US Commission on Wartime Contracting: Correcting over-reliance on contractors in contingency operations

The Commission on Wartime Contracting concluded in its second interim report to Congress that the use of contractors has become a “default option,” pointing to the estimated $177 billion spent since 2001 on contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet vigorous oversight and management of contractors by the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Agency for International [...]

George Bush calls off trip to Switzerland amid fear of violence at demonstration… or an arrest warrant

The Guardian reports that George W Bush has had to call off a trip to Switzerland next weekend amid planned protests by human rights groups over the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and the threat of a warrant for his arrest. The visit would have been Bush’s first to Europe since he admitted in [...]

Efforts to Prosecute Blackwater Are Collapsing

The NY Times reports that nearly four years after the federal government began a string of investigations and criminal prosecutions against Blackwater Worldwide personnel accused of murder and other violent crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cases are beginning to fall apart, burdened by a legal obstacle of the government’s own making. In the most [...]

Karzai decree to eliminate private security within 4 months

Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a decree on Tuesday setting a deadline of four months to disband private security companies — a move likely to dismay NATO and the U.S. military that rely on such firms to protect convoys and bases. According to the decree, security contractors currently working in Afghanistan will have to either [...]

US court dismisses 1998 Sudan missile strike suit

An appeals court on Tuesday 8 June upheld (click here to read the decision) the dismissal of a $50 million lawsuit against the United States over then-President Bill Clinton’s 1998 decision to order a missile attack on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant. The appeals court dismissed the case ruling that it involved a political question covered [...]

Canada: new bill on “investigative hearings” and “preventive detention”

Craig Forcese (University of Ottawa, Law) has a post on a bill on investigative hearings and preventive detention, which is tabled by the Canadian Government. Quote: In keeping with efforts in the last several sessions of Parliament, the government has tabled a bill seeking to re-enact the investigative hearing and so-called “preventive detention” (technically, recognizance [...]

Will Justice have to pay money to a terrorist organization?

Michael Isikoff has a post on Newsweek on the dilemma posed by the recent decision that President Bush’s warrantless-wiretapping program was illegal. Quote: “All things being equal, DoJ would love nothing more than to let stand a federal judge’s recent decision that President Bush’s warrantless-wiretapping program was illegal, thereby avoiding further legal skirmishes over one [...]

Qatari diplomat causes security alert on US flight

A Qatari diplomat who caused a security alert aboard a United Airlines flight after smoking in a toilet will not be charged with a crime. Qatar’s ambassador to the United States called the incident aboard a flight from Washington to Denver late on Wednesday 7 April a “mistake” and said the man, who had diplomatic [...]

Italian prosecutor is tracking convicted CIA agents

Jeff Stein reports at the Washington Post that the Italian prosecutor who won convictions against nearly two dozen CIA operatives for kidnapping last year is tracking their movements via cell phone and credit card records. Armando Spataro, the chief prosecutor in Milan, said he regularly signs subpoenas, which do not require a judge’s approval, for [...]

Court says Bush illegally wiretapped two Americans

A federal judge on Wednesday 31 March said the George W. Bush administration illegally eavesdropped on the telephone conversations of two American lawyers who represented a now-defunct Saudi charity. The lawyers alleged some of their 2004 telephone conversations to Saudi Arabia were siphoned to the National Security Agency without warrants. The allegations were initially based [...]