Posted on 11/26/2009 10:06:18 AM PST by Nachum
The Obama administration said late Wednesday it is still reviewing its policy on a treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, clarifying a previous statement indicating it would not sign the deal.
"The administration is committed to a comprehensive review of its landmine policy. That review is still on-going," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in a statement on Wednesday.
"The review is going to take some time, given that it is the first review of our policy conducted since 2003," Kelly added.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
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If our Coward-in-Chief disallows land mines, our soldiers will be getting their legs blown off, while the enemy runs away untouched.....
Oh come on, just sign it. Who can be expected to read those things...we aren’t all lawyers with hours and hours to devote to such things. What could be wrong with signing onto thousands(?) of pages that you haven’t read? /sarc
...preferring a strategy of anti-personnel pop-up Miranda warnings.
The rule in war is: Everyhting is always on the table. Anything less is asking for defeat.
As CIC, Zero could order the Army to destroy all stocks of mines, remove those in place (such as along the Korean DMZ) and in general follow the treaty language without submitting it to the Senate, can't he?
Jack
Interesting story about G. Washington...He arrived at the Senate with his Secretary of Defence...said he had a treaty....Senate said "that's nice"...We'd like to read it and discuss it. Washington was furious...."Then why am I here?"...and he left in a huff.
Yes a treaty requires the “advice and consent” of the Senate, whilst an Executive Agreement does not.
But my point was that Zero has the authority, by virtue of being the Commander in Chief of the US Military, to reach the same result as signing the treaty by simply ordering the forces under his command to destroy all land mines and remove any that may be in place that are subject to US military control. This would be, I believe, within his authority as CIC. All without even asking the Senate what time of day it is, let alone to approve a treaty, or, for that matter, signing an Executive Agreement.
This assumes there’s no affirmative law on the books saying that “The US Army must maintain a sufficient supply of land mines on hand at all times” and I strongly doubt there is such on the books. Hence ordering the US Army to scrap land mine stocks is in theory no different than ordering the US Army to paint all sentry post boxes with purple paint, which would be within his CIC authority. There may be a question whether appropriated funds may be used to remove and destroy mines, but that depends on how the military appropriation law is written, and I suspect there are uncommitted discretionary funds adequate for the job.
It would be a terrible decision, along the lines of others Zero has already done, but the wisdom of such a decision should not be confused with his ability to do it without Congressional authorization or without a Senate ratified treaty.
Jack
I’m not aware that we’re using them. The enemy is using them very effectively, and most of our combat deaths are due to land mines.
Since that is their one effective weapon against us, they aren’t going to give them up, and they aren’t going to sign a treaty. And if they did sign a treaty they still aren’t going to give up their one weapon.
And we don’t use them. So the treaty has no point, it is just childish grandstanding.
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