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It was, to our Congress, which approved War Powers for President Bush in the event . . . Uh, again, the only "case" which really mattered was whatever "case" was made to our Congress prior to the War Powers vote. After that, all else was PR and salesmanship (and perhaps, if my above theory is correct, disinformation and psychological warfare).

That simply means that any legitimate complaints about the rationale behind the war are addressed to Congress as well as to the President. You'd have a hard time convincing me that Congress' "approval" made Clinton's foray in Kosovo morally right.

I don't know what that means. I've never read a Clancy novel.

Clancy's novels are built around intricate, fascinating military-related story lines with lots of intrigue and misleading angles. If he wrote one using the sequence of events that have unfolded in Iraq over the last 12 years, his publisher would have printed about 50 copies and put them right on the $2 discount rack.

That simply means that any legitimate complaints about the rationale behind the war are addressed to Congress as well as to the President.

Yes but you are trying to argue that "the case must be weak if he did publicly XYZ". I'm just reminding you that the "case" you saw on CNN is not necessarily the same "case" which was given to Congress. That case, evidently, convinced Congress.

You'd have a hard time convincing me that Congress' "approval" made Clinton's foray in Kosovo morally right.

My memory is fuzzy about Kosovo, to be honest. Because, I seem to recall that Clinton went in there under NATO, without even going to Congress first, and there was a danger he would run up against the 90-day limit (for wars w/o prior approval) imposed by the War Powers act, but the whole thing was basically retroactively "approved" by Congress eventually. Is that correct? If so, we're talking about apples and oranges here.

In any event I agree with you that Congress passing a War Powers resolution doesn't make a war "moral". But since when was that what we were talking about? You sure seem to shift your points around a lot.

Gotcha. I'll take your word for it. Still don't know what you think this is supposed to prove. Anything?

Because I was never sold on the need for the first Gulf War to begin with.

That's a reasonable answer. The problem is, once done, such things can't be undone. Given that there was a '91 Gulf War which left Saddam in power in a uneasy situation (sanctions, "500000 dying Iraqi babies", no fly zones, etc) for 12 years, escalating the war and ousting him once and for all is not necessarily a worse option for anybody than continuing the damn thing.