60 Words And A War Without End: The Untold Story Of The Most Dangerous Sentence In U.S. History: Written in the frenzied, emotional days after 9/11, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force was intended to give President Bush the ability to retaliate against whoever orchestrated the attacks. But more than 12 years later, this sentence remains the primary legal justification for nearly every covert operation around the world. Here’s how it came to be, and what it’s since come to mean.

That the President is authorized 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 September 11, 2001, 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.

“It is like a Christmas tree,” John Bellinger III told me recently. “All sorts of things have been hung off of those 60 words.”

The Washington Post knows as well as you or I that American "vital interests," as defined in the Bush (and more queasily in the Obama) era, float in a context of lies, stupidity, waste and war crimes. Yet its editorial page so reflects the Beltway addiction to war that it pushes for more of it no matter how counterproductive the last one turned out for any rational assessment of U.S. vital interests.

Our invasion wreaked havoc on the physical and social infrastructure of the country. And the weapons we used, including depleted uranium munitions and white phosphorous, shattered its health. In 2010, for instance, The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published an epidemiological study, "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009," which found that Fallujah — the city we "cleared of terrorists" with two bloody assaults in 2004 — is experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia and infant mortality than Hiroshima and Nagasaki did in 1945.

The country as a whole, according to Jamail, has seen an enormous jump in cancer rates since the U.S. began dismantling it. In 1991, before the first Gulf War, there were 40 registered cases of cancer per 100,000 Iraqis, he noted. By 2005, "we saw 1,600 Iraqis with cancer out of 100,000."

And Fallujah, in particular, has been devastated by an increase in birth defects since 2004 — 14 times higher than the rate measured in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after they were bombed, according to Jamail.

It's common in Fallujah, he said, citing Iraqi Dr. Samira Alani, "for newborns to come out with massive multiple systemic defects, immune problems, massive central nervous system problems, massive heart problems, skeletal disorders, babies being born with two heads, babies being born with half of their internal organs outside of their bodies, cyclops babies literally with one eye — really, really, really horrific nightmarish types of birth defects. And it is ongoing."

Here are the 60 words:It's really that second clause that is the killer -- "in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."And certainly 9/11 and the AUMF was Christmas for the military-industrial-intelligence complex...The whole story of the "war on terror" and how the Obama administration won't update the AUMF, as described in the piece, is beyond sick, it's just evil, and gets to the heart of the problem with the mentality of the national security state and the military-industrial-intelligence complex.Related evil--This is so true:Thank goodness I haven't heard much from the media recently about how horrible it is that "al Qaeda" has taken over Fallujah and there is no new push for war there... although of course I wonder if they stopped talking about Fallujah because they were worried people might start remembering the horrors we did there, the radioactive, mutation-inducing hell it has become for its people.And yet, it is Hitler that is described as history's greatest monster....