A prediction on war, Iran and funding

Watching Countdown rerun...

I predict that the next budget passed by Congress affecting the armed forces, whether a continuing, supplemental or by agency, will have a very interesting, and possibly cryptic signing statement.

Bush will use his signing statement precedents (as yet untested in court) to claim plenary powers under the unitary executive and as commander in chief, to redirect resources to deploy forces where he, as CinC, deems necessary.
This will circumvent, at least for a while, any attempt by Congress to block escalation in Iraq or expansion of the war to adjacent countries. The unchallenged move of resources from Afghanistan to Iraq a few years ago may really come back to bite Congress, since they let that slide after they found out about it, which argues for some legal concession by them (think of the analogy of failure to protect copyright when the holder knows of a minor infringement, weakens any future claims).

I am now also intensely interested in the exact language of the current DoD primary funding bill for 2007, which the 2006 Congress did pass. May try to find time to look through it next week, I hear it is big. Be interesting to see if some language is buried deep in some sections.