Good article on the life and death consequences of language

I think the headline is a bit hyperbolic, but agree or disagree, the article itself is more than worth the read: 60 words and a War Without End

Interesting side note: The language the Obama administration uses regarding military force -- "associated forces" -- and quoted several times in the article isn't in the AUMF, but IS in the 2012 NDAA. The detention provisions of the NDAA supposedly just affirmed the AUMF, but actually expanded it. Interesting to see that, from what is quoted in this article, much of what I think is actually the real danger of the language of the NDAA seems to have come from the Obama administration's own legal arguments in a Federal case early in his administration, where the argument was being made that the AUMF allowed us to detain a suspect in guantanamo who was challenging that detention.

That very language in the NDAA supposedly "interpreting" the AUMF while in reality expanding it ("associated forces", "coalition partner," "belligerent act," "substantially supported") in the specific context of who we can detain seems to have been lifted directly from the Government's arguments in that case and placed in the NDAA. The dangerousness of this expansive language in the NDAA is discussed here. /self promotion.

From the looks of it, that exact same dangerously expansive language has been the framework for "interpreting" ALL force exercised under the authority of the AUMF.