[holdonnow]

Ron Paul is wrong because Congress is, in fact, authorizing war via a joint resolution, and paying for the war via its spending powers. As I said earlier, if that's not a legitimate exercise of Congress's war-declaration power, then what is it? Furthermore, there's simply nothing in the Constitution directing Congress on the exact language or format it must use to declare war. There are no magic words that must be triggered.

[tpaine]

I've seen no quote from Paul on this thread on the issue.
What did he say that was wrong?

[hchutch]

I have to agree.

Heck, if I read the Congressional Resolution passed on September 14, 2001, Congress gave POTUS an open-ended license to take down al-Qaida and any nation that either helped with the setup of 9/11 OR any nation that harbors those al-Qaida scumbags. It seems to me that Iraq trained some al-Qaida operatives, and is currently harboring al-Qaida members. Congressman Billybob has covered this one quite well.

Plus, we've got the violations of the terms of the cease-fire signed in 1991. Now, violating terms of a cease-fire strikes me as grounds to re-start hostilities with the violator of said cease-fire.

Finally, the attempt on George Bush Sr. in 1993 (Human Events detailed that one in a recent article), strikes me as an act of war in and of itself.

We have our choice for suitable casus belli with Iraq. Pick whichever one suits you the best, Texaggie79. There are valid reasons to go to war with Iraq, and here are already TWO instances which are covered under Congressional authorization to use force - which is pretty much saying war is declared.

Even then, if for some reason none of the above were to be the case (someone would REALLY need to be in some alternate universe with tons of warped definitions), we could always say we were in "hot pursuit" of members of al-Qaida, and that we advise any nation where we are in said hot pursuit to stay out of the way.