This short policy article argues that both the Bush administration, in its final two years in office, and Congress have an obligation and interest in taking US counterterrorism policy beyond the current "war on terror" operated on the basis of executive power and discretion, to comprehensively institutionalize it for the long term through Congressional legislation. It argues that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is mistakenly aimed merely at satisfying the narrow requirements of the Hamdan decision, and is far from the comprehensive legislation that institutionalizing counterterrorism policy requires in order both to have democratic legitimacy with the American people and to have a permanency that goes beyond the discretionary whims of any particular administration.