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Flame » in reply to re: re:Imprecisions and trust

re: re:Imprecisions and trust
gbaikie — (archived)

"are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."
It could be augued that all 3 conditions were met, whereas only one is needed.

PLUS:"The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to *introduce* United States Armed Forces into hostilities.."
It could be easily argued that we were already involved in hostilities, before the President even got into office. Iraq was hostile to our warplanes in the UN mandated "No Fly Zone". Suspected of attempting to assasinate a former US president. Openly supporting terrorists in Israel. And finally most importantly was not complying with cease fire agreement from Gulf War I- thereby effectively not ending it's hostilities and thereby not ending the war.
Proof that we were already at war is the known fact that we had forces in northern Iraq. Plus Clinton had fairly recently bombed Iraq [btw, some people don't seem to understand that dropping bombs and shooting missiles is war, I really can't fiqure out why some seem to ignore bombing a place, but think sending in ground forces make some legal distinction- now, granted that having troops on the ground could result in having more US casualities and it certainly requires troops to spend considerably longer time away from home and family- therefore it's more domestic political problem. BUT generally speaking it's thought to be "better" to send troops into an area, then just bombing the crap out of the area and then leaving. And certainly countries is the region regarded it this way. Now, doing a few airstrikes, might "send a message", but unfortuately this "message" might be interpreted in a way "not in accordance to your desires". But in any case the "message" is actually act of war- as is putting a shot over the bow of some ship (and we didn't miss the targets in Iraq)].
In altered reality in which Saddam gave a rat ass about legality, his regime could have argued that any potential "terrorist attacks" weren't according to law, terrorist attacks. Because Iraq was still in a state of war with the coalition forces of Gulf war I. It could prove this by showing that Iraq had not complied with the cease agreement and that Iraq had actually merely tricked the coalition into believing it had ended the war. And also on top of that, after the cease fire agreement, Saddam had continously publicly stated that Iraq was at war. What else is needed to qualify as war? There is not valid cease fire agreement & the legal and exclusive sovereign power of a country has declared it's at war. The fact that the enemy is too stupid to know it was "really" at war, would not be a legally valid "defense".

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