Plan B Forum

I predict tulsi gabbard D-hawaii

I guess diane Feinstein missed her chance

I kinda liked her when I saw her call out Pinocchio-Schultz for uninviting her to that Democratic debate because she was calling for more debates...

But yesterday I saw her spouting nonsense about "the illegal war" against the "legitimate, sovereign regime of Bashir Al Assad"...

She has an impressive personal military record, but with rhetoric like that, before I recognized her when they identified her on the screen, I seriously thought she might be a spokesperson for either the Syrian or Russian governments...

well we kinda are supposed to consult congress before bombing countries , and taking down countries and leaders aren t we?

I mean technically, you know?

aren t we supposed to , like, declare war or somethin'?

I mean technically, you know?

aren t we supposed to , like, declare war or somethin'?

Technically, no wes...

Military actions taken by Presidents have been challenged many times in the courts, and these challenges have always failed...

The SC position, is that Congress has "the power of the purse" and can always cut off the money for any military action that it doesn't want pursued...That is the Constitutional standard as determined by the Court...(And the Constitutional standard as determined by the Court, on this as on any other issue, is the Constitutional standard)

This happened in 1975, when the Congress prohibited the Ford Administration from expending any further funds to provide military aid to the South Vietnamese...and most recently, the Congress has prohibited the Obama Administration from expending any funds to close Gitmo or transfer or house any of the terrorists in custody there to or in the US mainland...

That having been said, it would be nice if there were an Authorization for Use of Military Force, resolution (usually referred to as an AUMF) passed by the Congress...

Which is the usual procedure...

However, the reason that hasn't happened in this case, is because our President (bizarrely) has submitted an AUFM request so limited and hand-tying in its scope, that the Congressional leadership doesn't want any future President, (or even him) to be bound by it...

Normally the debate is over whether a President is asking for too much authority...

In this case, incredibly, (but not surprisingly, when one looks at the totality of his record) we have a President who is asking for too little....

Excuse me for not knowing this off the top of my head, but is it necessary for a declaration of war to originate with the POTUS, or could Congress write and vote on a declaration on its own, and leave it up to the President to either sign it or veto it? (I'm thinking that this would be especially relevant in this case, where the enemy has insisted it is a "nation" by taking as its official name the identity a nation, and it pretends to actually be a nation. No need to define words or parse meanings to identify a "terrorist organization".)

I think that congress csn declare war on its own, but the president is responsible for waging the war, and the declaration means little if he refuses to wage war

I don't think it's spelled out, but in the five times in US history when a formal Declaration Of War was passed, it was at the request of the President:

The United States has formally declared war against foreign nations five separate times, each upon prior request by the President of the United States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarati ... ted_States

In any event, as I pointed out, the court has made clear that no formal declaration of war is required for a President to prosecute military action.

In this particular case, I don't suppose there'd be anything wrong with the Congress tossing the mealy-mouthed piece of crap Obama proposed, passing a proper AUMF, and daring him to veto it...

Of course, then they'd be accused of playing politics...

As of now the military action (such as it is) in Syria is legitimized by an admittedly broad interpretation the AUMF passed after 9/11, on the grounds that ISIS is a splinter group of Al Qaeda (which is technically true).

Both the neo-isolationist/randian right and pacifist/defeatist left factions of Congress are unhappy about this interpretation, but the White House and the Congressional leadership of both parties have been willing to accept it.

D'aesh/ISIL doesn't deserve to be in any way acknowledged as a nation; they are not.

wesw wrote:I predict tulsi gabbard D-hawaii

I guess diane Feinstein missed her chance

I predict this prediction will ultimately be as successful as wes' "prediction" that HRC drops out of the Presidential race in September 2015, no wait, October 2015, oh non, no, November 2015 ....

its November, and if she doesn t hurry up someone is gonna be mad when there ain t no cookies left.

...and I predicted that she would withdraw for 'medical reasons', to save face.

black Friday most likely.....



hopefully, bush will peter out soon