Posted on 07/02/2002 5:22:07 PM PDT by orrick
On June 11, Saddam Hussein signed Military Directive 531 odering commando units from the Republican guards and special military intelligence combat units to head into northern Iraq.
He had just recieved intelligence reports that the US special forces and CIA personnel he knew to have landed in the northern region of Iraq were making impressive strides in recruiting and training Kurdish fighters for their anti-Saddam combat units.
According to DEBKA Net Weekly military sources the presidential decree directed the commandos 'to wage a secret, tenacious and sustained war to destroy enemy forces that have invaded the Iraqi motherland' employing the following tatics:
1.Ambushes and night raids to attack and destroy Kurdish and US camps, communications bases, arms depots, and inflict heavy enemy casulties.
2.Seek the element of surprise
3.Each unit was on it sown in the field and must fight as though no outside help was available.
Yet Congress has approved every action since 1942. There is nothing in the constitution that even hints that Congress must formally declare war. It only vests that authority with it. Nice try genius.
Bombing an aspirin factory?
Nice try genius.
I guess they left article one, section eight, clause eleven out of your copy of the Constitution. The act of letting the president use the military for ninety days without a declaration of war is an un-Constitutional construct just like almost every other federal law that has been passed.
Where is the REQUIREMENT to Declare War? The POWER is there should the Congress choose to use it BUT there is NO requirement to do so.
When is the president put in charge of the military as Commander in Chief hmmm? Where is that in the Constitution?
The JUST causes of war, for the most part, arise either from violation of treaties or from direct violence. But the safety of the people of America against dangers from FOREIGN force depends not only on their forbearing to give JUST causes of war to other nations, but also on their placing and continuing themselves in such a situation as not to INVITE hostility or insult; for it need not be observed that there are PRETENDED as well as just causes of war.
It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition (this means you, Bubba42), or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans (now what was that about oil?). These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people. But, independent of these inducements to war, which are more prevalent in absolute monarchies, but which well deserve our attention, there are others which affect nations as often as kings; and some of them will on examination be found to grow out of our relative situation and circumstances.
The people of America are aware that inducements to war may arise out of these circumstances, as well as from others not so obvious at present, and that whenever such inducements may find fit time and opportunity for operation, pretenses to color and justify them will not be wanting. Wisely, therefore, do they consider union and a good national government as necessary to put and keep them in SUCH A SITUATION as, instead of INVITING war, will tend to repress and discourage it. That situation consists in the best possible state of defense, and necessarily depends on the government, the arms, and the resources of the country.
When the Congress of the US authorizes use of force OR when we are attacked. Get it? You are in way over your head.
It is amazing how people don't realize the amount of wit and wisdom the Founding Fathers had. Americans now think that leaders like BubbaXXX and Bush have similar wisdom. They are blithering idiots by comparison. Hell, Bush is damn near illiterate.
1.Ambushes and night raids to attack and destroy Kurdish and US camps, communications bases, arms depots, and inflict heavy enemy casulties.
2.Seek the element of surprise
3.Each unit was on it sown in the field and must fight as though no outside help was available.
These tenents have been probably known to umpteenth military commanders throughout history.........and now the Great Leader, Saddam Hussein, feels as if he is acheiving something special by codifying such things in 2002.
Yeah, and I saw a commercial for Bryl Cream the other day. Leave your response with my messaging service. I'll be out trying to purchase this great stuff.
So when Congress authorizes the use of force? Well at least you got that part right. But I gather that you mean that they authorize it carte blanche unless they grow a backbone (still waiting for that to happen) and say no?
No, the system was designed for the miltary to be called in to action by Declaration of War. We have to declare it whether or not an act of war was commited against us and that is precisely on of the rolls of Congress. No where in the Constitution does it say the president has the power to wield the miltary with the judgement and restraint of a two year old.
Way over my head to you? My, you are full of yourself aren't you?
Show me the blueprints of this so-called "design". While you are at it show me the boiler plate for a declaration of war spelled out in the Constitution.
The truth is, that George W. was whipped in his very first campaign for Congress out in Midland,TX by a Democrat who called him Harvard George and made our future President out to be a blue-blood intellectual. From that point on, George W. vowed that no one would ever "out-good-old-boy" him again. His "aw shucks" attitude is a persona that fits him well, but there's a lot more going on under the hood than he cares to brag about.
You have offered nothing but a flawed understanding of the distinction between the POWER to do something and the REQUIREMENT to do something. You are so invested in your flawed understanding that no amount of explanation will make you admit you are wrong. The only constitutional REQUIREMENT is for Congress to authorize the use of the military and to recognize the war powers of the CIC.
It's here and I am totally jazzed. To all FReepers who love the Constitution and want to know what the founders intended, this is the ultimate resoruce.
There is no numerical correspondence between the articles contained in the plan & those treated of in the pamphlet & the latter alludes to several more than are included in the former.There can be no mistake. Madison intended that a declaration of war should have a very high threshhold, as the example notes where he seriously considered a 2/3 vote of the people (the House) and the States (as represented by the Senate) for approval of such a declaration.In Mr. Pinkney's letter to Mr. Adams, accompanying his plan, he states that "very soon after the Convention met, I changed and avowed candidly the change of my opinion on giving the power to Congress to revise the State laws in certain cases, and in giving the exclusive power to the Senate to declare war, thinking it safer to refuse the first altogether, and to vest the latter in Congress."
In his pamphlet he concludes the 5th. page of his argument in favor of the first power with these remarks -- "In short, from their example, (other republics) and from our own experience, there can be no truth more evident than this, that, unless our Government is consolidated, as far as is practicable, by retrenching the State authorities, and concentering as much force & vigor in the Union, as are adequate to its exigencies, we shall soon be a divided, and consequently an unhappy people. I shall ever consider the revision and negative of the State laws, as one great and leading step to this reform, and have therefore conceived it proper to bring it into view."
On the 23. August He moved a proposition to vest this power in the Legislature, provided 2/3 of each House assented.
He does not designate the depository of the power to declare war & consequently avows no change of opinion on that subject in the pamphlet, altho' it was printed after the adjournment of the Convention and is stated to embrace the "observations he delivered at different times in the course of their discussions"
J. M. has a copy of the pamphlet much mutilated by dampness; but one in complete preservation is bound up with "Select Tracts Vol. 2." belonging to the New York Historical Society, numbered 2687.
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