1 Boring Old Man

U.S. Adviser’s Blunt Memo on Iraq: Time ‘to Go Home’
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
July 30, 2009

WASHINGTON — A senior American military adviser in Baghdad has concluded in an unusually blunt memo that Iraqi forces suffer from entrenched deficiencies but are now able to protect the Iraqi government, and that it is time “for the U.S. to declare victory and go home.” The memo offers a look at tensions that emerged between Iraqi and American military officers at a sensitive moment when American combat troops met a June 30 deadline to withdraw from Iraq’s cities, the first step toward an advisory role. The Iraqi government’s forceful moves to assert authority have concerned some American officers, though senior American officials insisted that cooperation had improved.

Prepared by Col. Timothy R. Reese, an adviser to the Iraqi military’s Baghdad command, the memorandum details Iraqi military weaknesses in scathing language, including corruption, poor management and the inability to resist Shiite political pressure. Extending the American military presence beyond August 2010, he argues, will do little to improve the Iraqis’ military performance while fueling growing resentment of Americans. “As the old saying goes, ‘Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days,’ ” Colonel Reese wrote. “Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose”…

“We now have an Iraqi government that has gained its balance and thinks it knows how to ride the bike in the race,” Colonel Reese wrote. “And in fact they probably do know how to ride, at least well enough for the road they are on against their current competitors. Our hand on the back of the seat is holding them back and causing resentment. We need to let go before we both tumble to the ground”…

We invaded Iraq to keep from being destroyed by their weapons of mass destruction and to break their ties with the terrorists that attacked our country. Since they didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction and were not involved with the terrorists, our objective was met before we went. As we launched our misbegotten invasion, we renamed it Operation Iraqi Freedom – liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein. That was accomplished in short order. We disbanded Iraq’s army, then we complained that Iraq’s army wasn’t up to snuff [brilliant]. Then we fought the Insurgents – either Iraqis who wanted us out, or foreign Jihadists flocking to Iraq to kill them some Americans. Time to call it what it is – a  F·I·A·S·C·O. One way to do that, as Reese says, is to "declare victory and go home."

Now we are "guests" in Iraq, but there’s some reticence to leave. The only reason I can think of for us to be there is the inertia of the Bush/Cheney silliness that took us there in the first place. Colonel Reese says, "Our hand on the back of the seat is holding them back and causing resentment. We need to let go before we both tumble to the ground.”

Abolish the White House Counsel
And the Office of Legal Counsel, too, while we’re at it.
Slate
By Bruce Ackerman
April 22, 2009

^{President Obama is right. Whatever we do about the sordid acts of torture during the Bush years, it is more important to prevent their recurrence in the future. Unfortunately, the president has yet to take his own words seriously. He seems to think it’s enough to appoint better people to the jobs in the White House and Department of Justice formerly held by Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, and John Yoo. But this is a mistake. We need to rethink the entire institutional setup that made their abuses not just possible but predictable.}

^{The torture memos are symptoms of a deeper structural problems in both the White House and the Justice Department. These failures enabled John Yoo, David Addington, and others to rush to their decisions without exposing themselves to the ordinary checks and balances that constrain professional legal judgment. Without fundamental changes, the same politicizing dynamic may well repeat itself after the next terrorist attack…}

^{The Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department also has roots in the Roosevelt era. The proliferation of New Deal statutes created a crisis of legal interpretation in the executive branch, with different departments and agencies interpreting the same statutes in different ways. This cacophony required the Justice Department to play a coordinating role. It borrowed an assistant from the solicitor general’s office, and that assistant began issuing opinions to resolve legal conflicts. The current Office of Legal Counsel evolved from these humble beginnings and continues to show signs of its origins. For example, the OLC isn’t organized as if it were a court that must hear both sides of the argument before reaching its opinion on the merits. Instead, the assistant attorney general in charge of the OLC acts as if he were an advocate and issues opinions without the checks and balances provided by adversary argument.}

^{This one-sided culture helped create the excesses of Bush OLC lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo. Since they were the president’s lawyers, it was easy for them to suppose that they should fulfill their client’s demands. The challenge for Dawn Johnsen, Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, is to transform her office into a truly judicial institution.}

^{It’s this function that served as the initial aspiration for the office during the 1940s, when it was called the "Executive Adjudications Division." Wonky, but "adjudications" gets at the idea of balance. But in the 1950s, President Eisenhower changed the name, thereby encouraging officials to think of themselves as the president’s lawyers, rather than as a quasi-independent, courtlike body charged with telling the president how he should discharge his constitutional obligation "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed."}

^{We should return to the earlier vision. President Obama should reverse Eisenhower’s executive order. He should transform the Office of Legal Counsel into a courtlike institution that will make every effort to interpret the law in an impartial fashion. Before reaching an opinion on the merits, this new tribunal should confront briefs and oral arguments that force it to consider soberly the hard questions. On important matters, the tribunal should sit in multimember panels. And panel members should feel free to write dissenting opinions if they believe that the majority has gone astray…}

The President’s Lawyers
Harpers
By Scott Horton
March 11, 2008

^{At the peak of the Civil Rights movement, when my first thoughts about civics were formed, the Department of Justice assumed a promethean role. Most of Washington was, of course, mired in partisan bickering. But the Justice Department seemed to stand for something noble and grand, for a unifying set of principles that the nation could agree upon. It stood for the rights of the downtrodden, even when this was not a popular thing, and particularly where it was not. The Justice Department stood for the Rule of Law. This is not to say that political gamesmanship was absent, for it can never be driven entirely from a political institution. Still, the Justice Department seemed to stand majestically above most of the fray. That was the period of its institutional apogee.}

^{Today, the Justice Department seems at the base of some dark crevasse, and when beams of light flow into it, what we see always causes a shudder. Far from being the gatekeeper of the nation’s legality and the custodian of its ethics, the Justice Department has emerged as the single most corrupt institution on the Washington landscape…}

^{For the better part of a year, one attorney general and his deputies appeared before Congressional committees and had streaming lapses of recollection. The memory failures always had to do with political manipulations using the justice system. And when they were able to recall facts, their recollections turned out to be false on critical points. Public outrage forced the departure of the entire senior leadership of the department. And then a new team began to arrive…}

^{These lawyers have no fidelity to law. They are an army of termites working away at the infrastructure of our democracy. And the first institution they will yet bring to complete destruction is the Department of Justice. The gravity of this betrayal cannot be overstated. And if there are two cesspools inside the Justice Department today, two centers of legal depravity, then they are the Office of Legal Counsel and the Public Integrity Section in the Criminal Division. Both operate to the same crude principle of politics trumps right. Both are working indefatigably to destroy the public’s confidence in the Department of Justice.}

^{Today, the editors of the Washington Post chart the moral collapse of the Office of Legal Counsel:}

^{Since its creation in the early 20th century, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has been considered the legal conscience of the executive branch, rendering judgments to presidents and executive agencies about what the law allows. The OLC responds to executive branch requests for clarifications on everything from how to determine annual leave for federal employees to whether treaty provisions are constitutional and how torture should be defined. Its opinions are binding on the executive and essentially carry the weight of law. Past OLC opinions continue to have force when a new administration begins, just as Supreme Court decisions enjoy the force of law long after the justices who made them have left the bench.}
^{Unfortunately, during the Bush Administration, the OLC has become known as a partisan enabler of legally and ethically questionable presidential policies, including those involving the use of torture. The OLC’s decisions have eroded the legitimacy of the office and given legal cover to behavior that most Americans — and most lawyers — regard as improper.}

^{The Post notes that the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is looking into the ethics of the OLC and its memo writing. I have now examined a series of cases which have been reviewed by OPR. My review leaves me convinced that OPR is an emasculated, politically immobilized organization. It’s stunning that notwithstanding a firestorm that erupted over OLC and its torture memoranda four years ago, notwithstanding the fact that they were ridiculed and condemned by the organized bar in the United States and around the world, no action was ever taken. OPR’s inaction speaks volumes about its lack of motivation…}

^{The Post is correct about the role of the OLC. It has become an enabler for corrupt, dishonest and criminal policies. Its opinions shield gross misconduct. It has become, as Jack Goldsmith suggested, a mill generating “get out of jail free” passes to the Bush Administration’s political hack retainers. OLC is dragging the Justice Department into depths it has never known before. And its descent has not yet even begun to slow.}

March 13,2002

Memorandum for William J. Haynes, II General Counsel, Department of Defense

Re: The President’s power as Commander in Chief to transfer captured terrorists to the control and custody of foreign nations

You have asked for our Office’s views on the laws applicable to the transfer of members of the Taliban militia, al Qaeda, or other terrorist organizations, who have come under the control of the United States armed forces, to other countries. We conclude that the President has plenary constitutional authority, as the Commander in Chief, to transfer such individuals who are captured and held outside the United States to the control of another country. Individuals who are detained within the United States, however, may be subject to a more complicated set of rules established by both treaty and statute.

[35 pages of blah, blah, blah]

Conclusion

We conclude that as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive, the President has the plenary constitutional power to detain and transfer prisoners captured in war. We also conclude that neither the GPW nor the Torture Convention restrict the President’s legal authority to transfer prisoners captured in the Afghanistan conflict to third countries. Although the GPW places conditions on the transfer of POWs, neither al Qaeda nor Taliban prisoners are legally entitled to POW status, and hence there are no GPW conditions placed on their transfer. While the Torture Convention arguably might govern transfer of these prisoners, it does not apply extraterritorially. If detainees in the future are held within the territory of the United States, however, a more complex set of rules would apply.

Please let us know if we can provide any further assistance.

Is this crazy old man ever going to stop blogging about the OLC Memos? He doesn’t know how to stop yet. This one is a show stopper.

This Jay Bybee Memo is about moving captives overseas to the custody of other countries. What is it about this question that requires thirty five pages to say? It’s actually pretty interesting. The first section [A. Presidential Authority Under The Constitution] goes on and on about moving P.O.W.s to other countries starting with the Revolutionary War and moving War by War to the present. That takes about 20 pages. Then there’s a paragraph blurb justifying moving non-P.O.W.s to other countries. What’s all this about?

C. Limitations Imposed on the Transfer Of Detainees By the Torture Convention

In addition to GPW, the Torture Convention establishes certain restrictions on the ability of state parties to transfer individuals within its control. The Torture Convention prohibits contracting parties from transferring individuals who are in their custody within their territory to the control of foreign governments that are more likely than not to torture them. Article 3 of the Torture Convention specifies that "[n]o State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture."

I read it twice. It has been repudiated, but after the fact. Even Steven Bradbury balks hard on this one in his January 15, 2009 Memo. If that weren’t enough, this one may even top it:

March 14,2003

Memorandum for William J. Haynes, II General Counsel, Department of Defense

Re: Military Interrogation ofAlien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States

You have asked our Office to examine the legal standards governing military interrogations of alien unlawful combatants held outside the United States. You have requested that we examine both· domestic and international law that might be applicable to the conduct of those interrogations. In Part I, we conclude that the Fifth and Eighth Amendments, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, do not extend to· alien enemy combatants held abroad. In Part IT, we examine federal criminal law. We explain that several canons of construction apply here. Those canons of construction indicate that federal criminal laws of general applicability do not apply to properly~authorized interrogations of enemy combatants, undertaken by military personnel in the course of an armed conflict. Such criminal statutes, if they were misconstrued to apply to the interrogation of enemy combatants, would conflict with the Constitution’s grant of the Commander in Chiefpower solely to the President. Although we do not believe. that these laws would apply· to authorized military interrogations, we outline the various federal crimes that apply in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States: assault, 18 U.S.C. § 113 (2000); maiming, 18 U.S.C. § 114 (2000); and interstate’ stalking, 18 U.S.C. § 2261A(2000). In Part IT.C., we address relevant criminal prohibitions that apply to conduct outside the jurisdiction of the United States: war crimes, 18 U.S.C. § 2441 (2000); and torture, 18′ U.S.C. § 2340A (2000 & West Supp. 2002). In Part III, we examine the international law applicable to the conduct ofinterrogations. First, we examine the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Apr. 18, 1988,1465 D.N.T.S. 113 ("CAT") and conclude that U.S. reservations, understandings, and declarations ensure that our international obligations mirror the standards of 18 U.S.C. § 2340A. Second, we address the U.S. obligation under CAT to undertake to preventthecoromission of"cruel,inhuman,ordegradingtreatmentorpunishment." We conclude that based on its reservation, the United States’ obligation extends only to conduct that is "cruel and unusual" within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment or otherwise "shocks the conscience" under the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Third, we examine the applicability of customary international law. We conclude that as an expression of state practice, customary intemationallaw cannot impose a standard that differs from U.S. obligations.under CAT, a recent multilateral treaty on the same sUbject. In any event, our previous opinions make clear that customary international law is not federal law and that the President is free to override it at his discretion. In Part IV, we discuss defenses to an allegation that an interrogation method might violate any of the various criminal prohibitions discussed in Part ll. We believe that necessity or self~defense could provide defenses to a prosecution.

[81 pages of blah, blah, blah]

Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the Fifth and Eighth Amendments do not extend to alien enemy combatants held abroad. Moreover, we conclude that different canons of construction indicate that generally applicable criminal laws do not apply to the military interrogation of alien unlawful combatants held abroad. Were it otherwise, the application of these statutes to the interrogation of enemy combatants undertaken by military personnel would conflict with the ‘President’s Commander-in-Chiefpower. We further conclude that CAT defines U.S. international law obligations with respeCt to .torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. The standard of conduct regarding torture is thesame as that wh:ich is found in the torture statute, 18 U.S.C. §§·.234D2340A. Moreover, the scope ofU.S.’obligations under CATregarding cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment is limited to conduct prohibited by the Eighth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Customary intemationallaw does not supply any additional standards. Finally, even if the criminal prohibitions outlined above applied, and an interrogation method might violate those prohibitions, necessity or self-defense could provide justifications for any criminal liability.

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John Yoo takes 81 pages to reach his heinous conclusions [Jay Bybee did his in 35 pages]. I won’t bother to go through his tortured illogic. This one is simply the bottom of the barrel and grounds for something. I don’t know what – but something.

The references at the end of this post are the Office of Legal Counsel Memos that have been officially repudiated by the Department of Justice, primarily in the OLC Memo [Re: Status of Certain OLC Opinions Issued in the Aftermath of the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001] written by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury and published five days before the Bush Administration left office. His legal arguments are sound, though he is something of an apologist – asking us to be more understanding than I’m inclined to be given the gravity of the actions of his predecessors. Nevertheless, I don’t want to pick at his arguments, but rather focus on the arguments of the original authors. And I don’t particularly want to question why the Administration wanted to do what it wanted to do. We’re all worn out with their argument that "torture works" or the "surge worked." Sometimes if you’re hard up for cash, "armed robbery works" too. In the courts, it’s called "theft by taking" and it’s a crime. So the "ends justify the means" has long ago been labelled as a fallacious argument.

A thirteen year old at a clinic where I volunteer who is at war with him mother argued, "She’s driving me nuts, saying the same thing over and over. ‘Did you wash the dishes?’ – in the kitchen, in my room, outside. I went to the basement and she yelled it down the stairs. She’s got a real problem!" Of course, when I asked if he’d washed the dishes, he said "No."

"My dad gets off on grounding me. Cigarettes in my backpack? Only one time! Found pot in my room? It was only two joints, little ones! He’s just crazy!"

There’s another kind of adolescent that believes their own self-serving arguments – called a bully. The bully backs up his/her argument with force, winning the day by intimidation rather than logic. There’s one of those in this story too – Cheney’s Lawyer/Chief of Staff, David Addington. Every report about this man confirms what we saw in his Congressional Hearing – he’s a contemptuous bully.

I don’t know about John Yoo. People talk about his background, being the son of Korean parents who escaped to America to become Conservatives. He’s a smart guy, but he seems like a "mark" to me – someone who can be engaged into going along with the "big guys." But that’s a guess. Whatever makes him tick, he’s a rationalizer of the first order.

And then there’s George W. Bush. He’s easy. He’s a spoiled brat who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth and got his way too often. Like I said, Bush is easy…

In this first set of repudiated memos, The conclusions are simply wrong, so the rationalizations are immaterial. We have the right to privacy. We can only be deprived of that right if there’s a  person-specific reason involving infringement of the rights of others that has been heard and certified by a court of law. Likewise the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids the use of the Military inside our borders for very good reasons. There’s nothing confusing about these laws. The Administration wanted to do broad based data mining, and they wanted to use the Military which is unconstrained by Civil Law. Can’t do that without changing the Law or the Constitution. No wonder they kept these opinions secret.

Suspension of Rights

I don’t know why they wanted to break the treaty with Russia, but I do know why they didn’t want us to ignore Treaties and Laws with al Qaeda and the Taliban. But that’s why we have Treaties and Laws – to prevent vigilanties and lynch mobs. Breaking Treaties defeats the point of Treaties. We don’t do that. 

Breaking of Treaties

And P.O.W. status? "Why they weren’t P.O.W.s, they were common criminals! Wait, criminals have rights. Let’s call them detainees." The Bushites were mad and wanted to torture the "bad guys" and get them to "talk." We all felt the same way. After all, the Taliban and al Qaeda were barbarians, instead of civilized people like us. Again, people at war are always mad like we were after 911. We have Treaties and Laws to keep us from becoming barbarians ourselves. The biggest rationalization of all is to interpret "we don’t torture people in America" as meaning that it’s okay to torture people by setting up prisons outside the U.S. and doing it there or contracting other countries to do it for us – preadolescent logic at its most absurd. To me, this is not just conceptually criminal, it’s the real McCoy.

Treatment of P.O.W.s

But over and above the preteen logic in these memos, the thing that stands out in bold relief is their contempt for authority – the authority of either Congress or the Judiciary. In fact these bodies are treated as the enemy. While we expect to alter our system in times of an emergency [emergency powers], this is different. Many of these memos are obviously about something else – they propose fundamentally altering our system of government by fiat. At the core, these memos have nothing to do with 9/11 or the wars. They have to do with an indefensible ideological position. It’s in phrases like this monotonous kind of language that pervades these Memos and Bush’s endless Signing Statements: "Nothing in the text or the history’ of Article I’s general grant of authority to incorporate international law into federal law authorizes Congress to interfere with the President’s specific authority as Commander in Chief to …" do whatever in the hell he wants to do.

Usually, when I become obsessed with a topic, I feel better after I’ve learned a lot about it – there’s some feeling of cognitive mastery. This is not the case with the Office of Legal Counsel [OLC] Memos that came out of the Department of Justice [DoJ] during those early years after the September 11th attacks turned our world upside down. Like everyone else, I’ve felt waves of outrage as we’ve slowly learned about them. I’ve even read a few of them along the way. Actually, the main culprit, Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, was already gone from the DoJ by the time we had a clue what had gone on. He was back in California teaching Constitutional Law at Berkley.

 

The Attorney General has directed the Office of Legal Counsel to publish selected opinions for the convenience of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government, and of the professional bar and the general public. The authority of the Office of Legal Counsel to render legal opinions is derived from the authority of the Attorney General. Under the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Attorney General was authorized to render opinions on questions of law when requested by the President and the heads of executive departments…

The web site includes Office of Legal Counsel opinions that the Department of Justice has determined are appropriate for publication.

Memoranda and Opinions By Year

We know about the OLC because of the controversial memoranda during the Bush Presidency, particularly those written by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo. Here’s a compilation of the OLC Opinions in 2001 through 2003, the period of John Yoo’s tenure there. The OLC doesnt publish all of its Opinions, so there’s no way I know to present a comprehensive picture. The lower graph is a summary of their published Opinions. Those written by John Yoo are in the darker red. Opinions that have to do with the President’s war powers or related matters not written by Yoo are in the lighter red. All other opinions are light green. The middle graph documents those Opinions obtained by Freedom of Information requests. And the top graph are Opinions known to exist that are still secret.

John Yoo was a Specialist: All of the Opinions known to be assigned to him had to do with some aspect of the War on Terror except the first one, written before 9/11. That Opinion was, however, about Presidential powers. He wrote 65% of the known OLC Opinions that had to do with aspects of the War on Terror during his time at the DoJ.

John Yoo was a "yes man": All of his Opinions said "yes" to whatever he was asked. And rather than sticking to just the legal points, he often lapsed into creating arguments – more like an advisor defense lawyer than a source of legal opinions. I can’t find the date of Yoo’s arrival at the DoJ. I was interested in how he came to be there since he is such a rigidly ideological Federalist Society type. And I’m not precisely sure when he left. His last opinion was in March 2003. It is reported that he left because John Ashcroft blocked his appointment as head of the Department. Yoo’s boss, Jay Bybee, was appointed to a Federal Judgeship [literally on the day the invasion of Iraq began]. Bybee was replaced by Jack Goldsmith on October 3, 2003.

Former US secretary of state Colin Powell says his United Nations speech making the case for the US-led war on Iraq was "a blot" on his record. Mr Powell has also said that he had "never seen evidence to suggest" a connection between the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States and the Saddam regime…

"I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and (it) will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It’s painful now," he said. Mr Powell spent five days at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters ahead of the speech studying intelligence reports, many of which turned out to be false. He said he felt "terrible" at being misinformed.

However, he did not blame CIA director George Tenet. Mr Tenet "did not sit there for five days with me misleading me," he said. "He believed what he was giving to me was accurate." Some members of the US intelligence community "knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn’t be relied upon, and they didn’t speak up," Mr Powell said. "These are not senior people, but these are people who were aware that some of these resources should not be considered reliable," he said. "I was enormously disappointed."

When I look back on all of this, I see one force threaded through the story from the start – Dick Cheney. In his Congressional career, he was an effective power broker, but not much of a legislator – voting the Conservative "party line" exclusively. He wrote the dissenting opinion in the Iran-Contra Hearings defending the Executive’s right to do anything. And he was in cahoots with the oil lobby. After the Gulf War, his Defense Department produced the Defense Policy Guidance that introduced the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" [preemption, unilaterality, superpower strength, and active promotion of democracy]. During the Clinton years, he headed a huge oil exploration company, and made speeches pointing to the oil reserves in the middle east and suggested that commercial interests become part of foreign policy. He was a founder of the PNAC, whose first act was a letter to Clinton encouraging "regime change" in Iraq. In their Military review, his Defense Guidance was exhumed. When tasked by George Bush to find him a running mate, he picked himself.  And his first act as VP was to assemble a secret Energy Task Force that focused of oil exploration in Iraq.

After 9/11, he was an epicenter of activity, in his words assuring that the president had the powers he needed to deal with the problem. In retrospect, that’s odd. The President had all the power he needed to go after al Qaeda. Yet Cheney’s Lawyer, David Addington, and OLC lawyer, John Yoo, were working overtime to establish an Executive with unlimited power. What’s odd about it is that we’d have given Bush the moon to go after al Qaeda. Likewise, Cheney and his staff micromanaged intelligence gathering – not about al Qaeda, but about al Qaeda/Iraq ties. Cheney and Libby visited the CIA to talk to analysts about that topic eg the Niger yellowcake Uranium. Addington went to Gitmo to check on the interrogations. The torture program focused on al Qaeda/Iraq ties., shepherded by Wolfowitz and Feith. In fact, the DoD OSP under Douglas Feith was on that al Qaeda/Iraq connection full time, stovepiping information to the OVP. So while Cheney said he was mobilizing powers and info, moving us to the "dark side" to deal with the Terrorists, what he did was look for evidence damning Iraq. And he continued to use 9/11, al Qaeda/Iraq ties, and Iraq WMDs in his defense of the Iraq War long after others had given them up. He still talks about it that way, even now.

On September 8th, 2002, the Bush Administration began its blitz for Invading Iraq. Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Powell each appeared on television pushing the Iraq WMD story, and Judith Miller has an INC inspired piece in the New York Times. Four days later, George Bush Addressed the United Nations.

And within a month, Congress had passed an Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq [House 297:133:3 and Senate 77:23:0]. If you read through it, as written it is heavily tied to the actions of the United Nations.

Public Law 107–243 107th Congress Joint Resolution To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq. October 16, 2002

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This joint resolution may be cited as the ‘‘Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002’’. SEC. 2. SUPPORT FOR UNITED STATES DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS. The Congress of the United States supports the efforts by the President to—     (1) strictly enforce through the United Nations Security Council all relevant Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq and encourages him in those efforts; and     (2) obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq. SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.     (a) AUTHORIZATION.—The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessaryand appropriate in order to—         (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and         (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.     (b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION.—In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon thereafter as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate hisdetermination that—         (1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either             (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or             (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and         (2) acting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorist and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.     (c) WAR POWERS RESOLUTION REQUIREMENTS.—         (1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION.—Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.         (2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS.—Nothing in this joint resolution supersedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution…

But by the next week, John Yoo in the Office of Legal Counsel had written a Memo that essentially says that Congressional Approval is only supplemental to the President’s "independent constitutional authority" to order military action.

In November, the U.N. passed a strong resolution insisting on resumption of inspection of Iraq’s military arsenel.

Again, John Yoo writes an OLC Memo that states that the President’s power to wage war is not effected by the terms of  the UNSCR 1441.

On December 7th, 2002, Saddam Hussein submitted his inventory of weaponry to the U.N. as required by UNSR 1441…

Big surprise. On the same day as Saddam Hussein submits his inventory and inspection is reinstituted in Iraq, John Yoo writes an OLC Memo that any false declarations would essentially justify a war.