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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Did the Bush administration deceive Congress and use post-9/11 emergency funds to prepare for war on Iraq? Bob Woodward's new insider account raises some critical questions.
Apr 22, 2004 | The most puzzling passage in Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack," deals with the allegedly covert expenditure of $700 million on preparatory tasks for the war in Iraq. Under the Constitution, the executive branch cannot spend taxpayer money without a congressional appropriation. The key question is whether Congress, explicitly or implicitly, authorized President Bush to spend $700 million for these purposes. The answer to that question is far from clear. But it is crucial to pose it, not only to evaluate what has happened in the last three years, but also to learn something about the relationship between Congress and the president in the modern era.
Here's what Woodward reports: In late July 2002, Gen. Tommy Franks informed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that to make the Iraq war feasible, at least two steps had to be taken in Kuwait. First, air bases there had to be made suitable for aircraft use, parking and munitions storage. Second, a new fuel distribution capability had to be created, enabling fuel to be moved from Kuwaiti refineries to the Iraqi border so as to support the coming invasion. Bush told Woodward that these activities were done covertly and at significant expense -- leading, in fact, to 30 projects that the president expressly approved by the end of July.
But how would they be funded? In Woodward's words, "Some of the funding would come from the supplemental appropriation bill being worked out in Congress for the Afghanistan war and the general war on terrorism. The rest would come from old appropriations."
What exactly does this mean? Begin with the "old appropriations." The most likely candidate is the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, passed on Sept. 14, 2001, a direct response to the 9/11 attacks that appropriated $40 billion for five enumerated purposes:
1) providing federal, state and local preparedness for mitigating and responding to the 9/11 attacks.
2) providing support to counter, investigate or prosecute domestic and international terrorism.
3) providing increased transportation security.
4) repairing public facilities and transportation systems damaged by the attacks.
5) supporting national security.
Of these, 1, 3 and 4 could not possibly include preparations for war in Iraq -- and 2 and 5 even seem a bit of a stretch. In fact, this emergency supplemental appropriation was universally understood as a complement to the very measure, enacted on the same day, that authorized the president to use force to respond to the 9/11 attack (and thus to wage war in Afghanistan).
The early draft of that authorization, proposed by the White House, would have given the president broad authority to "deter and prevent any related future acts of terrorism and aggression against the United States." It was soon narrowed to permit 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 Sept. 11 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."
In these circumstances, the emergency appropriation was mostly designed for domestic action that would amount to disaster recovery and strengthening internal preparedness -- an interpretation that finds support in a proviso saying that "not less than one half of the $40,000,000 shall be for disaster recovery activities and assistance related to the terrorist acts in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania."
Might anything in the Sept. 14 appropriation permit the president to devote many millions of dollars to war preparations for Iraq? It could be argued that the purpose of "promoting national security" or "providing support to counter, investigate or prosecute domestic or international terrorism" is broad enough to give the president this authority. But even this much is not entirely clear. With the words "promoting national security," Congress cannot plausibly have meant to give the president a blank check to prepare for hostilities wherever he chooses.
