The April 30 Senate hearing produced the sentence that is now the Pentagon's only on-the-record interpretation of the War Powers Resolution: "We are in a ceasefire right now, which our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses or stops in a ceasefire." [1] The phrasing — "pauses or stops" — is not a citation. It is a paraphrase of an unidentified internal reading.

The paper's Pentagon Minab silence piece named the same secretary's habit of testing legal questions on the record without producing the documents that would settle them. Sunday is the same shape, on a bigger statute. Section 1544(b) of the WPR — the 60-day clock — does not contain the word "ceasefire," does not authorize an executive-branch pause, and does not give the Defense Secretary the role of declaring one. War-powers expert Katherine Yon Ebright's response, on record: "Nothing in the text or design of the War Powers Resolution suggests that the 60-day clock can be paused or terminated." [1]

Five former Justice and Defense Department lawyers across two administrations went on record this weekend to say the same. [1] The Office of Legal Counsel, which would normally publish the opinion the executive branch is relying on, has not. The Pentagon has not produced an OLC memo, a State Department legal-adviser memo, or a White House Counsel letter to Congress identifying the statutory hook for the "pauses" doctrine. [2] Senator Tim Kaine, in committee: "If we're using the U.S. military to blockade everything going into and out of Iran, that's still hostility." [2]

The doctrine does the work the bombing once did — it keeps the operation legally airborne. The paper's position is that "pauses or stops" is not a legal phrase. It is a holding pattern.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington