OK, now it’s all beginning to make sense. Let’s take a look at this pretzel logic legal authority to attack inside Syria shall we.    Sheesh.

Unlike Libya in 2011, the U.N. did not have a resolution permitting President Obama to launch offensive military attacks inside a foreign and sovereign nation, Syria. Without a U.N. resolution there was no international law permitting President Obama to attack ISIS inside Syria.
Without a legal basis in international law, President Obama needs to use U.S. law for his Syria ISIS campaign.
So unlike Libya in 2011, and absent of international law to support the legality, for his 2014 Syria attacks to be legal President Obama needed to use US law; specifically, the War Powers Act.
President Obama is using two constructs. #1) The War Powers Act -and- #2) AUMF The 9-11-01 Authorization for the Use of Military Force.
But there’s a catch or two.
First, because President Obama is going to use the War Powers Act, and is not acting to defend the U.S. homeland, and is engaging in offensive military actions, he has to notify congress in writing immediately – and then update in writing within 30 days. It’s how the law works. But note what’s missing.

There is no mention of ISIS, because legally there can’t be. In order for Obama to use the 2001 AUMF he has to be attacking “al-Qaeda”, specifically “al-Qaeda”.
The AUMF only applies to al-Qaeda, not ISIS or any other group or state.
Hence Obama is using the words “and associated forces” and outlining attacks against “Khorasan” which is the bomb building and training group of al-Qaeda.
In essence he’s bombing and attacking al-Qaeda, and if an “associated force” like ISIS happens to be targeted too, well, ok then – it’s all legal n’ stuff.
We’re not really going after ISIS, it’s an al-Qaeda campaign where, well, um, 90% of the al-Qaeda ordinance just happens to fall on ISIS.
Gotcha.
But Obama now has another problem, or maybe not because the media will not challenge him.
You see….  back in May of 2013 President Obama made a big deal out of declaring “the war on terror is over“, and the AUMF was ridiculous and no longer needed.
Indeed as Peter Bergen put it in 2013:

[…]  For the first time on Thursday [May 2013], President Obama laid out the full scope of his proposed counterterrorism strategy, and it boiled down to this: George W. Bush’s endless war on terror is over.

And that’s appropriate, since the enemy Bush went to war with after September 11 has largely been defeated.

Obama’s speech at the National Defense University in Washington was designed to lay the political groundwork to wind down America’s longest war, the war that began when al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center and a wing of the Pentagon 12 years ago.

Thursday’s speech was the first time Obama had delivered an overarching framework for how to conceptualize the conflict that has defined U.S. national security policy since 9/11.

[…]  Much of the coverage of the speech has centered on the measures the president outlined to impose greater constraints on CIA drone strikes and to try to hasten the eventual closing of Guantanamo.

But the most significant aspect of the speech was the president’s case that the “perpetual wartime footing” and “boundless war on terror” that has permeated so much of American life since 9/11 should come to an end.

Obama argued that the time has come to redefine the kind of conflict that the United States is engaged in: “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.”

This is why the president focused part of his speech on a discussion of the seemingly arcane Authorization for the Use of Military Force that Congress passed days after 9/11 and that gave Bush the authority to go to war in Afghanistan against al Qaeda and its Taliban allies.

Few, if any, in Congress who voted for the authorization understood at the time that they were voting for a virtual blank check that has provided the legal basis for more than a decade of war. It is a war that has expanded in recent years to other countries in the Middle East and Africa, such as Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has engaged in covert military operations against al Qaeda-affiliated groups.

[…]  Obama made it quite clear in his Thursday speech that he would oppose such an expansion, saying he hopes instead to “ultimately repeal the AUMF’s mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further.”

In short, Obama intends to end a seemingly endless war.

That’s because, according to Obama, “the core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the path to defeat. Their remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us.”  (read more)

George Bush’s war on terror was over in 2013.  Until President Obama needed it, and the accompanying legal justifications therein, for Barack Obama’s war on terror  2014.

Now, the war on terror is back on and the AUMF is Obama’s  legal justification to attack inside Syria.

Think anyone will call him on that now ?

Nah, me neither….