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This morning I read Curt's thoughtful piece reflecting on the news of Osama bin Laden's death and how the news was received in various demonstrations across the country. I respectfully disagreed with som...
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After giving myself a day to reflect on Bin Laden’s death, here are a few thoughts that occurred to me.
First, the killing of Bin Laden is obviously a significant development in the conflict with Al Qae...
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The other night, with CNN reporting very tentatively that the Bin Laden operation had likely been a drone strike, Bobby and I got a little ahead of ourselves. Bobby said that it will "be interesting inde...
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David Ignatius, who typically has great sources in the CIA, writes:
The trail that led to bin Laden’s hideout in the town of Abbottabad, about 75 miles north of Islamabad, began between 2002 and 2004 wit...
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[See here for an updated analysis, after reading the original below]
In the summer of 2009, the Wall Street Journal broke a story about (i) a never-consummated CIA plan to develop a capacity to use smal...
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For obvious reasons, this is a high-traffic day on Lawfare. So it's a good time to remind people to go to our Facebook page and click that little "like" button and to follow the @lawfareblog Twitter feed...
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...albeit less directly than the AP, that some of the key the initial strands of intelligence came out of the CIA system. The Times reports:
Last night, an official said that “detainees” had identified a...
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...that, as I speculated this morning, the original leads for what became the Bin Laden operation developed in the CIA's secret prison's program.
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Watching CNN last night, I was astounded to hear Peter Bergen assert that the death of UBL means the end of the war on terrorism (anyone have this on video?). That is an extraordinary overstatement, as ...
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I haven't been able to post much lately, and I won't be able to much for at least another six weeks. During that period I will be completing a book on how and why the Obama administration embraced so ma...
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I recommend that Lawfare readers spend some time absorbing the entirety of this press briefing last night by "senior administration officials." In particular, the following passage stands out and suggest...
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THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a t...
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It is better to be lucky than to be good, and we might well find out here that President Obama has lucked into this one. But it's worth pausing for a moment over the possibility that a significant strate...
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So stated the President just now. I would be extraordinarily surprised if anyone serious raised a legal objection to this [UPDATE: Or will some argue that the CIA, as opposed to the military, cannot law...
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...that:
1) He directed CIA to make killing or capture of Bin Laden top priority of war against Al Qaeda;
2) Last August, he was briefed on a possible lead on Bin Laden, hiding within a compound deep in...
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CNN now seems more confident of Pakistani participation in the operation.
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CNN is reporting Bin Laden killed in a mansion near Islamabad, which would seem dramatically to reinforce perceptions that he has had some measure of protection or, at least, blind eye from Pakistani int...
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This keeps getting more interesting. A moment ago I raised the question how critics would respond if this proved to be a drone strike. Now someone on CNN says it was a "human operation". Same legal qu...
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I'm not. I want to hear from Mary Ellen O'Connell on this. Was this strike--if it was, in fact, a drone strike--unlawful? Are the CIA personnel who conducted it war criminals?
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[SECOND UPDATE: Not a drone strike, and probably not a test of the legal questions raised by drones...see here.]
The President has not yet spoken to the public, but early reports indicate that UBL was k...
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