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Brigadier General Dunlap: Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming this morning.

What I'm going to try to do is give you a little bit of a different pitch on the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) and introduce you to a concept that has gotten some traction in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG) world in that we've started talking about how law relates to modern warfare. These are going to be my own views as will become painfully obvious. What I want to do is talk about a little bit how the nature of war has changed.

It used to be that war, especially for the operators, was very simple. The command just went to war with the troops. But now, as Commander of United States European Command, General James L. Jones, observes, it's very different. It's become very legalistic and complex.

We can talk about during the Q&A why that is. I do have some theories. I think it has a lot to do with globalization and so forth, but the reality is that it's especially a problem in air operations. Dr. Rebecca Grant in a very good article in February of 2003 in AIR FORCE Magazine made that point.

This is something that's frustrating for a lot of Airmen. Air power does seem to get more scrutiny than other kinds of fires. Why is that? I would suggest to you because there's the perception that it's more controllable. In fact, James Baker, this is a different James Baker, a lawyer that was on the National Security Council (NSC) staff, kind of lays this out why it is. In the Air Force, we have promoted so often our technology and our capability for precision that people have begun to believe us, and that raises an expectation that other fires don't necessarily get.

I also think that it's given rise to what I call an asymmetrical form of warfare, “Lawfare.” Lawfare is the strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective. I don't want you to think that Lawfare is a negative, because we use Lawfare ourselves. For example, during Operation Enduring Freedom we used a legal weapon, so to speak, a contract to buy up all the commercial imagery that was available. There were other things we could have done in a more traditional military way to stop that information or attempt to stop that information from getting to the bad guys, but we chose to use a legal instrument. But most adversaries are using Lawfare, as I say, as a form of asymmetrical warfare by manipulating a value of our societies which is respect for law.

Why are they doing this? Because they really can't confront us in a traditional way. They aren't developing the kinds of capabilities to confront us in the air so they're looking for other ways of blunting our technology.

Speaking of the asymmetrical warfare theme, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, in talking about the new National Military Strategy, made a very interesting observation where he specifically talked about legal lines of attack in the context of asymmetrical warfare. And indeed, the methodology seems to fit the wordology, so to speak. One of the ways it's done is by ignoring international law to gain an operational advantage.

In a book by Roger Barnett, Asymmetrical Warfare, he kind of makes this exact point. Let me see if I can give you an example here. You might remember this from the first Gulf War where the Iraqis put their fighters, I think their Flankers, they put them right next to the Ziggurat of Ur, which is one of the most historical buildings from the ancient world. Of course it was an illegal act, but they did this and counted on our concern for adherence to the rule of law, the proportionality analysis and so forth, yet at the same time they hoped to achieve the operational objective of protecting those aircraft. That Ziggurat of Ur is actually more of a defensive shield than any of the hardened shelters that the Iraqis built.

Another method is to manipulate legal forums to decapitate military efforts. I just got back from Colombia. I've been down there several times. They are struggling with this particular kind of issue because the enemy has figured out if they want to get rid of a very effective government military leader, they just accuse them of human rights violations, and under their law they have to relieve the commander of command, and also under their law that officer is not eligible for military defense counsel, so they have to spend millions of pesos to hire their own defense counsel. That's one of the things, incidentally, that we're working with the Colombians to try to change their law to permit military defense counsel. It's particularly bad for junior officers and enlisted personnel who are charged in crimes.

But the same issue can come up with our own folks. You might remember during the second Gulf War there were war crimes charges alleged against our senior leaders. I never did find out what happened to the Swiss charges, but it just goes to show you that there are people out there who will use these methodologies against us. I was very interested to see this described in the March 2005 version of the National Military Strategy, the use of judicial processes.

One of the key ways that we're seeing Lawfare employed is in the psychological dimension of war. Actually it has a Clausewitzean basis, I would submit to you. You have some Air Command and Staff College (ACSC) students here today. I know you all have read your Clausewitz completely by now, and I'm sure you've gotten to the part where he talks about the remarkable trinity. He doesn't really use the words government/people/military, but that's a popular interpretation of the remarkable trinity.

In the US military and many other Western militaries, what we try to do is to destroy the adversary's military capability. A strategy of denial. Our enemies know they can't destroy our military capability so what they're doing is waging a different kind of war where they're trying to unhinge the remarkable trinity by separating the people from the government and the military. So their strategy is very different in a Clausewitzean sense, but it is Clausewitzean as it relates to Lawfare. So in this context what we're talking about is eroding national will by using the fact or perception of illegalities or ethical violations.

William G. Eckhardt makes a very good point here, that law today has become a center of gravity. What the enemy has done is found a positive value in our society, our adherence to the rule of law, and tried to turn that against us to gain an advantage, an operational advantage. So I think that conceptually there's a lot of value today, aside from our own professional and moral and ethical imperatives, to think of law as the center of gravity, as something that we have to deal with just to achieve operational success. In other words, it's a pragmatic consideration and not just a nice thing to do.

The reality is that illegalities do create operational effects which are literally indistinguishable from conventional military defeats. Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez I think captured it perfectly when he said the events at Abu Ghraib had the same effect as a traditional defeat. The reality is Americans have died and will continue to die as an indirect result of this. It energized the enemy, it eroded the Coalition, it achieved all those kinds of things that you would want if you were going to impose it through a battlefield defeat.

I think the ultimate Lawfare goal is to replicate the Vietnam effect. When you look at the literature such as is available of many of our adversaries, they're really fixated on the Vietnamese success in Vietnam. That's because it replicates their own situation where it was a technologically inferior, militarily inferior force that nevertheless had success. And one of the ways they had success was to erode national will because of the way the war was conducted.

The frustrating part and the challenging part for Airmen in the future is that actual compliance may not be enough. Remember the bombing of the Al Firdos bunker in the first Gulf War? We thought it was a command and control facility. It did have command and control capability, but the families of high Iraqi officials were using it as a bomb shelter. We hit it exactly, but the effect was when all the visuals, when all the CNN footage of the bodies being pulled out of that bunker got onto television, it had, as was pointed out in Gordon Trainor's book, The Generals’ War, as if the Iraqis had a great air defense.

I believe that what adversaries are seeing here is that it's cheaper and easier, rather than trying to build an Air Force, to instead design a strategy which optimizes this kind of technique. What we need to be aware of is that our adversaries are going to try to goad our folks into illegalities and the perception of illegalities.

I think the purpose of what is done by the Iraqis, especially when they're using the false flag, pretending like they're surrendering and then turning out to be suicide bombers, and so forth ... Yes, it is to kill Americans. Yes, it is to send a message that way. But I think it's also designed to create a mindset in our troops, kind of a shoot first, ask questions later mindset because they know that that kind of approach will continue to erode the support that we need to ultimately prevail.

That's why I think it's important to understand this as a military strategy. In the very important strategic magazine TIME, they state that all these things are not happenstance. There is a framework, I believe, and the enemy is specifically proceeding along with this particular strategy.

So what are some of the challenges that we see for senior warfighters? Yes, the law of armed conflict does have a legal dimension and there are consequences. For example, we are not parties to Geneva Protocol 1, but I think the concept here is worth discussing; the responsibility of commanders. There is a legal dimension and recent cases actually show that we will prosecute people for violations of the law of war. And others are very interested in doing it. And of course we have the specter of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

We're not parties to the ICC, but most of the rest of the world is, and we are working very hard to get countries where we operate to execute what we call Article 98 agreements where they will agree not to enforce ICC provisions against our troops, but nevertheless, it's out there.

And there is a moral dimension. This is now about two years old, but do you remember when Israeli pilots signed a letter stating they would not fly missions in the Gaza Strip because they thought attacks there were illegal and immoral? They weren't going to fly them any more. An interesting thing about this is they were never really disciplined by the Israeli Air Force. They were basically like, “okay, well, we'll get other people to do it.” But when I talk to senior leaders at the Combined Force Air Component Commander (CFACC) course and other places, I always try to emphasize the pragmatic issue of the law of armed conflict today. And again, in Dr. Rebecca Grant's article, I think she talks about it in the right way, as a strategic imperative.

When you think about compliance with the law of armed conflict, it needs to be in the overall architecture of your strategy for pragmatic reasons as well as of course the professional, ethical, moral, legal, etc., etc.

So how do we counter what I call abusive Lawfare? There are a number of things that we do, but I want to emphasize again, not all Lawfare is bad. I'm not advocating that law be thrown out because it's a problem. What I'm saying is there are different ways law can be used. We can use it, but I'm emphasizing here how the adversary tends to use it.

What we try to do in the Air Force in particular is what I call “legal preparation of the battlespace.” There are a number of things that we do with that. One of the things is that we have really enhanced our training over what it was just a few years ago. You might remember a couple of years ago, 10 years, 15 years ago, law of armed conflict training was basically “don't shoot the prisoners.” It was very rudimentary.

I guess some people didn't quite get that message of don't shoot the prisoners, but the training that we have now is much more sophisticated. I can tell you that we are now training seriously. Every flag officer that goes to the CFACC course goes through a process that includes relatively sophisticated training in the law of armed conflict. So the senior warfighters are much more keyed into this than I think they were even just a few years ago.

What are some of the things we talk about? Well, one of the key challenges that we have is we have to orient our senior leaders to the fact that most other countries are parties to treaties that we are not. So they have different imperatives when you operate in a coalition air environment.

One of these, for example, is the Protocol 1 to the Geneva Convention. We accept a lot of it as customary international law, but not all of it.

The Ottawa Convention is another one. This is the anti-personnel landmine treaty. Well, this becomes a problem for us because we use the gator mine system, for example. So if we're using that system it does have implications for coalition partners. Some of them can fly Combat Air Patrol (CAP), some of them can still do tanker ops, but others can't have anything to do with it. How their particular nations implement the Ottawa Convention can be very, very different.

Of course most other nations, as I mentioned, are parties to the International Criminal Court. We talk about some of the controversial issues, and let me just run through a few of these. Lawful military objectives and dual use targets ... One of the key things here is that it's important that the commander who makes the decision to attack a dual-use target or some other sensitive target is able to articulate in military terms what the advantage is that's going to be gained. And we try to give some very practical advice of trying to capture that thinking because there could be questions asked afterwards. For example, the bombing of the Hugo car factory was one of the things that was looked into by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) after Operation Allied Force.

Attacks on electrical grids always have been somewhat controversial, but even more controversial after the first Gulf War because of the unintended consequences. The reality is that they are valid targets, assuming you do your proportionality analysis. There is a study, and I think it was by a Studies and Analysis Squadron (SAS) student, that is very interesting, where basically he concluded that it almost never works out to much of a military advantage.

It's not illegal, but what we do tell commanders to do is make a data-driven decision. In other words, not a knee-jerk, “oh, yeah, we've got to go after electrical grids.” You have to ask the next question—why? And what is the data to show that it's going to achieve the military objective that you're seeking? Again, we try to give some practical advice along these lines.

Attacks on broadcast facilities ... As some of you may know, there was a lawsuit after we attacked the Serb radio and television station during Operation Allied Force. It was dismissed on technical terms, jurisdictional terms. Peter Greenwood, who was the lawyer who represented NATO, said that if it had gone to trial he was not too optimistic. The reason being, this is what the ICTY said, and this is very much not the view of Airmen, so we're seeing here a conflict between certain legal authorities and what the traditional Air Force view is.

It almost became an issue during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). And as you can see, there were a lot of concerns before the war. But like with a lot of things, the Iraqis kind of helped us out. When you put people in uniform on TV giving directions of a military nature, you've transformed that facility into a military command and control facility. In fact, the criticism that we got out of this is that we didn't attack it soon enough, and that we let Baghdad Bob be on TV too long.

Human shields ... You might remember the Serb civilians got out there, they put targets on themselves. They were guarding the bridge, trying to deter us from bombing it. My judgment is if they're voluntary human shields and they're trying to protect a legitimate military target, they're not civilians any more. They're unlawful combatants. There may be a political reason that you don't attack them, but it's not a legal problem.

That's one important thing. We try to delineate out what is a legal problem and what is a policy commander kind of issue as opposed to merging the two. We almost had the problem of voluntary human shields in Iraq during the second Gulf War, but they left because they feared for their safety. That's what they actually articulated. They said, “it's too dangerous for us to stay here as human shields.” Well, I thought the whole idea…anyway.

Cluster munitions ... Not illegal, but I can tell you that cluster munitions is the third rail of international law. There is a lot of concern, especially in Europe, about cluster munitions. The basic problem is the failure rate of the submunitions. It then creates what many people view as kind of a landmine. So it falls into that whole landmine feeling that innocent people are being killed.

In fact, the Human Rights Watch did a report on the war in Iraq—the air and the ground war. It's actually pretty favorable to the Air Force except in this area and one other area. This is what their concern is. I think we used a quarter million submunitions, so even if the failure rate is one percent, you can do the math, and there are quite a few things there that have the potential to explode.

Leadership targets ... This is one thing that absolutely drives me nuts. People sometimes in the press think there's something illegal about going after leadership targets, and by and large that's not true. Yeah, there is a prohibition against assassination, but under international law it isn't assassination to drop a 2,000 pound bomb on the leader of the enemy forces, even if he's a civilian, if he's responsible for command and control of military forces. Yes, leadership can be targeted, but here's another observation that we just need to accept from the perception of others. I would invite you to read the Human Rights Watch report because it says some very interesting things about what we used to target. They said that we used GPS from Thuraya Phone signature, and that GPS signature is not discreet enough for proper targeting in an urban environment. Well, you may not think much of Human Rights Watch, but Rand did a very fascinating study and it's on the web and if you're in the Air Force you can get it for free. They did an assessment of it.

The reality is it's very difficult to use an air weapon to kill a particular human being, even if it's a legitimate target. It's tough to do. It's not necessarily illegal, but it's just tough to do, so commanders need to weigh the potential downside especially if you're attacking in an urban environment.

Technology … We had a lot of controversy over technology, especially as it's exhibited in the Predator. Here's what the issue was. The allegation appeared in an article in The New Yorker that if it wasn't for a JAG we would have killed Mullah Omar. Well A, the facts did not go down exactly like this. B, I'm amazed anybody who has any passing familiarity with General Tommy Franks thinks that he is going to just turn himself upside down because some JAG thinks something isn't a good idea. But in any event, let's give ourselves a little quiz. Those of you who have seen Predator videos know what it looks like. If you're in an environment like we had in Afghanistan, yeah, it could be Taliban. Could it be civilians? Could it be CNN? Usually we get here and everybody says “fire away.” Could it be NGOs? Could it be allies? Remember, our allies looked a hell of a lot like the enemy. They might have a little different color scarf, but when you're looking at a Predator video, it's hard to tell what the heck you’re seeing.

So in the JAG Corps we often talk about the Predator video and similar types of things, that can be piped to a lot of different places, and everybody becomes an armchair general. The fact of the matter is it's pretty common in the legal world that visual identification can be flawed. We have whole books written on the fallibility of witness identification because of all different kinds of facts. So we like to say visual identification doesn't always equal positive identification. You have to look at the totality of the circumstances and there's lots of other factors. In the future we’re going to be challenged by people who are looking at Predator videos and think they know what they're seeing.

It does undermine the importance of what we try to do with our JAGs, and our JAG training has changed pretty dramatically. All the JAGs who work in the Air Operation Centers (AOCs) now go to the formal training unit down at Hurlburt Field, the five-week course where you learn how to do the unique computer systems and so forth. It's not legal training. It's the same training everybody in the AOC gets. And usually JAGs do pretty good down there.

Now another part of it is preparing key external audiences. I think a much better job was done on this in the second Gulf War than in the first Gulf War. In other words, there's briefings to reporters about how the enemy is going to try to deceive them, make them think there's collateral damage and so forth, putting out a lot books. And US Central Command (CENTCOM), for example, put on the web a briefing on how they do targeting and what they do to try to eliminate collateral damage. A lot of interviews, I gave interviews, others gave interviews, on the things that we try to do and it had a good effect. We got mostly positive press in the second Gulf War.

Technology is a big part of the solution. Changing the axis of attack; you might eliminate what would otherwise be a substantial risk of collateral damage. PsyOps, Information Warfare and Precision Guided Munitions are all ways in which we can limit collateral damage, but we need to be aware that the adversaries are looking to disrupt our precision capability. The reality is that with the weaponry I think we are there. We have the weaponry, but it's still dependent upon intelligence. Good intelligence will always be the most important factor in limiting collateral damage. The right processes can limit civilian losses: Careful review of the targets, involvement of the JAG, etc.

And just quickly, why do we have a JAG? Partly because it's mentioned in international law and partly because the commanders want JAGs there. This is what JAGs are supposed to do—review all the targets, Rules of Engagement and so forth. But here's the part I want to emphasize. There was a great looking article in Jane's Defence Weekly. When I saw the cover story I was really enthusiastic, until I read it. It sent the wrong message. JAGs don’t make decisions. What JAGs do, they advise. The commanders are the decision-makers, and that's what you see in our doctrine, in the joint doctrine as well as our own Air Force doctrine. We act as advisors.

The reality is that only JAGs give legal opinions. You'd be amazed how many people in an Air Operations Center think that they can give legal opinions. And we have to report apparent violations of LOAC, whether the commander wants it reported or not, and that is done. Then the ultimate backstop is I can call down to the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Al Udaid and get information. I can ask them things no matter what the commander may think. In other words, commanders cannot conceal illegalities. The JAGs are entitled to stovepipe to prevent that from happening.

Of course, access is really important and our doctrine sets it up to get the same information. And Air Combat Command Commander General Ronald E. Keys made this observation as well. So you'll see JAGs at the planning process. It used to be that you'd have one JAG in there and the first time you'd really see it, you'd be making objections at the major air attack plan briefing. If you're making objections then, you're going to lose the sortie. So now we embed JAGs much earlier in the process so by the time the CFACC is getting his brief, it's pretty much been vetted.

What's the footprint? Well for OIF if you're doing 2,000 sorties we had 15 lawyers. Now you think, “my God, that's a lot.” Except that there were 30 public affairs officers there. So it's all relative. I think this is the right number, because this gives you three or four people available on any given shift so that you have somebody in combat plans, somebody with the CFACC and so forth.

What does the CFACC tell the JAG? Well, like everyone else, you don't just sit there if you're a JAG and just make objections. You work to find a way to achieve what the commander wants to achieve. Lieutenant General Michael C. Short in a speech really made the ultimate observation. The JAG has to be able to tell the Commander what he or she doesn't necessarily want to hear, and I can tell you, that can lead to some very interesting conversations, where I'm reminded of my relative rank to the commander.

Our new boss, USAF Chief of Staff General T. Michael Moseley, is very JAG-oriented. I've been on deployments with him. He really has seized—and it's not because he has some kind of love affair with lawyers because I can guarantee you that's not the case—but he and most of the four-stars and three-stars these days really recognize the strategic implications when something goes wrong in a legal sense during an operation.

Responding appropriately ... One of the things that CENTCOM did I thought was really good. Remember when we were accused of the wedding party bombing? Well, there was an investigation, as there always is, or as there usually is, and they actually put it on the web. You can't always do this because there are going to be security reasons, but I really believe that transparency is the key to confronting the adversaries. Doing it quickly and getting it out to the public.

There's more we need to do. We need to build a doctrine for what I call collateral damage response cells. This was done on an ad hoc basis, but there needs to be in the CAOC, in my judgment, a standing organization just to address these kinds of issues and it needs to be interdisciplinary. It's not just JAGs, it's other players.

And we have to capture the data. One thing we found during the Tarnak Farms case, there's all kinds of computer systems in the CAOC, but when you're doing 2,000 sorties a day it's hard to remember details. We don't have a process now where we specifically try to capture data that might be necessary for an investigation after the fact because they didn't build these systems with that in mind. But since we're always going to be asked these questions, we need to take a look at that and build an architecture. What do we need to archive, and what don't we need to archive, because there's all kinds of information out there. And just looking at the mission reports, the MISREPS, is not enough.

A quick concluding observation ... We hear a lot about this. “Hey, the other guy's not playing by the rules.” Well yeah, you're right. And guess what? A big other guy is planning not to play by the rules because if you're in the Chinese military you don't publish anything unless there is at least the tacit support—in my judgment—of the Chinese government. They see it as a cultural thing. But the reality is for us it doesn't change anything because in democratic countries the political impact is always going to be important. And the fact of the matter is that our public wants us to do things the right way.

In a democracy, if it looks like we're doing something wrong or doing something the wrong way, if we don't fight the right way, then no matter how important the political objective is, support is going to erode. It's also a matter of perceptions. Even if we are fighting the right way we have to be able to explain ourselves so it's clear that we're fighting the right way.

So we have a new strategic challenge, and this is just one piece of it but, I think it's interesting that it was in Walter J. Boyne’s book, A History of the United States Air Force, 1947-1997. This is the kind of thinking that we have to have for operations in the future.

Does this put us at a disadvantage? Not really. I would invite you look at a couple of books. Victor Davis Hanson, controversial author. He's a classicist, historian, and basically he examines the stereotype that totalitarian, barbaric societies have an advantage militarily. He goes back in history and proves that that's not the case. The more democratic values you have, the more adherence to the rule of law, the more militarily successful you are.

Another book I would recommend is by Caleb Carr, a very short book. He doesn't like air power because he doesn't understand it, but he makes very much the point that societies that wage war on civilians—the fundamental issue in the law of armed conflict—he says not only are not successful, a lot of them don't exist any more.

I think it's worth arming yourself with that kind of knowledge.

The reality is it's actually more successful to comply with the law for pragmatic reasons. That's the thing that I'd like to emphasize here. It's a pragmatic issue, not just a legal and moral issue.

Okay, I've run through that and I want to open it up for questions, comments, thoughts. Yes, sir?

Q: Based on your remark that we should have taken out the television during the second Iraq war, does that make Aljazeera a viable target since they are using tapes from bin Laden that specifically tell people what to do about it, to kill Americans, making them targets?

Brigadier General Dunlap: That is a good question. Here's the best answer I can give you right now. Generally speaking, the radio and television facilities of a belligerent to a conflict are valid targets; with some other assumptions in there.

The thing about Aljazeera is it is in a country with which we are not at war. Now at the same time, we have the right to prevent any communication of things that are going to harm us, for example, how to kill Americans, so forth. Propaganda.

Now the further question then is can you physically attack their facilities? It would be a question of degree, in my judgment.

For example, if they were broadcasting “here's the American forces, go attack them,” and they're showing it on TV, that's easy. Then they have made themselves part of the enemy's communication system, command and control system. But each step you get back from that becomes more and more difficult.

I think the challenge now is in a democratic society and the democratizing world, don't they have the right to information?

What I tell senior leaders is forget about operational security, even though there's a front page story on it in USA Today. We need to think about doctrines, planning, techniques, to operate in an environment of total information.

General Alfred M. Gray, the former Commandant of the Marine Corps a couple of years ago, he said, “you know, information is interesting because when you play chess the other guy sees exactly where you are and everything else, and you see exactly where he is, and you don't necessarily win, even though you have total information.” So it is more than that.

So my recommendation ... A, it's a question of degree and a question of specific facts. B, Aljazeera as they performed in the second Gulf War, I haven't studied everything that they've done, but I would say no from what they did. An Aljazeera-type station in the future that goes further might be a different story.

What I really recommend is we have to start thinking about situations where there's total information. I mean we already see it now with commercial satellite imagery. We have people who are selling—you can get the fence line at Al Udaid which would be very helpful in situations and everything else off of a commercial satellite with your credit card. So the idea of trying to prevent information flow I think is a fool's errand. We need to start thinking that they're going to know where we are, so how do we fight? Do we fight differently? And so forth.

That's the best answer I can give you. That, by the way, would be a worthy topic of study for some enterprising ACSC student.

Q: My question is from a homeland security, homeland defense viewpoint. We've been using the Patriot Act as key part of our arsenal in our fight against terror. Now it's coming up for review. Do you think we're going to see the power of the Patriot Act erode?

Brigadier General Dunlap: I don't think so. I really don't. But you know, there are lots of different views on that. There will be changes around the margins I think. I think that library book thing may go because we're not using it. It causes a lot of heartburn and so forth.

Here's my concern about the use of armed forces for homeland security. This is just my view…

The military is the most trusted institution in American society—more than organized religion, more than the Supreme Court, more than Congress, the President—the most trusted institution in American society. There is no model that I am aware of in history where a military used for an internal security purpose has enjoyed that kind of feeling from its society.

Since we're dependent upon volunteers, the trust and the popularity of the armed forces is about more than just making you feel good. I think we need to be very, very cautious about any involvement of the armed forces in domestic security. I'm not talking about consequence management. That is our job. We've done it in the past, we can do it. I’m talking about the proactive counter-terrorism you read about. Well, Special Forces is going to do this. We're putting a lot at risk so I think we need to be very, very careful about that.

But no, I don't think we're going to see much erosion of the Patriot Act.

Q: I believe it was in Acting Secretary of the Air Force Pete Geren's address yesterday, there was mention of all the troops who are coming together to work convoy security in Iraq. One of the things that was mentioned is that medics were part of that, they’re being trained for that. And at least through all my LOAC training, I didn't know we could do that, and I wanted to get your perspective.

Brigadier General Dunlap: It depends on exactly who you're talking about. If you're talking about a doctor, that Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) talks about the provision of medical services. You have to be actively involved in the provision of medical services. But not everybody in a hospital may necessarily fall in that.

If it is a medic and they're on the convoy not doing medic duties, then that can be an issue. They may have to change their Geneva Convention status.

Q: We had that situation come up during one of my deployments. Some medics were being used in convoy duty. Someone voiced concern about not using our medical personnel in that capacity. They weren’t doing any actual armed guarding of a convoy, but they were being used in that situation.

Brigadier General Dunlap: And that's the kind of thing that we need to have bubble up. Because honestly, especially with our folks going to the Army, we don't always have good visibility on exactly what they're doing. It doesn't seem important because a lot of people say, “hey, the enemy's not making any distinction.” Well, okay, fine. But we're not really concerned about that. We're concerned about the bigger issue. For many, many reasons it's important for us to preserve the special status of medical personnel.

Q: You were talking about the use of the media to send out orders and so forth. What about CNN, who broadcasts the stuff showing what they're showing? Does that make them a legal target?

Brigadier General Dunlap: Well, it depends. If somebody is communicating intelligence information to the enemy then they're doing something illegal, so they're subject to various coercive techniques—everything from a lawsuit to being taken out.

Let's say we could bomb them, hypothetically. There's just going to be too many darn targets. The information world is going to be so pervasive that we would not be able to control it even if we wanted.

Let me tell you what an Israeli general told me. When they go on an operation, every Palestinian has a video camera. And they're videotaping live everything they do, including showing the positions of the Israeli soldiers. But they're wearing a journalist badge, and there are hundreds of them.

So they have just learned to live with that and do a lot of operational deception and things like this to try to overcome this pervasive information environment and I think that's the better way for us to do it, rather than trying to clamp down and control all the information. I think that's just too hard to do.

Q: When you began your talk, you mentioned that you believed that the rise in Lawfare is due to globalization. What does that mean?

Brigadier General Dunlap: What I mean by that is that I think generally in the world there is more of an interest in law than there was before. Take for example China. They didn't have any real law, but to have international commerce they have to have contracts and so forth, and more than that, they have to have international forums. In Europe, because of economies of scale, they have given up their sovereignty to a degree to come together for these international forums. So there's much more of an acceptance these days of international forums for legal matters. The international courts and so forth, and that bleeds over into the law of armed conflict. There's much more of a legal consciousness around the world. I think a lot of it has to do with the economic driver that requires law for commerce and business and so forth; it is now bleeding over into other aspects of human endeavors.

I want to thank you very much, and I especially liked the questions, because next time I do this there are going to be some changes, so I appreciate it.

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