A few days ago, I posted this little comment concerning Eugene Robinson's column on drones. The response to it has, I confess, surprised me, particularly as it has focused largely on an off-hand remark I...

My former colleague Eugene Robinson has a column in the Washington post entitled "Assassination by Robot," which seems to me to warrant a brief response. Robinson begins by saying that, "The skies over a...

Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedmann have a piece in the new issue of Foreign Affairs (mostly behind the pay wall, but an excerpt is here) offering a mixed verdict on drone strike operations in Pakistan. ...

The Washington Post reports this morning that JSOC recently carried out a drone strike in Somalia, targeting two al-Shabab leaders.  The piece emphasizes that the Administration has recently highlighted ...

For the benefit of those who could not watch the SFRC hearing this morning on Libya and the WPR, here are highlights from the oral testimony from State Department Legal Advisor Harold Koh (the written te...

Charlie Savage reports this morning:  “Since the United States handed control of the air war in Libya to NATO in early April, American warplanes have struck at Libyan air defenses about 60 times, and rem...

My analysis of the War Powers Resolution yesterday assumed, based on Charlie Savage’s story, that the only kinetic fire that U.S.

In this long post I analyze the Obama administration’s legal arguments for compliance with the War Powers Resolution.  A later post will consider the broader significance of the arguments. Here is the a...

A series of articles over the past few days have discussed plans for the CIA to operate armed drones in Yemen, where U.S. armed forces already have been using lethal force against AQAP targets (cruise mi...

Mark Mazzetti has a very important story in the Times noting that, far from backing away from using lethal force against AQAP targets in Yemen during this time of political instability, the US has steppe...

Writing at Foreign Policy, Charli Carpenter and Lina Shaikhouni present a series of arguments challenging the legality of the U.S. use of lethal force--whether from drones or special forces--in Pakistan....

Hot on the heels of a National Security Council debate last Thursday concerning whether to reduce the pace or scope of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan (reported by the Wall Street Journal here; please do c...