Anthony Clark Arend

My old friend and University of Virginia collegue Dr. Robert F. Turner has a fascinating op ed in today’s Washington Times exploring the meaning of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Turner served two tours in Vietnam as an Army Officer and is the author of the book Vietnamese Communism: Its Origins and Development. Turner writes:
Today marks the 45th anniversary …

Today’s New York Times has its latest article in a series on cyberwarfare. In this piece, John Markoff and Thomas Shanker describe a cyber attack that the United States considered against Saddam Hussein but decided to abandon because of feared colateral damage. Markoff and Shanker explain:
It would have been the most far-reaching case of computer sabotage in history. In …

A previous post noted that President Obama had indicated that the United States would sign the the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Today,  the AP reports:
The United States on Thursday signed a U.N. treaty enshrining the rights of the world’s 650 million disabled people, saying it symbolized President Barack Obama’s commitment to upholding human rights through …

SCOTUSBlog reports:
A federal judge, ruling for the first time that the U.S. government must release a detainee who once faced terrorism charges, on Thursday told officials to free a young Guantanamo prisoner by Aug. 21 or 22 so that he can return to his home country, Afghanistan.  U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle conceded that the Justice Department still had the …

Over at UN Dispatch, Mark Leon Goldberg writes:

In a short post, Bill Easterly and Laura Freschi air some concerns over the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) that have been leveled by Noam Chomsky and General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann.
Chomsky and D’Escoto both conclude that, in practice, R2P is just Great Power imperialism in disguise. Although a lot of other statements …

A previous post contained a video of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs telling C-SPAN that Twitter was blocked on White House computers. Apparently Gibbs was wrong. The Christian Science Monitor Blog reports:
On Friday, we passed along a remark that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs made on C-SPAN – that everyone’s favorite microblogging site was banned on computers at …

In case you missed this– on Friday, July 24, President Obama announced that the United States would sign the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The AP reports:
Marking the 19th anniversary of a landmark law barring discrimination against people with disabilities, President Barack Obama said Friday that the U.S. will sign a United Nations treaty urging …

Nathan Hodge over at Danger Room is reporting:
The U.S. military is mulling a plan to build a private army to protect bases throughout Afghanistan. On July 10, the Army issued a request for information from companies interested in bidding on an Afghanistan-wide security contract. While a formal solicitation has not been launched, the idea would be to provide security services …