Interesting read from Dionne Searcey of the Wall St Journal on this subject...

"Regardless, three days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, House and the Senate passed joint resolutions authorizing the President to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

It is amazing how easy it has become to be pompous and self righteous 8 years removed from that attack on our country !!!!

"The whole kerfuffle over disclosure skirts the legal elephant in the room in the most recent revelation: if our CIA’s shaggy assassins (trust us, we’ve seen those secret agent types on the Iraqi battlefield and they appear to never, ever shave) came across Osama bin Laden in a cave, can they legally kill him on the spot? "

PS: and this from todays NY Times....

"The program was designed in the frantic weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks when President George W. Bush signed a secret order authorizing the C.I.A. to capture or kill operatives of Al Qaeda around the world. To be able to kill Osama bin Laden or his top deputies wherever they might be — even in cities or countries far from a war zone — struck top agency officials as an urgent goal, according to people involved in the discussions"

"Current and former officials said that the program was designed as a more “surgical” solution to eliminating terrorists than missile strikes with armed Predator drones, which cannot be used in cities and have occasionally resulted in dozens of civilian casualties.

“The Predator strikes have been successful, and I was pleased to see the Obama administration continue them,” said Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “This was another effort that was trying to accomplish the same objective.”

Mr. Bond would not discuss specific details about the terminated C.I.A. program."

Because the program never carried out any missions and because Congress had already signed off on the agency’s broad authorities after Sept. 11, the officials and some Republican legislators said the C.I.A. was not required to brief lawmakers on specifics of the program."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/us...l.html?_r=1&hp




http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/07/13/...ver-finds-him/

Now add to this story the fact that just came out that the Democratic congressmen and women made this available to the PRESS first when they wrote the letter to the CIA !!!!

Is everyone ok with our congress doing this ? Why no outrage about this ?