An editorial in the Washington Post today explains the need for Congress to assert its authority in relation to the Executive branch, concerning escalation of the war:
Why Would Congress Surrender?By Fred Barbash
Wednesday, January 31, 2007; Page A15
(snip)...
Now, people who know better show no surprise at the notion that Congress's only war-related authority is the power of the purse. Timid requests for legislative involvement are ridiculed and caricatured as "micromanagement" or, worse, as comforting the enemy.
(snip)
But Article I gives Congress not merely the power of the purse. It vests in the House and Senate the authority to "declare war," to "make rules concerning captures on land and water," to "provide for the common defense," to "raise and support Armies," and to "make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces." In addition, the Senate advises and consents on important military appointments, which is why Lt. Gen. David Petraeus was on Capitol Hill last week for confirmation as the general in command of U.S. forces in Iraq.
(snip)
"Many safeguards in the Constitution reflect these concerns," he said, including expressly involving Congress in the war-making function. Indeed, wrote Scalia,
"except for the actual command of military forces, all authorization for their maintenance and all explicit authorization for their use is placed in the control of Congress under Article I, rather than the President under Article II."(snip)
The equilibrium of government, in the view of the Constitution's Framers, rested on a stated assumption that
each branch would fight fiercely to expand its authority but just as fiercely resist encroachment from another branch.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/30/AR2007013001652.html And then there's this AP article: Senators WARN...
Senators warn against war with IranBy ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer Wed Jan 31, 5:14 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Republican and Democratic senators
warned Tuesday against a drift toward war with an emboldened Iran and suggested the Bush administration was missing a chance to engage its longtime adversary in potentially helpful talks over next-door Iraq.
"What I think many of us are concerned about is that we stumble into active hostilities with Iran without having aggressively pursued diplomatic approaches, without the American people understanding exactly what's taking place," Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told John Negroponte, who is in line to become the nation's No. 2 diplomat as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's deputy.
Obama, a candidate for president in 2008,
warned during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that senators of both parties will demand
"clarity and transparency in terms of U.S. policy so that we don't repeat some of the mistakes that have been made in the past," a reference to the faulty intelligence underlying the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070131/ap_on_go_co/us_iran;_ylt=AmQRRm_GxufgpUKcuO6Hu4HMWM0F;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OXIzMDMzBHNlYwM3MDM- Now admittedly, there's a lot I don't know. I don't know what they're thinking, and I don't know what a process for asserting Congressional authority would look like, what rules would be invoked, how such a battle of Constitutional powers would play out. But it sure seems like high time for our representatives to figure that out.
Maybe they have. Maybe Congress has some plan up its collective sleeve to state soon, "We don't have enough 'transparency' so we say NO -- we're going to push back against the White House this time."
Maybe there is a process they've outlined for asserting their authority should BushCo move against Iran.
Maybe they've got a plan... And maybe I've missed statements from others in Congress warning about greater demands and action against escalation.
I hope so, because right now all I'm hearing is talk of non-binding resolutions and "sense of the Senate" and calls for "transparency in policy" etc. Those are warnings? BushCo could order troops into Iran tommorrow and tell Congress later (I have long had suspicions our troops have gone past the border into Syria), just as they started the so-called "surge" before it could be stopped. What is Congress willing and able to do to stop this insane, radical administration from making a devastating situation worse by extending the war to Iran?
Is there really fear of political backlash as Barbash describes it -- being "ridiculed and caricatured as 'micromanagement' or, worse, as comforting the enemy"? Are Republicans afraid of going against such an unpopular president? Are representatives afraid of being blamed for the inevitable BAD outcome of this misadventure, a la Vietnam?
I've been extra-busy with work lately so maybe I've missed something. If so, please tell me!!
What is going on?!? 
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