{"id":259370,"date":"2016-08-01T13:04:25","date_gmt":"2016-08-01T13:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/special-forces-shadow-wars-face-legal-threat-from-corbyn\/"},"modified":"2016-08-01T14:59:27","modified_gmt":"2016-08-01T14:59:27","slug":"special-forces-shadow-wars-face-legal-threat-from-corbyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/special-forces-shadow-wars-face-legal-threat-from-corbyn\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Special forces shadow wars\u2019 face legal threat from Corbyn"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>        Special forces operations should be subject to proper democratic oversight through a new War Powers Act, which would prevent troops being risked in Britain\u2019s \u2018shadow wars,\u2019 according to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>He told Middle East Eye on Friday of his concerns over the repeated use of a legal loophole to deploy troops from the secretive SAS unit into war zones such as Iraq and Libya without a democratic mandate.<\/p>\n<p>The prime minister is currently able to deploy special forces without a vote, a capability which is buttressed by the UK\u2019s long-standing but increasingly controversial policy of refusing to comment on clandestine military activities.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dKduJ9Z0TN0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>I\u2019m very concerned about this because [former Prime Minister] David Cameron \u2013 I imagine [Prime Minister] Theresa May would say the same \u2013 would say parliamentary convention requires a parliamentary mandate to deploy British troops. Except, and they\u2019ve all used the \u2018except,\u2019 when special forces are involved,<\/em>\u201d Corbyn said.<\/p>\n<p>He said this backdoor method of using elite troops has a long and dubious history, drawing a comparison between today\u2019s operations and those of the US military during the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>The question of this of course goes back a long way to Vietnam in 1963, when the US managed to have I think 50,000 advisers to the South Vietnamese government before the Congress was even invited to vote on whether or not it should be involved in the Vietnam War. I think the parallel is a very serious one,<\/em>\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>His comments were immediately attacked by former soldier-turned-Tory MP Bob Stewart, who told the Times on Wednesday the PM must have the opportunity to deploy troops \u201c<em>when they think it\u2019s crucial.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"arcticle__read-more read-more\">\n<p>Read more<\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"read-more__link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/344490-special-forces-middle-east\/\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n                    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"read-more__cover\" src=\"https:\/\/img.rt.com\/files\/2016.05\/thumbnail\/574712cac36188132a8b4587.jpg\" alt=\"\u00a9 Omar Sobhani \"\/><br \/>\n    <\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p>However, scholars and other Tory MPs have questioned the UK\u2019s shadowy approach in recent times.<\/p>\n<p>In May, Tory Foreign Affairs Committee chair Crispin Blunt told RT the government should simply come clean because British citizens are fully aware of the UK\u2019s not-so-secret special forces shadow wars.<\/p>\n<p>Blunt said there is no formal parliamentary process for overseeing SAS missions and \u201c<em>there\u2019s obviously an issue as to whether the intelligence and security committee would be the proper vehicle for oversight of these kinds of operations, but we are not there at the moment.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a July <a href=\"http:\/\/remotecontrolproject.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Special-Forces_Jon-Moran_Formatted-003.pdf\">paper<\/a>\u00a0on the issue published by the Remote Control Project, which investigates clandestine modes of warfare, security expert John Moran pointed out that many of the UK\u2019s major military allies \u2013 including the US and Australia \u2013 are much franker with their citizens about the work of special forces.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/354137-sas-corbyn-deployment-ban\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Special forces operations should be subject to proper democratic oversight through a new War Powers Act, which would prevent troops being risked in Britain\u2019s \u2018shadow wars,\u2019 according to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. He told Middle East Eye on Friday of his concerns over the repeated use of a legal loophole to deploy troops from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":259371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-259370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}