The ICC—the international court for war crimes featured front and center in my novel Falcon Seven—was prosecuting Thomas Lubanga, the alleged Congolese warlord, but the chief prosecutor for the ICC, Luis Moreno Ocampo, was found by the trial court to be out of line for failing to inform the defense of a key figure in the case.  The case was dismissed.  You can read about it on Yahoo News here.  But of course Moreno Ocampo appealed–to the appellate court right down the hall. 

Unsurprisingly, the “appellate” court of the ICC (which is located in the same building as the ICC’s trial court), reversed the trial court’s decision, saying Ocampo should only have been sanctioned, and, of course, the trial may continue. 

Notably, Moreno Ocampo is the same chief prosecutor of the ICC who said in 2009 (you can read the Reuters story here ) that he was investigating the conduct of American troops in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for war crimes.  Looks like Americans will be in the good hands of a sanctioned prosecutor of the ICC some day.  We’d better dust off the Servicemember’s Protection Act and get it ready.  We may need it.

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Many of my books have been noted by the press to be somewhat prescient.  To anticipate future events.  Like Fallout, which before 9/11 anticipated an air attack on the US from inside US territory by foreigners trained here. 

One of the things I have been noting and writing about for years is the duplicity of the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI (Inter-Service Intelligence), toward the United States.  It has been widely believed for years that the ISI established and supported the Taliban.  They have always denied it, and continue to deny it.  An article released today quotes the Pentagon that portions of the ISI are working with terrorist groups to undermine US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. You can read the FoxNews article here.  The Wall Street Journal asserts here that the ISI is affirmatively supporting the Taliban. 

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Few things have done as much for naval aviation as putting one of the hottest actors in the business, Tom Cruise, on screen in the hottest airplane of the day, the F-14. Now there’s talk of a Top Gun sequel. I’m all for it!

Those of us who went to the real TOPGUN, before the movie, thought the school was incredibly cool and we felt fortunate to go. But we sure didn’t expect anyone we knew to even come close to understanding what we were doing.  After the movie though, all you had to do was say you went to TOPGUN, and people immediately thought more highly of you. That was a refreshing change in the 80s.

However, when Top Gun was released, those of us in VF-84 knew that the movie with the best F-14 flying scenes had already been made—and our squadron did all the flying in that movie. It is called The Final Countdown, starring Martin Sheen, Kirk Douglas, Katharine Ross, Charles Durning, and James Farentino.

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“Who will stand in judgment of U.S. troops and leaders?”

This question is asked within the subtitle of Robert Dudney’s editorial “Warfare v. Lawfare,” in the June edition of Airforce Magazine. It is one the United States must answer frequently. It comes up every time someone says the United States should sign the Treaty of Rome, which established the International Criminal Court.

Who will stand in judgment if we sign?

As stated in the editorial: (more…)

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I’ve mentioned “lawfare” before. It is defined by the Lawfare Project, as:

“the use of the law as a weapon of war, or more specifically, the abuse of the law and legal systems for strategic political or military ends.”

The countries most vulnerable to such a strategy are the ones most attuned to human rights issues, and most active in international conflicts. The U.S. is target number one, and Israel is undoubtedly target number two.

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