FEINGOLD PLANS HEARING NEXT WEEK ON 'EXERCISING CONGRESS' CONSTITUTIONAL POWER TO END A WAR'

Senator Feingold asks, 'How can Congress end a war?'

Brian Beutler
Published: Tuesday January 23, 2007


Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) will hold hearings next week to examine “Exercising Congress’s Constitutional Power to End a War”, RAW STORY has learned.

The Judiciary Committee hearings are scheduled for Tuesday, January 30. However, because that committee has to announce hearings several days in advance, details are often not forthcoming or have not yet been disclosed.

Since coming back into session earlier this month, observers have wondered whether Congress would use its funding power to try and force the redeployment of troops from Iraq. After President Bush announced plans to escalate the war—plans marked by a "surge" of 21,500 troops—a handful of non-binding bills of varying severity were introduced by both Democratic and Republican senators expressing disapproval.

Well before those bills were announced, though, Feingold offered legislation of his own to the Foreign Relations Committee designed to end the war completely. If passed, that bill—cosponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)—would give the Department of Defense 60 days to submit and implement a strategy to remove troops from Iraq almost altogether. That plan, once approved by Congress, would have to be implemented within 180 days of the bill's enactment. Under its terms it would " in Iraq the minimal level of United States forces sufficient to engage directly in targeted counterterrorism activities, train Iraq security forces, and protect United States infrastructure and personnel."

more at:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Feingold_asks_How_can_congress_end_0123.html

...doesn't that make this a sticky wicket to begin with?

of the fact that he is a war-time president.

...and they haven't. They approved a resolution allowing Bush to use our military to force Iraq to comply with some UN resolution about WMDs or something, but Bush never proved that Iraq had WMDs, and he ordered a full-scale invasion.

enter into war. The Commander-in-Chief does not have to wait for a formal declaration to defend the country. That is the theory that Bush used to take us to Iraq.

The interesting question is the extent of the inverse of Congress' authority to declare war. Once a state of war exists, does Congress have the authority to "undeclare", i.e., end the war? If so, does it matter whether or not Congress declared the war or whether the war was entered into in another way?

I'm inclined to believe that the Supreme Court would say that Congress does not have as much authority to end war as it does to declare war as it is less equipped than the Commander-in-Chief to determine whether or not the war can, and should, be ended.

I'd love to see this hashed out on Capitol Hill...

a request for a formal declaration of war. And, in my opinion, Congress violated the Constitution by handing over their power to start a war to Bush (as they did to LBJ in Vietnam--same problem).

However, this mess can be solved very easily by Congress rescinding the "Iraq War Resolution" (IWR) (--misnamed, because it was NOT a vote for war, but a vote to let Bush decide whether to invade or not, based on potential Saddam threat). Rescind, or amend, it--as Sen. Kennedy has proposed. The reasons for giving Bush this power--such as they were--are all gone. No WMDs. No connection to 9/11. No Saddam. (And beyond that, we now know all of them to have been lies.)

Then, get the troops out, and if Bush won't do it, start de-funding the occupation.

Congress has the SOLE POWER to declare war AND the sole power to FUND war, under the Constitution. They could withdraw funding tomorrow. They did this to Reagan re Nicaragua. (You can't use any funds we appropriate to make war on that country.) (Then Reagan operatives secretly sold missiles to Iran, to fund the fascist "contra" war against Nicaragua--a direct violation of a law passed by Congress, for which a few underlings paid in jail time.) (Yup, they sold missiles to Iran!)

We've got soldiers stuck in Iraq, but existing funds can be used to withdraw them and to protect their withdrawal. That argument for NOT de-funding the occupation is bogus. The Pentagon has TRILLIONS and TRILLIONS of dollars. They don't need EXTRA money to withdraw our troops.

All that's going on there now is a bloodbath--mostly a civil war. ANYBODY we kill is questionable. Intel on who might be Al Qaeda is questionable. We can't trust intel from our totally Bush-fucked up intelligence agencies. We also can't trust ANY side the Bushites choose to support. What are their motives? No doubt getting the oil contracts signed is their main one. So they support a puppet government run by the majority Shias that is permitting massive death squad activity against the Sunnis. We might as well be in the middle of Rwanda, taking sides.

What's needed is a U.N. peacekeeping force--EU, African, Arab/Muslim and/or other. Just not us. We have lost all credibility--and it may take decades if not centuries to get it back--that we have any claim to being "honest brokers" in the Middle East, or anywhere else.

This is just devastating for Israel as well--whose rightwing war profiteers allied themselves with the despised Bush Junta, and now Israel has hardly another friend left in the world, and could even lose the long-standing support of the American people. I am not for that. I want Israel to survive, and to play a positive role in the Middle East. But their government has screwed the Israeli people over, just as ours has screwed us over--involving us in an unnecessary, unjust war in which hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims have died, and their country destroyed.

The potential for a conflagration in the Middle East is very great--and it is going to require great leadership to head it off. Unfortunately, we have a complete idiot and puppet of the oil corporations in the White House. This is one of the reasons that Congress is in such a bind. They don't even have a halfway competent President to negotiate with, or to rely upon to carry out rational actions. It is a very dicey situation. They MUST find a way to curtail Bush (and of course the power behind the throne, Cheney), and to get around them to calm things down in the Middle East, while yet the two of them are doing everything they can to instigate wider war. An attack on Iran (most likely to come in some sort of trumped up 'Gulf of Tonkin' incident) could EASILY involve surrounding states AND China AND Russia (--with four nuke powers potentially involved, including Pakistan and Israel). The best scenario of a Bush/Cheney attack on Iran is disaster in the Middle East. The worst scenario is laid out by Carl Sagan in his book "The Cold and the Dark," which describes the impacts of even a limited use of nuclear weapons on earth's atmosphere--end of all life on planet earth.

That is what madmen Bush and Cheney are risking by escalating the Iraq War and provoking Iran. All of us dead, over a period of months, as the dust cloud from even a limited use of nuclear weapons spreads around the earth and blocks out the sunlight, killing plant life. As the food runs out, we will all starve to death. All life on earth ended forevermore.

EVEN Daddy Bush and Co. have said de-escalate Iraq, and negotiate with Iran and Syria. I think this is why. The potential for utter disaster, with the present policy, is very great.

So Congress MUST act--in whatever way they can devise--to take war powers away from the Bush Junta. And they have plenty of Constitutional authority to do so. But it is not an easy thing for Congress to do, for various reasons, among them, that Bush/Cheney remain in control of the powers of the president, including power over the armed forces, and police powers of various kinds (and including black budgets and operatives to contrive excuses for, say, martial law). Also, Congress has no single leader--it is a "committee." This complicates taking action with regard to the executive branch, which is a more consolidated center of power--the President, the White House (and, in this case, also Cheney). I think that ultimately Congress will be compelled to impeach them and remove them from office. Developments in the Fitzgerald trial of Cheney aide Libby provide good reason to start impeachment proceedings against Cheney. He has not been indicted, but he is strongly implicated, and impeachment BEGINS with an investigation, with questions that need answers, and it is Congress' special DUTY to investigate the Executive when such grave questions are raised.

Peace Patriot said:



This is a terrifying prospect. My question is, can Congress engage in diplomacy with the nuclear powers likely to be involved, without the permission of the executive branch? That might head off a nuclear confrontation.

Congress can remove US troops from any hostile environment immediately by a simple concurrent resolution. That means that the President cannot veto the decision because he doesn't have to sign it. This power was granted to Congress in the War Powers Act of 1976. If Congress wanted to end the war, they could do it today.

It's about who has the Constitutional authority. They're not there to set policy according to what they think is best, they're there to set policy in as close accordance with the Constitution as they can. I would suppose that since Congress has the power to start a war, Congress logically would have the power to end a war. However, the current Supreme Court has a more unitary executive view and may believe that it is simply the nature of executive authority that only it has the power to end war.

Him and Boxer -- I wish one or both of them would have run for President.

:headbang: :headbang:

I can't bear to take my Feingold for President sticker off my car :'(

:toast:

I guess you can't have that and run for president. I'd rather see them do something anywhere than just fulfill their life amibition of power. Use the damn power they already have. Stop present or future wars.

My jury is still out on some of the candidates.

Though, I must say it does seem to have embolden Biden a bit. He seems so fired up. Any fired up Dem is good news to me. These are not times for smiling and chating.

he'd have done the same things he's doing now. At least I like to think that - he exudes integrity.

Joe Biden fired up is something to see - there were so many times I've heard him speak so eloquently against something, and then go and vote for it, anyway. I still kind of like the guy, though - I'd love to see his actions speak as loudly as his words do. I hope he continues to be emboldened because he is a very good speaker against the administration when he wants to be - one of the best IMO.

IMPEACHMENT!

is the way to stop this war. Bush will do whatever he can to keep it going and escalate it to the highest level and Congress will not be able to stop it without his removal from office.

A recent MSNBC poll shows 87% of the US wants impeachment with over 400,000 polled.

I truly wished he would run in 2008.....

whether Congress can give its powers away to another branch.

It just seems unconstitutional on the face of it. The Founders must have just depended on everyone's natural urge for more power. They didn't anticipate a Congress so uninterested that it would hand some of its power away.

.

...to end this Iraq insanity.

Shrub could not give a shit if ALL the Senators voted against an escalation - as long as the resolutions are "non-binding", Shrub will march onward. He will NEVER listen to anybody!

The only way to stop this madness is end the funding. If not sooner, then later - but later may mean more tragic loss of life for a failed war and disastrous policy.

Lets see who has enough guts to vote for this! I hope every DEM Presidential candidate thats on the Hill will!!!

Congress has no real power besides to make laws, It has no ability to enforce anything and has no ability to force the Commander and Chief to send his army home.