Candle - what you say makes a lot of sense. however, the quote above is the part I don't get about all of this. If it's about oil, why Iraq, and why now? why not Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Yemen, or even Argentina ? (if you're going to act in defiance of global opinion anyway, why not?) why did the US give the oil fields back to Iraq in 91 if the goal is to control the oil? also, I have grave doubts that anything done by the Federal Gov't is done on behalf of, or for the benefit or convenience of, the the US consumer
Bryan , you posted that stuff, just go back and read the items dealing with the U.N. and see that he is saying that we must obey the U.N. in regards to attacking or not attacking. The U.S. has the right as a sovereign state to conduct its foreighn policy how it sees fit. If we abdicate those decisions to the U.N. , then we are giving up our rights. I for one hope that never happens. Even if Gore were the president , I would never want the U.N. authority to be more important in policy decisions than those of the president of the united states. That has nothing to do with political party, it has to do with the primacy of the constitution. As for the congress declaring war, you are choosing to ignore the fact that the president can order attacks on anybody without a declaration of war, as in Korea, Vietnam, the ongoing air strikes around the no fly zone, etc., etc. etc. That's just the way it is. If you don't like it, then petition to change the constitution, but don't just spout that it is illegal, because a high school student could read the constitution and tell you that it isn't. Why do you think that Vietnam, Korea, etc. were never declared illegal after all this time if in fact they were illegal? I've already explained this at least 3 times on this site, and if you don't get it by now I don't know what to say. You guys really seem to want to believe that the U.S. is evil, and George Bush is evil. If that radical party line is more important than the welfare of the United States, then this whole debate is pointless. If you are on this site and trading securities, you are depending upon people to protect your way of life. Wake up, realize who your REAL enemies are.
dotslash - just FYI on Constitutional powers... (I wonder how the War Powers Act applies to the "war on terrorism," where there is no state against which to declare war ) ========================= U.S. CONSTITUTION: Article I, Sec. 8, Clause 11: [The Congress shall have power] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; Article II, Sec. 2, Clause 1: Section. 2. Clause 1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; ========================= WAR POWERS ACT of 1973: SEC. 2. (c) The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, 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. Sec. 4. (a) In the absence of a declaration of war, in any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced-- (1) into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances; SEC. 5. (b) Within sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is required to be submitted pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is earlier, the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack upon the United States. Such sixty-day period shall be extended for not more than an additional thirty days if the President determines and certifies to the Congress in writing that unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of United States Armed Forces requires the continued use of such armed forces in the course of bringing about a prompt removal of such forces. http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/warpow.html
I am certainly not a constitutional lawyer. Nor unfortunately am I a Supreme Court justice (this is a major oversight of our government...I should be). I would guess that the War Powers Act would apply. You do not need a recognized sovereignty to comply with the act as it appears written. It addresses the provocation. Not the structure of the provocateurs. Just a laymans guess. In any event; Peace! (whenever possible) Rs7
yeah, same here - but getting appointed is next on my to-do list, right after I figure out this darned trading thing....
We had many military conflicts without first having a declaration of war. Maybe you don't think it SHOULD be that way, but it is. If it was really illegal somebody who was a constitutional lawyer would have taken it up with the supreme court by now and won. I'm sure there is no shortage of Berkely Law School grads that would love to sink their teeth into that one, and obviously they would have by now if it were possible to win. First we get mixed up in wars one way or another, and then the congress comes along behind and either approves or disaproves. So far they have never cancelled a war in progress to wait for congressional approval. This topic has been beaten to death, I'm not going to comment on it anymore.
I had my reservations about attacking Iraq. Now, after reading this tonight, I just want to nuke the entire region. http://www.msnbc.com/news/802759.asp?0cl=cR Read the whole thing.
A must read DEADLY COST OF A DEADLY ACT by Robert Fisk, «The Independent», London, 18/12/98 WE ARE now in the endgame, the final bankruptcy of Western policy towards Iraq, the very last throw of the dice. We fire 200 cruise missiles into Iraq and what do we expect? Is a chastened Saddam Hussein going to emerge from his bunker to explain to us how sorry he is? Will he tell us how much he wants those nice UN inspectors to return to Baghdad to find his "weapons of mass destruction"? Is that what we think? Is that what the Anglo-American bombardment is all about? And if so, what happens afterwards? What happens when the missile attacks end - just before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, because, of course, we really are very sensitive about Iraqi religious feelings - and Saddam Hussein tells us that the UN inspectors will never be allowed to return? As the cruise missiles were launched, President Clinton announced that Saddam had "disarmed the [UN] inspectors", and Tony Blair - agonizing about the lives of the "British forces" involved (all 14 pilots) - told us that "we act because we must". In so infantile a manner did we go to war on Wednesday night. No policies. No perspective. Not the slightest hint as to what happens after the bombardment ends. With no UN inspectors back in Iraq, what are we going to do? Declare eternal war against Iraq? We are "punishing" Saddam - or so Mr Blair would have us believe. And all the old cliches are being trundled out. In 1985, just before he bombed them, Ronald Reagan told the Libyans that the United States had "no quarrel with the Libyan people". In 1991, just before he bombed them, George Bush told the Iraqis that he had "no quarrel with the Iraqi people". And now we have Tony Blair - as he bombs them - telling Iraqis that, yes, he has "no quarrel with the Iraqi people". Is there a computer that churns out this stuff? Is there a cliche department at Downing Street which also provides Robin Cook with the tired phrase of the American Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, about how Saddam used gas "against his own people"? ...For little did we care when he did use that gas against the Kurds of Halabja - because, at the time, those Kurds were allied to Iran and we, the West, were supporting Saddam's invasion of Iran. The lack of any sane long-term policy towards Iraq is the giveaway. Our patience - according to Clinton and Blair - is exhausted. Saddam cannot be trusted to keep his word (they've just realised). And so Saddam's ability to "threaten his neighbours" - neighbours who don't in fact want us to bomb Iraq - has to be "degraded". That word "degraded" is a military term, first used by General Schwarzkopf and his boys in the 1991 Gulf war, and it is now part of the vocabulary of the weak. Saddam's weapons of mass destruction have to be "degraded". Our own dear Mr Cook was at it again yesterday, informing us of the need to "degrade" Saddam's military capability. How? The UN weapons inspectors - led for most of the time by Scott Ritter (the man who has admitted he kept flying to Israel to liaise with Israeli military intelligence), could not find out where Saddam's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons were hidden. They had been harassed by Iraq's intelligence thugs, and prevented from doing their work. Now we are bombing the weapons facilities which the inspectors could not find. Or are we? For there is a very serious question that is not being asked: if the inspectors couldn't find the weapons, how come we know where to fire the cruise missiles? And all the while, we continue to impose genocidal sanctions on Iraq, sanctions that are killing innocent Iraqis and - by the admission of Mr Cook and Mrs Albright - not harming Saddam at all. Mrs Albright rages at Saddam's ability to go on building palaces, and Mr Cook is obsessed with a report of the regime's purchase of liposuction equipment which, if true, merely proves that sanctions are a total failure. Mr Cook prattles on about how Iraq can sell more than $10bn (=A36bn) of oil a year to pay for food, medicine and other humanitarian goods. But since more than 30 per cent of these oil revenues are diverted to the UN compensation fund and UN expenses in Iraq, his statement is totally untrue. Dennis Halliday, the man who ran the UN oil-for-food programme in Baghdad, until he realised that thousands of Iraqi children were dying every month because of sanctions, resigned his post with the declaration that "we are in the process of destroying an entire society. it is illegal and immoral." So either Mr Halliday is a pathological liar - which I do not believe - or Mr Cook has a serious problem with the truth - which I do believe. Now we are bombing the people who are suffering under our sanctions. Not to mention the small matter of the explosion of child cancer in southern Iraq, most probably as a result of the Allied use of depleted uranium shells during the 1991 war. Gulf war veterans may be afflicted with the same sickness, although the British Government refuses to contemplate the possibility. And what, in this latest strike, are some of our warheads made of? Depleted uranium, of course. Maybe there really is a plan afoot for a coup d'etat, though hopefully more ambitious than our call to the Iraqi people to rise up against their dictator in 1991, when they were abandoned by the Allies they thought would speed to their rescue. Mr Clinton says he wants a democracy in Iraq - as fanciful a suggestion as any made recently. He is demanding an Iraqi government that "represents its people" and "respects" its citizens. Not a single Arab regime - especially not Washington's friends in Saudi Arabia - offers such luxuries to its people. We are supposed to believe, it seems, that Washington and London are terribly keen to favour the Iraqi people with a fully fledged democracy. In reality, what we want in Iraq is another bullying dictator - but one who will do as he is told, invade the countries we wish to see invaded (Iran), and respect the integrity of those countries we do not wish to see invaded (Kuwait). Yet no questions are being asked, no lies uncovered. Ritter, the Marine Corps inspector who worked with Israeli intelligence, claimed that Richard Butler - the man whose report triggered this week's new war - was aware of his visits to Israel. Is that true? Has anyone asked Mr Butler? He may well have avoided such contacts - but it would be nice to have an answer. So what to do with Saddam? Well, first, we could abandon the wicked sanctions regime against Iraq. We have taken enough innocent lives. We have killed enough children. Then we could back the real supporters of democracy in Iraq - not the ghouls and spooks who make up the so-called Iraqi National Congress, but the genuine dissidents who gathered in Beirut in 1991 to demand freedom for their country, but were swiftly ignored by the Americans once it became clear that they didn't want a pro-Western strongman to lead them. And we could stop believing in Washington. Vice-President Al Gore told Americans yesterday that it was a time for "national resolve and unity".You might have thought that the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor, or that General MacArthur had just abandoned Bataan. When President Clinton faced the worst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he bombed Afghanistan and Sudan. Faced with impeachment, he now bombs Iraq. How far can a coincidence go? This week, two Christian armies - America's and Britain's - went to war with a Muslim nation, Iraq. With no goals, but with an army of platitudes, they have abandoned the UN's weapons control system, closed the door on arms inspections, and opened the door to an unlimited military offensive against Iraq. And nobody has asked the obvious question:what happens next? Robert Fisk «The Independent», London, 18/12/98
IN 1996 Lesley Stahl asked Madeleine Albright :"We have heard that a half a million children have died (as a result of the sanctions against Iraq). I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it??? Albright: "I think is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it".
The Deaths He Cannot Sanction Ex-U.N. Worker Details Harm to Iraqi Children By Michael Powell Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 17, 1998; Page E01 NEW YORK—There is no easy way to make this argument as bombs and missiles rain down. No fashionable way to rebut those intent on vengeance against a nation run by the likes of Saddam Hussein. So Denis Halliday offers only a quick instruction in the mathematics of death, of the pure and deadly efficiency of the United Nations sanctions he helped oversee in Iraq. Two hundred thirty-nine thousand children 5 years old and under. That is the latest -- and most conservative -- independent estimate of the number of Iraqi children who have died of malnutrition, wasting and dysentery since sanctions were imposed at the behest of the United States and Great Britain in 1990. Halliday, a tall and proper Irishman, is by temperament uncomfortable with emotion. But the deaths and suffering -- and he'll hate this word -- haunt him. "We need to talk ugly: We are knowingly killing kids because the United States has an utterly unsophisticated foreign policy," Halliday says. "No matter how bad this bastard Saddam is, how can we justify that? "And the catastrophe of more bombing will only make matters much worse." Halliday is an outcast, as close to stateless as an international civil servant can be. He announced his resignation as the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Iraq in August, a dramatic move that met with wide media coverage almost everywhere except in the United States. In careful, clinical language, he offered a most compelling narrative of destruction: The allied bombing in the Persian Gulf War devastated Iraq's infrastructure, systematically destroying power stations and water purification systems. Uranium-tipped armor-piercing shells further contaminated the water supply in the southern part of the country. And the American and British-led decision to clamp U.N. economic sanctions on Iraq compounded the problems.