At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on May 16, a week before the President‘s speech, the committee chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, questioned Michael Sheehan, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, about designating enemies with no more Congressional authority than the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress three days after the 9/11 attacks and giving the President effectively unlimited discretion to wage the war on terrorism, wherever he might imagine it to be.