Armed Conflict
Use of Force
822 Articles
Secrecy, Nonacknowledgement, and Yemen
Ryan posted last week about varying accounts of who was killed in an attack on an apparent wedding party in rural Yemen on December 12, 2013. A Human Rights Watch report quotes…
Missing Transparency: Is the US Response to Reported Drone Attack on Wedding Party Self-Defeating?
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a fact-intensive report based on the group’s investigations into a US drone strike that allegedly hit a wedding party in Yemen…
A Rejoinder from Jenks and Corn re U.S. SIGINT Based Targeting
There is probably no area of greater consensus between us and Professors Goodman and Jinks (their post) than the recognition that the law of armed conflict should and must be responsive…
Military Targeting Based on Cellphone Location
A recent news story by Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill details the use of NSA signals intelligence (SIGINT) – including cellphone and SIM card data – to locate and kill…
Eyes Wide Shut: Scahill and Greenwald’s Flawed Critique of U.S. SIGINT Based Targeting
[Editor’s Note: Stay tuned later today for a post by Ryan Goodman and Derek Jinks responding to the guest post by Chris Jenks and Geoffrey Corn.] In The NSA’s Secret Role in…
Which Policies Apply to the Killing of U.S. Citizens in Pakistan?
Yesterday, the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times, and the LA Times reported on debates within the U.S. government about “whether to authorize a lethal strike…
Where’s the “Metadata”?: What Greenwald and Scahill (Don’t) Say about NSA Metadata Collection and Lethal Targeting
There are many, many important revelations about NSA’s involvement in the US drone program in Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill’s historic debut story for First Look…
Lethal Targeting of US Citizens: AP Report Raises More Questions Than Answers
In a highly provocative piece this morning, Kimberly Dozier writes that the Obama administration is weighing another drone strike against a U.S. citizen. That is obviously a…
10 Things We Need to Know Now About the US Drone War
A year ago today, NBC News published a leaked copy of a Justice Department memo that justified the killing of a U.S. citizen without a trial in a foreign country outside a war…
U.S. Operations Against al-Shabaab/al-Qaeda: The Targeting of Godane
As Sarah Knuckey’s post explains, CNN is reporting that the latest US drone strike in Somalia targeted Ahmed Abdi Godane, the leader of Al-Shabaab. Sarah asks whether the strike…
What rules is the US applying to its Somalia drone strikes?
CNN today provided the most detailed account yet of the latest U.S. drone strike, carried out this past weekend in Somalia. US officials (quoted anonymously by CNN) said the…
US Announces Investigation into Wedding Convoy Drone Strike: A Step Toward Accountability?
Last night, NBC’s Michael Isikoff reported that (anonymous) US officials said: “The Obama administration has launched an internal investigation into a Dec. 12 drone strike…