HOLDER HEARING: Holder: ‘We Were at War Before Sept. 11′

Eric Holder might have surprised a few people with this answer to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) question of whether the nation is at war:

I don’t think there’s any question that we are at war, and I think, to be honest, I think our nation didn’t realize that we were at war when in fact we were.  When I look back at the 90s and Tanzania embassy bombings, the bombing of the Cole, I think we as a nation should have realized that at that point we were at war. We should not have waited until September 11th, 2001 to make that determination.

The implications of this statement seem ambiguous.

If Holder means that we’ve always been at war and therefore the current war shouldn’t factor in to how we interpret the Constitution, that’s one thing. But if he’s saying that the idea that we’ve been at war for so long justifies the extremes that have been employed by the Bush administration, that’s another. It wasn’t exactly clear by the way he answered.

I welcome comments on this interpretation, or what readers think Holder meant.