{"id":4491,"date":"2008-08-30T06:36:16","date_gmt":"2008-08-30T05:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=4491"},"modified":"2008-08-30T06:36:16","modified_gmt":"2008-08-30T05:36:16","slug":"bush-seeks-to-affirm-a-continuing-war-on-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/bush-seeks-to-affirm-a-continuing-war-on-terror\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush Seeks to Affirm a Continuing War on Terror"},"content":{"rendered":"

By ERIC LICHTBLAU<\/span><\/a>\u00a0| WASHINGTON \u2013 Tucked deep into a recent proposal from the Bush administration is a provision that has received almost no public attention, yet in many ways captures one of President Bush\u2019s defining legacies: an affirmation that the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush\u2019s advisers assert that many Americans may have forgotten that. So they want Congress to say so and \u201cacknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban<\/span><\/a>, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

The language, part of a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at the United States naval base at Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo Bay<\/span><\/a>, Cuba, goes beyond political symbolism. Echoing a measure that Congress passed just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, it carries significant legal and public policy implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to claim the imprimatur of Congress to use the tools of war, including detention, interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy, legal and political analysts say.<\/p>\n

Some lawmakers are concerned that the administration\u2019s effort to declare anew a war footing is an 11th-hour maneuver to re-establish its broad interpretation of the president\u2019s wartime powers, even in the face of challenges from the Supreme Court<\/span><\/a> and Congress.<\/p>\n

The proposal is also the latest step that the administration, in its waning months, has taken to make permanent important aspects of its \u201clong war\u201d against terrorism. From a new wiretapping law approved by Congress to a rewriting of intelligence procedures and F.B.I.<\/span><\/a> investigative techniques, the administration is moving to institutionalize by law, regulation or order a wide variety of antiterrorism tactics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis seems like a final push by the administration before they go out the door,\u201d said Suzanne Spaulding, a former lawyer for the Central Intelligence Agency<\/span><\/a> and an expert on national security law. The cumulative effect of the actions, Ms. Spaulding said, is to \u201cput the onus on the next administration\u201d \u2013 particularly a Barack Obama<\/span><\/a> administration \u2013 to justify undoing what Mr. Bush has done.<\/p>\n

It is uncertain whether Congress will take the administration up on its request. Some Republicans have already embraced the idea, with Representative Lamar Smith<\/span><\/a> of Texas, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, introducing a measure almost identical to the administration\u2019s proposal. \u201cSince 9\/11,\u201d Mr. Smith said, \u201cwe have been at war with an unconventional enemy whose primary goal is to kill innocent Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the midst of an election season, the language represents a political challenge of sorts to the administration\u2019s critics. While many Democrats say they are wary of Mr. Bush\u2019s claims to presidential power, they may be even more nervous about casting a vote against a measure that affirms the country\u2019s war against terrorism. They see the administration\u2019s effort to force the issue as little more than a political ploy.<\/p>\n

Mr. Bush \u201cis trying to stir up again the politics of fear by reminding people of something they haven\u2019t really forgotten: that we are engaged in serious armed conflict with Al Qaeda,\u201d said Laurence H. Tribe<\/span><\/a>, a constitutional scholar at Harvard and legal adviser to Mr. Obama. \u201cBut the question is, Where is that conflict to be waged, and by what means.\u201d<\/p>\n

With violence rising in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden<\/span><\/a> still at large, there are ample signs of the United States\u2019 continued battles with terrorism. But Mr. Bush and his advisers say that seven years without an attack has lulled many Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Sept. 11, 2001, recedes into the past, there are some people who have come to think of it as kind of a singular event and of there being nothing else out there,\u201d Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey<\/span><\/a> told House lawmakers in July. \u201cIn a way, we are the victims of our own success, our own success being that another attack has been prevented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Mukasey laid out the administration\u2019s thinking in a July 21 speech to a conservative Washington policy institute in response to yet another rebuke on presidential powers by the Supreme Court: its ruling that prisoners at Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo Bay , were entitled to habeas corpus<\/span><\/a> rights to contest their detentions in court.<\/p>\n

The administration wants Congress to set out a narrow framework for those prisoner appeals. But the administration\u2019s six-point proposal goes further. It includes not only the broad proclamation of a continued \u201carmed conflict with Al Qaeda,\u201d but also the desire for Congress to \u201creaffirm that for the duration of the conflict the United States may detain as enemy combatants those who have engaged in hostilities or purposefully supported Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

That broad language hints at why Democrats, and some Republicans, worry about the consequences. It could, they say, provide the legal framework for Mr. Bush and his successor to assert once again the president\u2019s broad interpretation of the commander in chief\u2019s wartime powers, powers that Justice Department lawyers secretly used to justify the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects and the National Security Agency<\/span><\/a>\u2019s wiretapping of Americans without court orders.<\/p>\n

The language recalls a resolution, known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001. It authorized the president to \u201cuse all necessary and appropriate force\u201d against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks to prevent future strikes. That authorization, still in effect, was initially viewed by many members of Congress who voted for it as the go-ahead for the administration to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, which had given sanctuary to Mr. bin Laden.<\/p>\n

But the military authorization became the secret legal basis for some of the administration\u2019s most controversial legal tactics, including the wiretapping program, and that still gnaws at some members of Congress.<\/p>\n

Senator Arlen Specter<\/span><\/a> of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said he wanted to make sure the Bush administration \u2013 or a future president \u2013 did not use that declaration as \u201canother far-fetched interpretation\u201d to evade the law, the way he believes Mr. Bush and aides like Alberto R. Gonzales<\/span><\/a>, the former attorney general, did in using the wiretapping program to avoid the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to face another situation where we had the Sept. 14 resolution and then Attorney General Gonzales claimed that that was authorization to violate FISA,\u201d Mr. Specter said.<\/p>\n

For Bush critics like Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration, the answer is simple: do not give the administration the wartime language it seeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not believe that we are in a state of war whatsoever,\u201d Mr. Fein said. \u201cWe have an odious opponent that the criminal justice system is able to identify and indict and convict. They\u2019re not a goliath. Don\u2019t treat them that way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By ERIC LICHTBLAU\u00a0| WASHINGTON \u2013 Tucked deep into a recent proposal from the Bush administration is a provision that has received almost no public attention, yet in many ways captures one of President Bush\u2019s defining legacies: an affirmation that the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda. Seven years after the Sept. 11 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1616],"tags":[27,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-4491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"category-usa-news","8":"tag-bush","9":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491","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=4491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}