His Works Completed, Dick Cheney, Mass Murderer of Iraqis and American Democracy, Dies

"The week before Dick Cheney died, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, one of the bureaucratic venues through which the most powerful vice president in U.S. history disfigured the country, informed Congress that it would have no say over Donald Trump's rapidly coalescing military aggression against an oil-rich country. While self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth boasted over social media about treating the Caribbean fishermen that he insists without evidence are drug smugglers "exactly like al-Qaeda,""

"Office of Legal Counsel chief T. Elliot Gaiser told a group of legislators that the administration would not be bothering with congressional authorization for an escalating set of strikes carried out as part of a massive U.S. naval buildup. In Gaiser's sophistry, because the fishermen are unarmed, U.S. personnel are in no danger, so there is no war that fits the terms of the 1973 War Powers Resolution;"

The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel asserted that Congress would have no authority over imminent U.S. military strikes targeting an oil-rich country. Senior administration figures advocated harsh treatment of suspected smugglers while the OLC declined to seek congressional authorization for an expanding campaign supported by a massive naval buildup. The OLC framed the operations as outside the 1973 War Powers Resolution by arguing no armed threat exists when fishermen are unarmed. Congressional capacity to approve or constrain armed force has been undercut as executive power over war making has consolidated within the presidency.

Read at The Nation