2.5.11

At times like these I have to remember that I didn't get into international law to receive satisfying answers to difficult questions:
In addition, under the UN Charter, the United States would normally be prohibited from using force inside Pakistan without obtaining Pakistan's consent. It is not clear whether the Obama administration received the consent of the Pakistani government to use force inside Pakistan in this case, but the Pakistani government appears at least to have consented after the fact to this potential infringement of its sovereignty.

In other words: it was illegal, but no one minds. This is so not going to help build the legitimacy of international law. The fact that some of the information appears to have come from Guantanamo detainees is also not going to help.

(via)

1 comment:

a said...

The neo-cons are going to jump to the conclusion that we got this information from Gitmo ONLY because of torture, when we hardly know if it was obtained before they were water-boarded or if even it wouldn't have been gotten otherwise.