphic it will not even have the virtue of the chapter, i.e. even if it is clearly wrong, it won’t be wrong clearly. For two reasons I devoted an entire chapter to a single neuralgic...
