It's impossible to overstate how correct Rep. Barbara Lee was when she warned that this resolution would constitute "a blank check" to wage war "anywhere, in any country," and "without time limit." Fifteen years later, this "war" is raging as destructively as ever, with no end in sight.

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ALMOST IMMEDIATELY AFTER the 9/11 attack, while bodies were still buried in the rubble, George W. Bush demanded from Congress the legal authorization to use military force against those responsible for the attack, which everyone understood would start with an invasion of Afghanistan. The resulting resolution that was immediately cooked up was both vague and broad, providing 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."

Despite this broadness, or because of it, the House of Representatives on September 14 approved the resolution by a vote of 420-1. The Senate approved it the same day by a vote of 98-0. The lone dissenting vote was Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California, who -- three days after the 9/11 attack, in a climate of virtually full-scale homogeneity -- not only voted "no" but stood up on the House floor to deliver this eloquent, unflinching and, as it turns out, extremely prescient explanation for her opposition:

In an op-ed she published in the San Francisco Chronicle nine days later, she explained her vote by pointing out that the resolution "was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events -- anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation's long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit." She added: "A rush to launch precipitous military counterattacks runs too great a risk that more innocent men, women, children will be killed."

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Authors Bio:

[Subscribe to Glenn Greenwald] Glenn Greenwald is a journalist,former constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. His most recent book, "No Place to Hide," is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. His forthcoming book, to be published in April, 2021, is about Brazilian history and current politics, with a focus on his experience in reporting a series of expose's in 2019 and 2020 which exposed high-level corruption by powerful officials in the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, which subsequently attempted to prosecute him for that reporting.

Foreign Policy magazine named Greenwald one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. He was the debut winner, along with "Democracy Now's" Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work breaking the story of the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning.

For his 2013 NSA reporting, working with his source Edward Snowden, he received the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting; the Gannett Foundation Award for investigative journalism and the Gannett Foundation Watchdog Journalism Award; the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative Reporting in Brazil (he was the first non-Brazilian to win); and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award. The NSA reporting he led for The Guardian was also awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. A film about the work Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras did with Snowden to report the NSA archive, "CitizenFour," directed by Poitras, was awarded the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

In 2019, he received the Special Prize from the Vladimir Herzog Institute for his reporting on the Bolsonaro government and pervasive corruption inside the prosecutorial task force that led to the imprisonment of former Brazilian President Lula da Silva. The award is named after the Jewish immigrant journalist who was murdered during an interrogation by the Brazilian military dictatorship in 1977. Several months after the reporting began, Lula was ordered released by the Brazilian Supreme Court, and the former President credited the expose's for his liberty. In early 2020, Brazilian prosecutors sought to prosecute Greenwald in connection with the reporting, but the charges were dismissed due to a Supreme Court ruling, based on the Constitutional right of a free press, that barred the Bolsonaro government from making good on its threats to retaliate against Greenwald.

After working as a journalist at Salon and The Guardian, Greenwald co-founded The Intercept in 2013 along with Poitras and journalist Jeremy Scahill, and co-founded The Intercept Brasil in 2016. He resigned fromThe Intercept in October, 2020, to return to independent journalism.

Greenwald lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil with his husband, Congressman David Miranda, their two children, and 26 rescue dogs. In 2017, Greenwald and Miranda created an animal shelter in Brazil supported in part through public donations designed to employ and help exit the streets homeless people who live on the streets with their pets.