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BREAKING NEWS! Head Of Security At U.S. Embassy in Yemen Assassinated

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The U.S. Suffered Its Worst Airpower Loss Since Vietnam Last Week and No One Really Noticed

The Taliban attack on an air base in southern Afghanistan on Friday drew coverage for the way the insurgents cloaked themselves in U.S. army uniforms to gain a tactical advantage, but few have taken note of the historical proportions of the damage inflicted. John Gresham, at the Defense Media Network, has published a detailed account of the attack on Camp Bastion, in which two Marines were killed, six U.S. Marine Corps jet fighters were destroyed, and two more “significantly” damaged. Those facts were all carried in most reports, but if that just sounds like a typical damage report from a decade-long war, you’re wrong. Gresham explains the devastating damage done to VMA-211, the name of the Marine Corps attack squadron that was most affected last week, noting that it is “arguably the worst day in [U.S. Marine Corps] aviation history since the Tet Offensive of 1968.” Or you could go back even further. “The last time VMA-211 was combat ineffective was in December 1941, when the squadron was wiped out during the 13-day defense of Wake Island against the Japanese.”

He spells out some more of the details of the attack:

Eight irreplaceable aircraft (the AV-8B has been out of production since 1999) have been destroyed or put out of action – approximately 7 percent of the total flying USMC Harrier fleet. Worse yet, the aircraft involved were the AV-B+ variant equipped with the APG-65 radar and AAQ-28 Litening II targeting pods – the most capable in the force. Given the current funding situation, it’s likely that the two damaged AV-8Bs will become spare parts “hangar queens” and never fly again. A Harrier squadron commander is dead, along with another Marine. Another nine personnel have been wounded, and the nearby Marines at Camp Freedom are now without effective fixed-wing air support. The USMC’s response to this disaster will be a telling report card on its leadership and organizational agility.

It just goes to show how desensitizing a decade of war can be. With casualty counts streaming in the news every day, it’s easy to miss historically devastating milestones that crop up. As an aside, if you want to see a really smart visual recreation of the attack, watch Brian Todd’s CNN segment on the attack below:

The Taliban attack on an air base in southern Afghanistan on Friday drew coverage for the way the insurgents cloaked themselves in U.S. army uniforms to gain a tactical advantage, but few have taken note of the historical proportions of the damage inflicted. John Gresham, at the Defense Media Network, has published a detailed account of the attack on Camp Bastion, in which two Marines were killed, six U.S. Marine Corps jet fighters were destroyed, and two more “significantly” damaged. Those facts were all carried in most reports, but if that just sounds like a typical damage report from a decade-long war, you’re wrong. Gresham explains the devastating damage done to VMA-211, the name of the Marine Corps attack squadron that was most affected last week, noting that it is “arguably the worst day in [U.S. Marine Corps] aviation history since the Tet Offensive of 1968.” Or you could go back even further. “The last time VMA-211 was combat ineffective was in December 1941, when the squadron was wiped out during the 13-day defense of Wake Island against the Japanese.”

He spells out some more of the details of the attack:

Eight irreplaceable aircraft (the AV-8B has been out of production since 1999) have been destroyed or put out of action – approximately 7 percent of the total flying USMC Harrier fleet. Worse yet, the aircraft involved were the AV-B+ variant equipped with the APG-65 radar and AAQ-28 Litening II targeting pods – the most capable in the force. Given the current funding situation, it’s likely that the two damaged AV-8Bs will become spare parts “hangar queens” and never fly again. A Harrier squadron commander is dead, along with another Marine. Another nine personnel have been wounded, and the nearby Marines at Camp Freedom are now without effective fixed-wing air support. The USMC’s response to this disaster will be a telling report card on its leadership and organizational agility.

It just goes to show how desensitizing a decade of war can be. With casualty counts streaming in the news every day, it’s easy to miss historically devastating milestones that crop up. As an aside, if you want to see a really smart visual recreation of the attack, watch Brian Todd’s CNN segment on the attack below:

By John Hudson on September 21, 2012
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/09/us-suffered-its-worst-airpower-loss-vietnam-last-week-and-no-one-really-noticed/57139/

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Insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik: U.S. Ambassador Killing an Inside Job!

Top US Government Insider: Bin Laden Died In 2001, 9/11 A False Flag

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations Steve R. Pieczenik says he is prepared to tell a federal grand jury the name of a top general who told him directly 9/11 was a false flag attack

Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents and still works with the Defense Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job.

Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.

Recruited by Lawrence Eagleburger as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management, Pieczenik went on to develop, “the basic tenets for psychological warfare, counter terrorism, strategy and tactics for transcultural negotiations for the US State Department, military and intelligence communities and other agencies of the US Government,” while also developing foundational strategies for hostage rescue that were later employed around the world.

Pieczenik also served as a senior policy planner under Secretaries Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz and James Baker and worked on George W. Bush’s election campaign against Al Gore. His record underscores the fact that he is one of the most deeply connected men in intelligence circles over the past three decades plus.

The character of Jack Ryan, who appears in many Tom Clancy novels and was also played by Harrison Ford in the popular 1992 movie Patriot Games, is also based on Steve Pieczenik.

Back in April 2002, over nine years ago, Pieczenik told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months,” and that the government was waiting for the most politically expedient time to roll out his corpse. Pieczenik would be in a position to know, having personally met Bin Laden and worked with him during the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan back in the early 80′s.

Pieczenik said that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001, “Not because special forces had killed him, but because as a physician I had known that the CIA physicians had treated him and it was on the intelligence roster that he had marfan syndrome,” adding that the US government knew Bin Laden was dead before they invaded Afghanistan.

Marfan syndrome is a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer.

“He died of marfan syndrome, Bush junior knew about it, the intelligence community knew about it,” said Pieczenik, noting how CIA physicians had visited Bin Laden in July 2001 at the American Hospital in Dubai.

“He was already very sick from marfan syndrome and he was already dying, so nobody had to kill him,” added Pieczenik, stating that Bin Laden died shortly after 9/11 in his Tora Bora cave complex.

“Did the intelligence community or the CIA doctor up this situation, the answer is yes, categorically yes,” said Pieczenik, referring to Sunday’s claim that Bin Laden was killed at his compound in Pakistan, adding, “This whole scenario where you see a bunch of people sitting there looking at a screen and they look as if they’re intense, that’s nonsense,” referring to the images released by the White House which claim to show Biden, Obama and Hillary Clinton watching the operation to kill Bin Laden live on a television screen.

“It’s a total make-up, make believe, we’re in an American theater of the absurd….why are we doing this again….nine years ago this man was already dead….why does the government repeatedly have to lie to the American people,” asked Pieczenik.

“Osama Bin Laden was totally dead, so there’s no way they could have attacked or confronted or killed Osama Bin laden,” said Pieczenik, joking that the only way it could have happened was if special forces had attacked a mortuary.

Pieczenik said that the decision to launch the hoax now was made because Obama had reached a low with plummeting approval ratings and the fact that the birther issue was blowing up in his face.

“He had to prove that he was more than American….he had to be aggressive,” said Pieczenik, adding that the farce was also a way of isolating Pakistan as a retaliation for intense opposition to the Predator drone program, which has killed hundreds of Pakistanis.

“This is orchestrated, I mean when you have people sitting around and watching a sitcom, basically the operations center of the White House, and you have a president coming out almost zombie-like telling you they just killed Osama Bin Laden who was already dead nine years ago,” said Pieczenik, calling the episode, “the greatest falsehood I’ve ever heard, I mean it was absurd.”

Dismissing the government’s account of the assassination of Bin Laden as a “sick joke” on the American people, Pieczenik said, “They are so desperate to make Obama viable, to negate the fact that he may not have been born here, any questions about his background, any irregularities about his background, to make him look assertive….to re-elect this president so the American public can be duped once again.”

Pieczenik’s assertion that Bin Laden died almost ten years ago is echoed by numerous intelligence professionals as well as heads of state across the world.

Bin Laden, “Was used in the same way that 9/11 was used to mobilize the emotions and feelings of the American people in order to go to a war that had to be justified through a narrative that Bush junior created and Cheney created about the world of terrorism,” stated Pieczenik.

During his interview with the Alex Jones Show yesterday, Pieczenik also asserted he was directly told by a prominent general that 9/11 was a stand down and a false flag operation, and that he is prepared to go to a grand jury to reveal the general’s name.

“They ran the attacks,” said Pieczenik, naming Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Hadley, Elliott Abrams, and Condoleezza Rice amongst others as having been directly involved.

“It was called a stand down, a false flag operation in order to mobilize the American public under false pretenses….it was told to me even by the general on the staff of Wolfowitz – I will go in front of a federal committee and swear on perjury who the name was of the individual so that we can break it open,” said Pieczenik, adding that he was “furious” and “knew it had happened”.

“I taught stand down and false flag operations at the national war college, I’ve taught it with all my operatives so I knew exactly what was done to the American public,” he added.

Pieczenik re-iterated that he was perfectly willing to reveal the name of the general who told him 9/11 was an inside job in a federal court, “so that we can unravel this thing legally, not with the stupid 9/11 Commission that was absurd.”

Pieczenik explained that he was not a liberal, a conservative or a tea party member, merely an American who is deeply concerned about the direction in which his country is heading.

By: Paul Joseph Watson
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
http://www.prisonplanet.com/top-us-government-insider-bin-laden-died-in-2001-911-a-false-flag.html

Watch the full interview with Dr. Pieczenik below.

Now The Real Killing of Bin Laden Is Revealed?

Wednesday, August 29, 2012 – By Staff Report
http://www.thedailybell.com/4229/Now-the-Real-Killing-of-bin-Laden-Is-Revealed

Osama bin Laden book by Navy SEAL reveals al-Qaeda leader unarmed and shot in doorway … Osama bin Laden was shot in the head as he peeked out of his bedroom, according to the No Easy Day book by a Navy SEAL, contradicting previous official accounts of the raid on the former al-Qaeda leader. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: This must be a truthful book because it is making the Pentagon very uncomfortable.

Free-Market Analysis: No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama Bin Laden, by Mark Owen with Kevin Maurer, should probably be withdrawn for being a lie. When Clifford Irving famously concocted a tale about Howard Hughes he ended up serving 19 months in the slammer. But “Owen” will laugh all the way to the bank.

We just finished writing about this book the other day. We explained how eyewitness accounts entirely contradict the official narrative. We reported on a recent Infowars interview that reinforced what many others have reported, that bin Laden died ten years ago.

One only has to look at the videos that bin Laden supposedly released in the 2000s. All are still pictures of him, rather than video, and every one can probably be proven NOT to be him.

He was dying of Marfan syndrome a decade ago; his death was reported multiple times; he made not a single confirmable appearance after, say, 2000.

The caves from which he supposedly engineered his takedown of the World Trade Towers were never found. They conveniently dropped down the memory hole. Here’s an article we posted just the other day on this book and the possibility it would be made into a movie:

Steven Spielberg to Make Phony Movie of Fake Osama Death Book?

And here’s some more about it from the Telegraph article, above:

The terror mastermind was hit in the head when he looked out of his bedroom door in the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, according to the book – a copy of which has been obtained by The Associated Press.

The former Navy SEAL writing under the pseudonym Mark Owen in No Easy Day, says he was directly behind the “point man” as they made their way up the stairs of the two-storey house.

“Less than five steps” from the top of the stairs, he heard “suppressed” gunfire: “BOP. BOP.” The point man had seen a “man peeking out of the door” on the right side of the hallway.

The author writes that bin Laden ducked back into his bedroom and the SEALs followed, only to find the terrorist crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood with a hole visible on the right side of his head and two women wailing over his body.

Owen says the point man pulled the two women out of the way and shoved them into a corner and he and the other SEALs shot him several times until he lay motionless.

“(We) trained our lasers on his chest and fired several rounds. The bullets tore into him, slamming his body into the floor until he was motionless,” Owen writes according to a copy of the book obtained by the Huffington Post.

The SEALs later found two weapons stored by the doorway, untouched, the author said. Neither weapon was loaded.

“He hadn’t even prepared a defense. He had no intention of fighting. He asked his followers for decades to wear suicide vests or fly planes into buildings, but didn’t even pick up his weapon,” Owen writes.

Bin Laden was apparently wearing a white t-shirt, loose tan trousers and a tunic.

The power elite that pursues wars like the Afghan war uses dominant social themes to promote world government. It seeks to frighten people into giving up wealth and power to globalist institutions. But these are large and simplistic promotions that are not easily unraveled.

The bin Laden promotion is worrisome because it is so obviously false and because so many people know it is. There is very little gray here – and Money Power usually manipulates shades of gray easily.

In other words, as the Internet reveals more and more of their plans, they are growing desperate. Or at least it seems they don’t care anymore. You know, Bin Laden hasn’t been sighted for a decade. His vaunted caves were never found. Plenty of respectable people have indicated he died around the turn of the century.

As far as the “raid” goes … No photos of the body have emerged, not one. No photos of an aged bin Laden. No DNA. No body.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

All we get is the ongoing attrition of the SEAL unit that was involved in the episode. And this is more like a mob hit where they rub out some participants as a warning to others.

And then, of course, there is the release of the book, which is obviously supposed to give President Barack Obama an election lift. Just like a movie about the killing, “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Bin Laden Death Movie Mired in Controversy

And now, of course, Steven Spielberg is supposedly thinking of optioning the book.

The book is being presented (on purpose) in a counterintuitive way. We learn, for instance, that No Easy Day contradicts “the official version of events.” But no one will comment on the differences (maybe because neither scenario occurred).

We also learn that bin Laden’s body was treated with contempt by SEALs who sat on him in the cramped helicopter.

We learn the SEALs “are not fans” of President Barack Obama.

We learn that Vice President Joe Biden reminds SEALs of “someone’s drunken uncle at Christmas dinner.”

And, of course, we learn, as a final touch, that officials at the CIA are thinking of suing the author for not allowing the book to undergo a “formal review.”

Conclusion: But, hey, that’s understandable. It was probably written in the Pentagon.

Report: Bin Laden Already Dead

Published December 26, 2001 By FoxNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,41576,00.html#ixzz26yXIhy7A

Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.

“The Coalition troops are engaged in a mad search operation but they would never be able to fulfill their cherished goal of getting Usama alive or dead,” the source said.

Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief.

About 30 close associates of bin Laden in Al Qaeda, including his most trusted and personal bodyguards, his family members and some “Taliban friends,” attended the funeral rites. A volley of bullets was also fired to pay final tribute to the “great leader.”

The Taliban source who claims to have seen bin Laden’s face before burial said “he looked pale … but calm, relaxed and confident.”

Asked whether bin Laden had any feelings of remorse before death, the source vehemently said “no.” Instead, he said, bin Laden was proud that he succeeded in his mission of igniting awareness amongst Muslims about hegemonistic designs and conspiracies of “pagans” against Islam. Bin Laden, he said, held the view that the sacrifice of a few hundred people in Afghanistan was nothing, as those who laid their lives in creating an atmosphere of resistance will be adequately rewarded by Almighty Allah.

When asked where bin Laden was buried, the source said, “I am sure that like other places in Tora Bora, that particular place too must have vanished.”

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When is dropping bombs on another country not considered “hostilities”? That question is at the heart of a debate about whether the War Powers Resolution requires President Barack Obama to keep Congress informed about U.S. military activities in Libya.

The Obama administration is claiming that actions in Libya aren’t subject to the War Powers Resolution because they don’t meet the definition of “hostilities.” We wanted to fact-check this statement,  but experts we spoke with — even those who disagreed with the Obama administration — told us this is a complicated case and perhaps not a checkable fact. Rather, it’s a legal claim that will be settled by either the courts or the political process.

Still, we decided it would be useful to readers to lay out all the evidence we’ve gathered here. And we want to be clear: The Obama administration’s argument violates our standards of common sense, and we didn’t find one independent expert who whole-heartedly supported the claim that actions in Libya are not “hostilities.”

Libya and the War Powers Resolution

U.S. involvement in Libya began on March 19, 2011, as part of a NATO mission to support rebels attempting to overthrow the long-serving authoritarian leader Muammar Gadhafi. Obama said Gadhafi was launching military actions that were causing civilian deaths and forcing ordinary Libyans to escape to neighboring countries, threatening a humanitarian crisis within Libya and instability for its neighbors, Egypt and Tunisia. The NATO coalition initiated a bombing campaign and set up a no-fly zone designed to restrain Gadhafi.

“Left unaddressed, the growing instability in Libya could ignite wider instability in the Middle East, with dangerous consequences to the national security interests of the United States,” Obama said.

Under the War Powers Resolution, a president can initiate military action but must receive approval from Congress to continue the operation within 60 days. If approval is not granted and the president deems it an emergency, then an additional 30 days are granted for ending operations.

But since NATO action in Libya began, Obama has not sought or received approval from Congress. In fact, individual members of Congress have warned Obama that he can’t continue military action unilaterally. That’s what has caused the current face-off between the White House and Congress.

On paper, the War Powers Resolution seems clear-cut. But in practice, Congress and the White House have skirmished repeatedly over it.

While the Constitution (Article I, Section Eight) assigns the right to declare war to Congress, the last time that actually happened was at the beginning of World War II, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. Since then, presidents have generally initiated military activities using their constitutionally granted powers as commander-in-chief without an official declaration of war to support their actions. In some cases, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress has complied with a presidential request for specific approval, short of a formal declaration of war.

The War Powers Resolution, passed in the wake of the Vietnam War, was intended to stop presidents from fighting wars without input from Congress. However, presidents from both parties have regularly ignored it, and Congress has often been reluctant to assert itself. Some critics have suggested that the resolution has functioned so poorly that it should be scrapped. 

“It is ineffective at best and unconstitutional at worst. No president has recognized its constitutionality, and Congress has never pressed the issue. Nor has the Supreme Court ever ruled on its constitutionality. In fact, courts have largely shied away from refereeing war-powers disputes between the two political branches,” wrote James Baker and Warren Christopher in 2008. The two former secretaries of state, one a Republican and one a Democrat, studied the issue for a year and then recommended that it be replaced.

But for now, the law remains in force. So, earlier this month, butting up against the 90-day mark since action in Libya began, the Obama administration released a report summarizing its actions in Libya. The administration did not claim that the War Powers Resolution was unconstitutional but argued instead that its actions in Libya didn’t meet the definition of “hostilities,” so the War Powers Resolution did not apply.

“U.S. military operations are distinct from the kind of ‘hostilities’ contemplated by the Resolution’s 60-day termination provision,” the report said. “U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors.”

The report also argued that NATO was leading the efforts in Libya and that U.S. strikes rely on remotely piloted drone planes for its attacks.

Members of Congress from both parties expressed skepticism.

“You know, the White House says there are no hostilities taking place,” said U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican. “Yet we’ve got drone attacks underway. They’re spending $10 million a day, part of an effort to drop bombs on Gadhafi’s compounds. It just doesn’t pass the straight-face test in my view, that we’re not in the midst of hostilities.”

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., also rejected the administration’s argument. “The War Powers Act is the law of the land,” Sherman told Glenn Greenwald, a liberal blogger with Salon. “It says if the president deploys forces, he’s got to seek Congressional authorization or begin pulling out after 60 days. Too many presidents have simply ignored the law.”

Sherman argued that “when you’re flying Air Force bombers over enemy territory, you are engaged in combat.”

What the law says

To research the administration’s claim, we first turned to the law itself. The War Powers Resolution, passed in 1973. The resolution doesn’t define “hostilities,” but it does say that the president must go to Congress under three possible conditions if there is no formal declaration of war:

“In any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced—

(1) into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances;

(2) into the territory, airspace or waters of a foreign nation, while equipped for combat, except for deployments which relate solely to supply, replacement, repair, or training of such forces; or

(3) in numbers which substantially enlarge United States Armed Forces equipped for combat already located in a foreign nation.”

By our reading, dropping bombs on a country would fall under the second point. We then turned to a range of experts on military affairs, international relations and the law to see what the consensus was.

What the experts say

Most of the experts we talked to said that what is happening in Libya does, in fact, constitute hostilities and that to claim otherwise — as the White House is doing — is false. 

“The U.S. has deployed manned and unmanned aircraft to fire missiles and drop bombs — the type of weapons only permissible for use in armed conflict hostilities,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a University of Notre Dame law professor.

Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said that “this is akin to the argument that what we’re doing isn’t war but ‘kinetic military action.’ Now, the War Powers Act itself is problematic constitutionally, but you absolutely cannot say that what we’re doing in Libya isn’t ‘hostilities,’ in the lay or technical sense.”

And legal commentator Stuart Taylor Jr. said it’s “not a close call, in my opinion. Our military has been dropping bombs and killing people in Libya over a period of several months.”

As we noted earlier, the administration gave two specific rationales for why U.S. actions didn’t fall under the War Powers Resolution. First, U.S. efforts aren’t putting forces at risk because those efforts are relying on unmanned aircraft. Second, they argue, NATO is leading the effort.  

Jack Goldsmith — a Harvard University law professor who was a top government lawyer in the George W. Bush administration and wrote a book, The Terror Presidency, detailing his internal opposition to what he considered the administration’s overly broad views of executive authority — has written the most detailed critique we found on both those arguments. He found it unconvincing that drone attacks wouldn’t constitute hostilities. He also noted that the administration has been ambiguous in its public statements about whether it’s using only drones or both drones and piloted aircraft.

As for the NATO argument, Goldsmith pointed out that members of the U.S. Armed Forces hold leadership positions in NATO, and the United States provides significant funding for NATO. “The fact that this command and participation happens via NATO seems irrelevant; the fact is that U.S. Armed Forces are helping those nations engage in military hostilities,” he wrote. 

A few experts, though, told us they see the question as more nuanced. Whether the actions constitute hostilities, they said, is a question either for the courts or for the political process to work out. 

“This is not an easy case, and news reports suggest that this was fought over internally in the administration,” said Kal Raustiala, a University of California at Los Angeles law professor. Personally, he said, he thinks it’s “a bit of a stretch to say that Libya doesn’t count for the War Powers Resolution. But it is not crazy. The bottom line is the resolution is a struggle between Congress and the president, and there is no ‘right’ answer to what hostilities mean — until Congress defines it better.”

Even those experts who believe the U.S. is indeed engaged in hostilities think it’s unlikely that courts will be willing to intervene in a high-stakes disagreement over the meaning of the separation of powers. It’s more likely the courts would throw out the case on technical grounds, they said.

The War Powers Resolution is “an old statute filled with uncertainties,” Goldsmith wrote. “There is no definitive judicial construction of it and little likelihood of judicial review. The President is making an aggressive and narrowing interpretation of the statute. Whether the interpretation succeeds will depend entirely on Congress’s reaction. If Congress disagrees with the president’s construction, only it can vindicate its view.”

Congress is considering a number of measures that would both authorize and limit U.S. military actions in Libya. The final outcome of their actions remains to be seen.

The administration’s position

We asked the White House directly about the administration’s position. Spokesman Eric Schultz sent us this statement: 

“Our conclusion that these constrained and limited operations do not amount to ‘hostilities’ under the WPR is consistent with WPR interpretations put forward by administrations of both political parties dating back to the statute’s 1973 enactment. But what is beyond dispute is the fact that we have averted a massacre, saved thousands of lives and reversed the advance of Gadhafi’s forces, giving the Libyan people a chance to determine their future. We have also kept the president’s commitment to transfer responsibility to our coalition partners for the enforcement of the civilian protection mission and are now in a support role.”

Schultz also reiterated the arguments from the administration’s brief, which we’ve already described, and he referred us to additional analysis from Robert Chesney on the Lawfare blog, which cataloged the reasons previous presidents have given for why certain military activities were not subject to the War Powers Resolution and found that the Obama administration’s arguments were similar to some of those of previous administrations.

“From that perspective,” Chesney wrote, “it’s not hard to see how the administration comes to the view that the current state of U.S. involvement in Libya — i.e., no boots on the ground, no manned aircraft flying combat missions and thus putting pilots in harm’s way as a theoretical matter, [unmanned aerial vehicles] conducting combat missions only sporadically and with seemingly low intensity (isolated strikes on specific vehicles, that sort of thing), and manned aircraft otherwise conducting only support missions like refueling and jamming — taken as a whole fails to come within the scope of the WPR’s requirements.”

But even Chesney acknowledges in his post, “That’s not to say it’s an unassailable argument. For one thing, some, no doubt, would not give as much weight to executive branch interpretations as would, well, the executive branch. And there is the complication of (Adm. James G. Stavridis, the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe), an American officer in command of NATO forces from other countries that are engaged on a much more sustained basis in ‘exchanges of fire.’”

Finally, Schultz pointed us to statements from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., leaders of the Democrats in Congress. Reid said the War Powers Resolution didn’t apply because “we have no troops on the ground there, and this thing’s going to be over before you know it anyway, so I think it’s not necessary.” Pelosi said the actions were limited, and she believed the president had the authority he needed to go forward. “I don’t think they should stop the support that they’re giving to NATO to stop the humanitarian disaster,” she said.

Our view

We agree that prior administrations have taken similar approaches as the Obama Administration in analogous situations. But just because the administration’s approach to defining “hostilities” has been allowed to proceed historically — whether for political reasons or for convenience — doesn’t mean that the definition is legally justified.

The War Powers Resolution says it applies in any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced “into the territory, airspace or waters of a foreign nation, while equipped for combat.” We don’t see the use of drone aircraft as an escape clause, since dropping bombs from a foreign nation’s airspace is a textbook definition of hostilities. And as we said earlier, the administration’s argument violates our standards of common sense, and we didn’t find one independent expert who whole-heartedly supported the claim that actions in Libya are not “hostilities.”

We’ll be watching to see how the president and Congress handle the issue in the days ahead and whether their actions produce an answer about whether U.S. actions are hostilities that fall under the War Powers Resolution.

By Angie Drobnic Holan, Louis Jacobson
Published on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 at 11:38 a.m.

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