Rumsfeld's War

Donald Rumsfeld's lawyers are telling him that he can wage any kind of war anywhere he wants and he doesn't have to tell Congress about it and he's not bound to the same rules and stuff as the CIA.

Under Title 10. . . the Defense Department must report to Congress all "deployment orders," or formal instructions from the Joint Chiefs of
Staff to position U.S. forces for combat. But guidelines issued this
month by Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone state that
special operations forces may "conduct clandestine HUMINT
operations . . . before publication" of a deployment order, rendering
notification unnecessary. Pentagon lawyers also define the "war on
terror" as ongoing, indefinite and global in scope. That analysis
effectively discards the limitation of the defense secretary's war powers
to times and places of imminent combat.

"Operations the CIA runs have one set of restrictions and oversight,
and the military has another," said a Republican member of Congress with
a substantial role in national security oversight, declining to speak
publicly against political allies. "It sounds like there's an angle here
of, 'Let's get around having any oversight by having the military do
something that normally the [CIA] does, and not tell anybody.' That
immediately raises all kinds of red flags for me. Why aren't they telling
us?"

This sounds kind of scary. I hope he doesn't declare war on me.