Get Your War On!

Oh Canada, which is where this story gets the proper headline, as opposed to here in the United States, where the extensibility of the feature enhancements make for streamlining the core competencies of news organizations more extensive and competently, featureful...

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress should explicitly declare a state of armed conflict with al Qaeda to make clear the United States can detain suspected members as long as the war on terrorism lasts, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Monday.

Mukasey urged Congress to make the declaration in a package of legislative proposals to establish a legal process for terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo, in response to a Supreme Court ruling last month that detainees had a constitutional right to challenge their detention.

"Any legislation should acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us," Mukasey said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute.

"Congress should reaffirm that for the duration of the conflict the United States may detain as enemy combatants those who have engaged in hostilities or purposefully supported al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations," he said.

Mukasey was not asking for a formal declaration of war, which would trigger certain emergency powers under the Constitution and international law, a Justice Department spokesman said. U.S. President George W. Bush has on numerous occasions said the United States was "at war" against terrorists and cited that as a basis for his powers.

[...]

Mukasey may not have *explicitly* asked for it, but that's no reason to think the Congress won't deliver it anyway.

Q1: How many people here can recite the collective and exhaustive list of all those "certain emergency powers" such a formal declaration would legally provide to the executive branch?

Q2: How many of those powers have yet to be exercised by this President despite not having been legally afforded to him?