Posted on 04/05/2008 1:49:31 PM PDT by The_Republican
The first has long since lapsed. It permitted the president to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq." This threat came to an end with the destruction of Saddam Hussein's government.
Instead, U.S. military intervention is authorized under the second prong of the 2002 resolution. This authorizes the president to "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." This has allowed the Bush administration to satisfy American law by obtaining a series of resolutions authorizing the United States to serve as the head of the multinational force in Iraq.
But here's the rub. The most recent U.N. resolution expires on Dec. 31, and the administration has announced that it will not seek one for 2009. Instead, it is now negotiating a bilateral agreement with the Iraqi government to replace the U.N. mandate.
David Satterfield, the administration's coordinator for Iraq, claimed that the 2002 resolution authorized the continuing use of force against al-Qaeda in Iraq. But al-Qaeda only came into Iraq as a result of U.S. intervention. Congress only authorized the use of force to defend against the "continuing threat" posed by Iraq, not all threats that might someday exist in Iraq.
Other administration arguments are worse.
It has suggested that Congress's "war on terror" resolution, passed a week after 9/11, provides sufficient legal support for continuing the war in 2009. But this claims far too much. If that were true, then President Bush could have unilaterally invaded Iraq in 2002 without any further congressional decision.
The administration has also suggested that Congress has legally sanctioned the war by continuing to appropriate funds for it. But approving funds is not sufficient to authorize military action.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Where were these people when clinton bombed Yugoslavia without “any” authorization whatsoever and continued 18 days past the war powers act.
Yugoslavia was no threat to us or it’s neighbors or the world.
Now that was an illegal war.
“The Lawyer’s Guide to War Fighting”
REALLY???
We are still in Germany, and Kosovo, and Afghanistan, long after hostilities ceased.
In normal speak it’s called reinforcements.
These people are the dumbest on the planet.
Any warrior force would want to reinforce when threatened.
It would be like saying we actually caused WWII to get worse because we fought back causing enemies to increase their forces and efforts. If we hadn’t fought back WWII would have ended at Pearl Harbor.
Insane morons.
truthfully, constitutionally, if gulf war I was “constitutional”, GWBush needed no act from congress to act against Saddam in 2003.
The coalition led by the U.S., Britain and Kuwait in 1991 had not given Saddam a peace treaty, only a truce agreement.
That truce agreement was fully enforceable by the coalition of states that imposed it on Saddam, at any time he was in breach of the terms of that truce;
which, in fact, he was, continuously from the day he signed it,
for a number of reasons, of which his failure to unconditionally, co-operatively and transparently divulge the full nature and extent of his wmd programs was one.
The truce terms, and later corresponding UN resolutions, imposed no requirement on the U.S. or anyone else to ‘prove’ Saddam had wmds. The requirement was on Saddam, 100%, and it required his response to unconditionally, co-operatively and transparently end any questions about his wmd efforts.
But Saddam, from day one chose the opposite path. He chose to make any U.S. OR U.N. answers to Iraqi wmd questions as uncertain as he could. Saddam did not want those questions definitely answered, and did all he could to make sure they would not be.
Saddam’s wmd response made sure that he was never in full compliance with and was always in breach of the truce he signed.
Even by ‘international law’, all that the coalition that imposed the truce had to do, to resume hostilities, was to acknowledge that twelve years of failed diplomacy had not only failed to secure the terms of the truce, but demonstrated enforcement of it, by diplomacy alone, was not going to obtain that enforcement, thus ending, formally, the fiction that there was, any longer, a truce in force.
Gulf War II was nothing other than the resumption of Gulf War I upon final, belated recognition that a signed truce was in fact no longer a truce that was enforced or diplomatically enforceable.
Those that imposed that failed truce on Saddam had every right and obligation to enforce it by any means needed.
The article is referring to actions and Resolutions by the UN. These only concern the First Iraq War, in which George Bush, pere, did NOT advance to Baghdad because the operative UN Resolutions did not permit that. The current Iraq War is covered by the Congressional Joint Resolution which was included in the Patriot Act, passed on 18 September, 2001, and reaffirmed a year later.
In that Joint Resolution, Congress authorized the President to "use military force" including "across international boundaries" to pursue the terrorists and defeat "them and the nations that harbor them." Congress used, in 2001, almost identical language to what Congress used in 1805 to authorize President Jefferson to pursue and defeat the Barbary Pirates.
There is no possible excuse for a supposedly literate staff of a supposedly competent newspaper to be unaware of the differences between the legal authority for Gulf War I and Gulf War II. I conclude that the staff of the Post are either incredibly dumb or incredibly dishonest. Which do you think it is?
Congressman Billybob
Some Yalies, though not all of them, have an arrogant belief that the world owes them a living, and that their thoughts are so much better than other people's.
I wrote an article for United Press International, five years ago, on American declarations of war. It was more honest and accurate than this incompetent cr*p these professors have produced now.
John / Billybob
But this resolution was passed in 2002? I’m a bit confused by that.
I cannot believe that they are so stupid and ill-prepared that they do not know about that Resolution, which was labeled a "Declaration of War" when it was first introduced. I conclude, therefore, that these two professors are lying about what Congress has / has not done, in order to advance their preferred political positions.
John / Billybob
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