Posted on 03/21/2011 1:52:02 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
President Obama swore an oath to "... preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." He should have sworn to obey it.
Congress, alone, has the power to declare war, and to make all the laws necessary to engage in military conflict. The War Powers Act defines precisely what is required of the president before military action may commence.
Obama launched 118 missiles and dropped 40 bombs on Libya without a thought about Congress or the Constitution.
He was quite concerned, however, about the United Nations. He hardly noticed the attacks on protesters until the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution authorizing the use of force against the Libyan government. Within hours after U.N. approval, the U.S. military was engaged – without the knowledge or approval of Congress.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
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Of course he does, he’s a “citizen of the world” and someday hopes to be President of it.
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
— Senator Barack Hussein Obama, December 20, 2007
Those were my exact thoughts upon reading this ridiulous headline. Where is the Constitution ... INDEED!
Where has it been for the past 26 months?
WTH does the current illegal war have to do with any of "those situations." There is/was no imminent threat to the US, France or England -- that broadest of broad coalitions. The only threat from Daffy was to "rebels" to his government. We do not even know who those alleged "rebels" are. For all we know they could be the MB or AQ. It is simply mind boggling that there is anyone of FR trying to defend the actions of the usurper.
Are you insinuating the term "unlawful combatant" only appeared during the WOT?
...the distinction between lawful and unlawful enemy combatants (also referred to as “unprivileged belligerents”) has deep roots in international humanitarian law, preceding even the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The Hague Regulations of 1899 and 1907 contemplated distinctions between lawful and unlawful combatants, and this distinction remains to this day.As Professor Adam Roberts told the Brookings Speakers Forum in March 2002, “There is a long record of certain people coming into the category of unlawful combatants— pirates, spies, saboteurs, and so on. It has been absurd that there should have been a debate about whether or not that category exists.”
Blue helmets or other jack boots, when they send them. Until then, we continue the soft war and vote out the commie rats. Election 2012 is critical.
I’d guess within the next 6 to 12 month the American public will finally open their eyes when the fascist NWO economic policies hit them hard.
I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.
Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.... The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors...
I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.
All quotes taken from Barack Obama's Stirring 2002 Speech Against the Iraq War when he was nothing more than a 2 bit state senator.
Bflr.
Bflr.
“The rationale for vesting the power to launch war in Congress was simple,” Biden said in a Senate speech delivered on July 30, 1998.“The Framers' views were dominated by their experience with the British King, who had unfettered power to start wars. Such powers the Framers were determined to deny the President.”
Actually based on what we thought we knew at the time then a case can be made for a president going into Iraq for nation security purposes with or without congressional approval. Then In the first gulf war we had Iraq invading Kuwait and saudia Arabia and yet we waited mths to give Iraq time to withdraw and the world to unite behind the cause.
In libya there is no national security issue. There is absolutely no rationale for not getting congressional approval.
The Speaker of the House has not even protested.
No branch and no party is the US government gives a damn about the Constitution.
None of 'em. They are acting on whim and expediency...not by rule of law.
“Are you insinuating the term “unlawful combatant” only appeared during the WOT?”
I did reply to this but can’t find the reply. How odd.
Anyway: of course I’m not. Being a Brit I know the concept goes back hundreds of years, and was applied to captured longbowmen as well as captured spies in our battles with France. To wit, they’d be tortured for information and then despatched in particularly gruesome fashions as a warning to other people who weren’t “playing by the rules” (i.e. who were playing hard to get instead of dressing up in identifiable colours and fighting man-to-man with swords).
As for treating terrorists as “unlawful combatants”, we did have Guido Fawkes. Once we got the intel, we despatched him in a gruesome way, to serve as a warning to others.
The point I’m trying to get at, is that “unlawful combatants” only ever means one of two things: “enemy combatants we want to make a public example of” (a bit naughty), and “enemy combatants we want to torture for information because we need to know what they know” (more justifiable).
You can pretend all you like that there’s ever been anything substantially more to the terminology than that, but there really isn’t.
The German Army rulebooks said that shooting unarmed POWs in reprisals wasn’t (technically) allowed, but the very same rule books said that it was okay to shoot spies. So what did the Nazis do when they recaptured escaped POWs? Look at what they were wearing. If they were in civilian garb, to evade capture, then they could be shot as spies, and made an example of.
In South Park, there’s a running gag where Ned and Jimbo know they’re not supposed to shoot certain wild animals at certain times of the year but get around that restriction by shouting “They’re coming right for us!” and claiming self defense. Same concept, different context.
When you say "what we thought we knew" are you referring to the WMD issue? If so, then let's remove it from the equation and list only the irrefutable evidence to make the case.
1. Ignored 17 UN resolutions over 12 years – the original being a cease-fire agreement to end the Gulf War.
2. Murdered 100s of 1000s of his own people – some using WMD
3. Had terrorist training camps set up in his country – see Salman Pak
4. Paid $25,000 each to the families of the so-called pali suicide bombers
5. Provided safe haven for known al-Qaeda terrorists
6. Invaded another sovereign nation
7. Conducted the Oil for Palaces scandal – which France and Russia were into neck deep
8. Continuously fired at US and GB planes enforcing the no-fly zone
9. Kicked the UN weapons inspectors out of the country
Perhaps where you come from that is the case.
Unlawful enemy combatants are those who are not fighting for a nation and who do not wear the nation's uniform. In other words they are nothing more than terrorists who flood into a country based on their love of an ideology rather than love of country. Such as the terrorists from many nations rushing into Iraq to fight the Great Satan, not to help the Iraqis.
10. Attemped assassination of a US president who happened to the sitting president’s son.
Yeah I was limiting the justification to wmd’s. Actually there were wmd’s found and Iraq had months to hide other wmd evidence.
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