Congress doesn't need to formally declare war (by using the word "war", anyway) in order to wage one on a foreign enemy. All Congress has to do is issue a joint resolution authorizing the Executive agency the use of military force.
I am not sure that Clinton ever got such authorization, except for perhaps the Ever Mighty Kosovo War (what a joke).
With respect to the "War on Terrorism," Congress has authorized it, and it is a constitutionally valid war. For more information, go to www.congress.gov and look up the following Joint Resolutions:
House Joint Resolution 64, 107th Congress:
To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.
...
(b) WAR POWERS RESOLUTION REQUIREMENTS-
(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS- Nothing in this resolution supercedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.
Senate Joint Resolution 23, 107th Congress:
(says basically the same thing).
Both were debated, voted on, and passed by each house of Congress. The Joint Resolution was passed by a Congressional Joint Committee. This was the Law of the Land, effective 14 September 2001.
(I will have to hunt down the extension Resolution - It didn't turn up in the same search as these, so they may have chosen different wording for it...)
:) ttt
But who did Congress authorize Bush to wage war against? It seems to me that it's not good enough for Congress just to say "we authorize the president to wage war on terriorism" or "anyone who attacked us" because then all the president needs to do wage war without end against anyone he wants to is to call that country "terrorist" or say that one of its intelligence agents "met with a terrorist" or that the country is developing "terrorist weapons of mass destruction." That makes the authority to declare war into a semantic argument, with the rest of us trying to figure out what the meaning of "is" is.
If congress wanted the president to wage war against Iraq, it should have said "Iraq." Otherwise the president could fall off the wagon, tie one on and decide one day that he now agrees with the PLO, that Ariel Sharon is the real terrorist. By that standard, there'd be nothing to stop him from waging war on Israel (or Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Iceland, Switzerland and the Seychelles.)