It’s not international law. It’s Public International Law. In the 80’s CIA would have referred to this as the latter. After Afghanistan and the planning and funding of the war through Mercy Corps, Sarah Chayes and the Shays on the intellignce committee; one might change back to international law because of the huge funding through USAID to Mercy Corps from the Intelligence Committee, CIA. the definition probably changed right after Chayes, who worked with Kennedy to from PC, died and 9/11 happened a couple of months later and we had to call PC and the Green Berets out. The problem with international law is that is who had Kennedy killed.

Using force is vital when it’s a good time to pay back some dems and Kennedy pals like PC and Green Berets. The UN would have picked Public International Law.

After all, when the U.S. feels like it, the U.S. is pretty good at resourcing, manning and encouraging aggressive wars. I count: the invasions mounted by South Africa of Namibia, Mozambique and Angola; the invasion of Laos by the South Vietnamese; the guerrilla war against Nicaragua; the Kurdish guerrilla war against Iraq in the 1970s; the Chinese nationalist cold war against Communist China, which included organizing a nationalist chinese army in Burma that found the processing of heroin a much more lucrative business – and those are off the top of my head.

The notion that the U.S. is going to submit to an international authority that is less powerful than the U.S. seems to ignore both the massive unpopularity of this stance in the U.S. and the lack of a single example where the U.S. backed off on an intervention or overthrow it had decided on because it contravened international law. Is there a single case? I am not talking about shifting jurisdictions to international forums so that multi-nationals can sue to overturn state environmental laws, now.

The problem with the post-Cold War order would not have surprised any of the canonical writers on politics – Machiavelli, Hobbes, Montesquieu. And when the U.S. gets Iraq internationally condemned for purchasing and making WMD, and then turns around, violates every international covenant, and helps India make WMD, who is going to raise a voice against the U.S.? The UN is much more interested in Iran, of course, has said nothing about Pakistan, and will continue to operate mostly as cover for what the U.S. wants to do on the major things, while giving vent to grievances on the smaller scale.

“I confess that I have a much greater tolerance for these sorts of creative approaches to national sovereignty and democratic change when I have any confidence the puppeteers have a clue what they’re doing.

This does not look to me like good reason to avoid questioning Bush’s questionable assumptions.

I have seen no credible evidence that bin Ladin recordings after 2002 were the same voice etc as before 2002. All I have is a vague statement from Bush’s NSA, the same organization that would be the best in the world at faking it.

Remember, this was 2001, only a few months after the nice-guy Clinton and this kinda formalities still seemed important; it was all in the newspapers.

So, the Taleban guys asked for evidence. The Bushies guys said: ‘sure, we have the evidence and it’s strong but it’s also totally secret and can’t be shown to anyone’. The Taleban guys kept insisting on having the evidence before they begin extraditing the evildoers.

And then something very funny happened. Bush said: ‘OK, if you don’t believe me, I’ll show the evidence to Tony Blair, capiche? Surely you will trust my friend Tony, eh?’ And so, he showed ‘the evidence’ to Tony, Tony confirmed that it’s good and that was the end of story as far as the western press was concerned; who could doubt Tony’s integrity?

And they will deny the strongest of evidence. Don’t forget, 9/11 wasn’t Bin Laden’s first terrorist act. The Clinton Administration provided plenty of evidence to the Taliban in 1998 after the embassy bombings. Bin Laden had issued fatwas calling for killing Americans several times and had actually been indicted for the embassy bombings and earlier terrorist acts. Many of his associates had been convicted, and much evidence against Bin Laden was presented at their trials. But the Taliban didn’t hand him over in 1998, and after 9/11 we weren’t stupid enough to wait any longer.

The position that the State is always a force for good is actually a fringe right-wing phenomenon, known as Fascism. There is no left-wing “mirror image” of libertarianism, and hence no inconsistent left-wing inverse schmibertarianism.

Is there trustworthy evidence that it was actually Bin Ladin in that video?

The Bush administration said they thought it was him, but we shouldn’t take their word for it, or for anything.

‘The United States has turned down Taliban offers to negotiate. Bush repeated that stance Tuesday. “I have said that the Taliban must turn over the al-Qaida organization living in Afghanistan and must destroy the terrorist camps. They must do so, otherwise there will be a consequence,” he said. “There are no negotiations. There is no calendar.”’
source: CourtTV, Oct. 2, 2001, “Taliban still says: no proof, no bin Laden”
http://www.courttv.com/assault_on_america/1002_nobinladen_ap.html

By October 17, 2001, The Guardian was reporting that the Taliban was offering a deal that didn’t require evidence.

“For the first time, the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden for trial in a country other than the US without asking to see evidence first in return for a halt to the bombing, a source close to Pakistan’s military leadership said. But US officials appear to have dismissed the proposal and are instead hoping to engineer a split within the Taliban leadership. The offer was brought by Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the Taliban foreign minister and a man who is often regarded as a more moderate figure in the regime.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,575593,00.html

See libruls: bombing does too work! If we keep at it who knows what else they’ll accept!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137095,00.html

Admittedly, we have since found out that the Taliban was willing to negotiate to hand him over, and Bush refused to negotiate. :-P But that wasn’t obvious to us or the UN at the time.

How was it consistent? The US presented an ultimatum to the Afghan government demanding extradition of a group of country’s residents. The US was asked to produce the evidence of these residents’ involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attack. The US then refused to produce any evidence. The US government announced that it does have the evidence, but it won’t be disclosed. The US government then attacked Afghanistan, defeated its government and installed a puppet government that has no support and can’t control the country. Almost 6 years later the US is still bombing the country regularly.

How can this be consistent with any principles of anything? You’ve gotta be kidding.

Yeah, the Russell War Crimes Tribunal, in ‘67:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Tribunal

This gets to the heart of what is meant by compliance with international law of war—do regulatory norms and formal rules need to be followed, or is compliance with underlying principles sufficient?

In 2003, the US argued inter alia that Iraq was violating UNSC resolutions (which it was although nowhere near the degree to which the US claimed or to which invasion would be a prudent option). Bush’s claim was that the US would enforce what others would not.