After reading through all the postings I see the old human condition of convoluted justification in play - I like what is happening so it must be all right - and there is precedent for it. As has been pointed out there seems to be selective appreciation for respect for the law and judicial rulings- some like wars and intervention but not Roe v. Wade for example.
A good illustration of the matter at hand is a parent scolding a child to which the child replies "but his sister did it the other day and she didn't get in trouble" or "My friend Johnny's parents let him do it" or the universal "everybody does it". Then there is the old parental question "if everybody jumped off a bridge would you jump too?"
So some here say that congress authorized force against terrorism after 9/11(or cite the war powers act) so therefore any military action the president takes is legitimate and no declaration is needed. Well I never consider writing a blank check to anyone, not even a good friend, just isn't wise. We have heard plans for months now about a much wider war than Iraq is in the making - to quote a Stratfor article the from other day - "Wolfowitz -- and President George W. Bush -- simply don't want to lay the long-term cards on the table at this time. They would rather be accused of attacking Iraq without reason than being viewed as being engaged in a long-term, well-thought-out campaign against other countries in the region.". To add weight to this conclusion all one has to do is recall the president's speech the other night at the AEI. He plainly stated that the Arab countries are on notice that they will restructure their forms of government, restructure their foreign policy and restructure their domestic civil rights according to our designs or they will be the next Iraq. Another quote from the Stratfor article -"There also will be other troops based in Iraq -- not reporting to the occupation commander, but reporting to a war-fighting commander whose primary responsibility will be for operations outside of Iraq." Not to base my premise on this one article, these matters have been long talked about in print and on TV for many months now - the point is such a large scale war, series of wars if you will and long term occupations are of such grave consequence that they should be openly debated in congress and in the country. To do otherwise is way too similar to the Roman Senate giving up the republic.
In regards to the UN and world government conservatives have long been opposed to such notions as they perceived the UN to be a power over our sovereignty and therefore unconstitutional. We now see these conservatives lovingly embrace the concept of global government because they see the US and not the UN reigning supreme. In fact the UN has been a tool of the US all along. Before we rejected it but now the same product is repackaged and we love it. Interesting.
But of course if we spelled out a 20 point plan for regime change by various methods, or whatever form it would take, we would be unable to complete it. Our opposition would unite against us and develop a counter strategy, and the cost to counter that would be unacceptable to our population or that of the world. Many say we already said to much just by naming the axis of evil.
So in the end, the choice is the kind of ambiguous and flexible series of campaign in pursuit of eliminating international terrorism, or appeasement. Our nation and western civilization are unprepared for anything more ambitious.