This book discusses the critical legal issues raised by the US responses to the terrorist threat, analyzing the actions taken by the Bush administration during the so-called "war on terrorism" and their compliance with international law. Thomas McDonnell highlights specific topics of legal interest including torture, extra-judicial detentions and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and examines them against the backdrop of terrorist movements which have plagued Britain and Russia. The book extrapolates from the actions of the USA, going on to look at the difficulties all modern democracies face in trying to combat international terrorism. This book demonstrates why current counter-terrorism practices and policies should be rejected, and new policies adopted that are compatible with international law. Written for students of law, academics and policy-makers, the volume demonstrates the dangers that breaking international law carries in the "war on terrorism".

Serves as a coursebook that exposes students to current legal issues relating to international organizations. Contains excerpts from international treaties, negotiating history, decisions by international organizations, international and domestic judicial opinions, diplomatic correspondence, contemporary news accounts, first-hand narratives and scolarly articles.

This is a chilling analysis of the immediate predecessor of the US war on terrorism: its counter-insurgency policy during the Cold War. The US promised a low level response uniquely tailored to assisting third world states to respond to local insurgencies seeking social change. Drawing on the reports of Truth Commissions from six countries, Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile, South Africa, and Indonesia, Frederick Gareau examines a harrowing array of human rights abuses by US-supported dictators, governments and paramilitary groups against their own peoples. He shows that state and para-statal forces committed by far the greatest proportion of violence, and that these state repressions were perpetrated with Washington's full awareness, complicity, and military and politico-diplomatic support, if not at its instigation.

This study exposes the support that administrations in Washington have given right-wing dictatorships that committed terrorism especially during the cold war and war on terrorism. It rejects the narrow definition of terrorism insisted on by Washington that exempts terrorism committed by governments (state terrorism) from the definition, and for political reasons restricts the term solely to the private terrorism committed by private individuals or non-governmental organizations. Every one of the six truth commission reports used in the studyone each for El Salvador, Chile, Argentina, and South Africa and two with remarkably similar conclusions for Guatemala-- found that the governments were responsible for the great preponderance of terrorism and other acts of repression that occurred in their respective countries, much more so than the guerrillas. [publisher web site].