Latest in Targeted Killing
In a post earlier today, I highlighted a variety of recent developments in which the Obama administration has adjusted constraints on using force under color of the AUMF, based in part on the report in the
You could be forgiven if, amidst all the allegations of groping, the Clinton-Trump debates, and the ongoing implosion of the Republican Party, you missed an extensive interview by Jonathan Chait with our current president in New York magazine earlier this month. You could also be forgiven if you wouldn’t have predicted that among the “five days that shaped [Obama’s] presidency,” Chait includes in his piece September 30, 2011, the day that a U.S.
This document was released yesterday. I haven't read it yet, but it is entitled "Procedures for Approving Direct Action Against Terrorist Targets Located Outside the United States and Areas of Active Hostilities" and appears to be a redacted version of the internal policy document that President Obama issued in connection with his May 23, 2013 speech on drone strikes.
Greg Miller has an interesting and seemingly quite well-sourced article in the Washington Post today documenting (and offering explanations for) a significant decline in CIA drone strikes. To be clear, the claim is not that drone strikes on the whole are in decline.
CENTCOM has just released a summary of publicly-acknowledged airstrikes conducted against AQAP targets in Yemen over the first five months of 2016. The list includes three strikes from February and March that were not previously acknowledged, interestingly, and there is no guarantee that there are not others of that kind still awaiting public disclosure.
DOD has announced an airstrike on an al Shabaab official in Somalia:
The DOD airstrike that may have killed Taliban leader Mullah Mansour is interesting, from a legal perspective, at many levels.
Despite the substantial overlap between counterterrorism activities undertaken by the CIA and JSOC, we tend to pay a lot more attention to the details of the congressional oversight framework for the former as compared to the latter. The NDAA often addresses CT oversight relating to DOD activities, however, and this year is no exception. What follows below is an attempt to provide a user-friendly guide to the proposals on the table.
I. Increasing the pace of quarterly operational briefings regarding CT:
Readers of Lawfare will be interested to learn that the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights has just published its report on the British Government’s policy on the use of drones for targeted killing. The report is the outcome of an inquiry launched by the Joint Committee in October 2015.
Recently, the Obama Administration announced that it will soon release a redacted version of its Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG) governing the use of force in counterterrorism operations outside the United States and “areas of active hostilities.” This includes drone strikes and other targeted killings.