Today’s Headlines and Commentary

As Ben posted on Saturday, Omar Khadr has been repatriated to Canada. Here are the Associated Press, Ian Austen of the New York Times and the BBC on the story.

Judge Edward J. Lodge has ruled that the government “may have willfully misused” the material witness statute in Abdullah al-Kidd’s case and that it will go to trial. Ethan Bronner of the Times has the story.

Julian E. Barnes and Siobhan Gorman of the Wall Street Journal tell us that the U.S. is stepping up its game against Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in response to the Benghazi attack.

Eli Lake of The Daily Beast discusses why it took the Obama administration so long to say the attacks in Libya were acts of terrorism.

Republicans have made many an accusation against the President for his handling of the Libya attack: Rep. Peter King has called for U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice to resign, says CNN, the Hill covers Congressional reaction to the flap, and Mitt Romney has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that “President Obama has allowed our leadership to atrophy.”

Lots of drone news today. Peter Bergen and Jennifer Rowland write on CNN’s web site about the seventy countries that now have drones and argue that:

[T]here has been almost no substantive public discussion about drone attacks among policymakers at the international level.

The time has come for some kind of international convention on the legal framework surrounding the uses of such weapons, which promise to shape the warfare of the future as much as tanks and bombers did during the 20th century.

The Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic and the Center for Civilians in Conflict have released a study entitled “The Civilian Impact of Drone Strikes: Unexamined Costs, Unanswered Questions.” Here is the summary and recommendations. Noah Shachtman of Wired’s Danger Room reports on the study’s findings, and Naureen Shah, lecturer in law at Columbia Law School and the associate director of the school's Counterterrorism and Human Rights Project, has this column in USA Today about the unprecedented precedent President Obama has set with drones.

Meanwhile, National Public Radio tells us about a clash yesterday between Afghan and American troops that killed five. It is not clear whether the attack was another “green-on-blue” attack. Rob Nordland of the Times also reports.

And Alissa J. Rubin of the Times reports on a suicide bombing in Afghanistan today, which “killed three international service members and at least 10 Afghan police officers and civilians.” Agence France Presse says that the death toll is around twenty.

And for all who have been wondering who has been wondering who has been the source of all those national security secrets leaking to the press, The Onion has the answer---in today’s Moment of Zen.

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