Newsweek reports on a September 2001 memo of the Office of the Legal Council that was just Friday silently posted at the Justice Department’s website.
The memo, written by "Geneva does not apply" law Professor John Yoo, concludes (emph. added):
.. the President has the plenary constitutional power to take such military actions as he deems necessary and appropriate …
Military actions need not be limited to those individuals, groups, or states that participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon: the Constitution vests the President with the power to strike terrorist groups or organizations that cannot be demonstrably linked to the September 11 incidents, but that, nonetheless, pose a similar threat to the security of the United States and the lives of its people, whether at home or overseas.
The footnote to the above sentence says:
But we do not think that the difficulty or impossibility of establishing proof … bars the President from taking such military measures as, in his best judgment, he thinks necessary or appropriate to defend the United States from terrorist attacks. In the exercise of his plenary power to use military force, the President’s decisions are for him alone and are unreviewable.
Is there any need left for an expensive Congress and a Supreme Court if "the President’s decisions are for him alone and are unreviewable"?