Did Congress declare war and I missed it?

more: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/5/12/155453/629

Did Congress declare war and I missed it?
by duck
Fri May 12, 2006 at 12:54:52 PM PDT

Much has been made of President Bush's "wartime powers" that allow him to wield supreme executive power in the manner he has.

But unless Congress passed a formal declaration of war overnight that I missed, we are NOT in a state of war. And some of the legal authority President Bush has presumed must be on shaky legal ground.

And Congress had abdicated its responsibility to its citizens.

More on the flip...


duck's diary :: ::
Think about it. When Japan attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt asked the Congress to formally declare war.


I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

Bush did not do this. Instead, his team, in secret, crafted an ambiguous memo that magically imbued him with the executive powers a declaration of war usually requires.


Our review establishes that all three branches of the Federal Government - Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary - agree that the President has broad authority to use military force abroad, including the ability to deter future attacks.


Many freepers respond to criticisms of Bush's actions with the anology of Abraham Lincoln. As a resident of Maryland, I am pretty familiar with some of the actions Lincoln took while in office in the Civil War to quash dissent and uprisings, including suspending habeus corpus and basically shutting down the Maryland legislature.


Indeed, both presidents faced similar situations as commanders-in-chief during wartime. Lincoln, confronted with a destructive Civil War, was constitutionally obligated to protect and preserve the union. To prevent Washington from being encircled by Maryland's and Delaware's pro-secessionist forces and to ensure the transit of loyal troops to the capital, Lincoln, beginning in April 1861, ordered federal soldiers to arrest active secessionists, saboteurs and guerrillas in those states. He later extended a similar temporary order to other northern areas of uncertain allegiance.

Lincoln cited SCOTUS case law to bolster his argument, and he basically got his way. Maryland stayed in the Union, and the Union prevailed with Washington, D.C. never being seriously threatened militarily.

But the parallel between Lincoln and Bush fails for several reasons.

This whole "We are at war" rhetorical straw man just pisses me off no end. Congress needs to retake it's power of declaration of war, rescind the War Powers Act, and pass a binding resolution promising impeachment if Bush attacks another sovreign nation without proper and explicit authorization.

The Chimperor is out of control and needs to be smacked down a notch or three, along with his whole criminal gang.

Contrary to BushCo's opinion, his powers are not unlimited, or at least they shouldn't be.

He's saying that Al Qaeda is a hostile military force. There are Al Qaeda on American soil. Therefore, America has been INVADED. Therefore, war powers intended for the purpose of repelling the invasion of a hostile force are completely and perpetually active until the invasion of American soil by enemy combattants has ended. No declaration of war is necessary, for the battlefield, and the war, are here, in America.

That's the message in the admin's legal briefs going back to oh, 2003 or so, if not even prior to that.

Afghanistan) so we don't have to fight them HERE"(America). Why the constant mixed msgs? They have proven they will LIE and use any device(Faux news being the main megaphone for bush) to win the argument and try to shut everyone up.

And it's politically damaging to this administration and to the Republican Party in general.

It's not any more complicated than that.