Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Hidden US Intelligence Machinery of the War on Terror: Top Secret America

The Hidden US Intelligence Machinery of the War on Terror: Top Secret America

Murch, Richard

Paperback

General World History

ISBN13: 9798170987290
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 31 2026
Pages: 156
Weight: 0.43
Height: 0.39 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Three Days, Sixty Words
The legal architecture of the post-9/11 security state was built in days, not years. On September 14, 2001 - three days after the attacks, the wreckage at the World Trade Center was still burning - both chambers of Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force. President Bush signed it into law on September 18.

The resolution itself runs to only about sixty words: it authorizes the president to use all necessary and appropriate force against any nation, organization, or person he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the September 11 attacks, or harbored those responsible, in order to prevent future acts of international terrorism.

The brevity of the text belied the scope of what it authorized. The AUMF carried no expiration date, no list of specific countries, and no requirement that Congress vote again before the president extended military action to a new front.

By 2017, according to research compiled by legal scholars, it had been invoked more than thirty times to justify American military operations in more than a dozen countries - from the initial invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, to operations in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, and Syria, to President Obama's 2014 decision to bomb ISIS forces without seeking any new congressional authorization at all, on the theory that a terrorist group founded years after 9/11 was nonetheless covered by a law written to address the perpetrators of that specific attack.

Also from

Murch, Richard

View All

Also in

General World History

View All