But not enough to stop him from lawfully invading Iraq.
How, again does that justify the AUMF? You see, if I hadn’t loaned my drunk friend my car, you’d be naïve to think he couldn’t walk a few blocks to his other friend’s house and borrow one…
I don’t see it as an excuse for Bush; you do. That’s a critical point all its own. Each person is accountable for their own actions.
Then pass the Levin Amendment, instead of going on either trust, fear, hawkishness, or whatever motivated the various Congressmen who voted for the AUMF.
So make him do that. I’ve already pointed out how it’d be beneficial for Bush to start the war via the AUMF Against Terrorists (requires Bush to openly, formally lie about a finding of fact, as opposed to an opinion) or the War Powers Act (time limit), versus the AUMF, and you’ve never responded to it.
So it apoears to me that you would prefer to make Bush start a war without trying to disarm Iraq peacefully by seeking a new tougher inspection process in the form of a new UNSC Resolution and requiring Bush to enforce it if it comes to fruition or if not enforce all the old resolutions on the books if the UN can’t because Saddam Hussein won’t cooperate or if the UN saw no need for a new resolution or if it was vetoed by a permanent member.
And you say that knowing that 1441 passed and S.H. Cooperated, but Bush went in the opposite direction of 1441 and the AUMF.
That’s a false dilemma. There is no reason to believe that a new inspection regime couldn’t be achieved without Congress pre-authorizing war.
The fact that 1441 and Hussein did cooperate with it and we still got a war should make you question your assumption that the AUMF should have prevented war.
My argument is that Bush had no intent to abide by the restraint to enforce 1441’s successes toward peacefully disarming Iraq as the AUMF required. It is therefore not an assumption that the AUMF should have prevented war, it is verification after the fact that Bush was not inclined to be restrained by anything that would have prevented him from removing S.H.from power to disarm Iraq of the threat of WMD.
The fault does not fall to the AUMF; the fault falls to the one that ignored the AUMF.
And what you are essentially doing is criticizing some Democratic Senators for not fully knowing or predicting with certainty whether Bush’s would start a major war with Iraq or not if he did not get the AUMF being negotiated with House and Senate leaders during the first weeks of Oct 2002.
The choice was never a simple assumption that a no vote against the AUMF brought with it a strong possibility that war would be averted because we could assume Iraq could be disarmed peacefully without the clear threat of force being pre-authorized to show Iraq and the UN that disarming Iraq must happen in a post 9/11 world.
The “restraint” is to use force, as Bush determines to be necessary and appropriate, to defend the U.S. and enforce all UNSC resolutions relevant to Iraq.
He did abide by that extremely-loose restraint.
Maybe a refusal by Congress to pass the AUMF would have prevented war, maybe it wouldn’t have. We can’t know for sure. What we can and do know is that the AUMF allowed Bush to start the war without a time limit (as the War Powers Resolution includes), or having to make an easily-exposed, factual determination that Iraq was involved in 9/11 (as the AUMF Against Terrorists demands). It also gave the war bi-partisan support, which sharply limited the degree to which the Democrats were able to use the war to attack Bush before the 2004 election. All things considered, the AUMF was a tremendous asset to Bush. Why else do you think he wanted it? Shits and giggles? A momentary shift to a peace-first attitude, as you’ve suggested?
No, I am criticizing all Senators and Representatives who voted to pre-authorize a war, and give the President the power to wage it, or not.
Also, if they were worried that Bush might start a war with Iraq if they didn’t give him an AUMF…what exactly did they think would happen after they gave him one? Do you defend Congress by claiming they did something as stupid and illogical as authorizing a war to prevent a war? I just think they were afraid and wanted to pass the buck, your “defense” of them actually ends up being much more damning.
It’s pretty simple. If the UN wouldn’t attempt to pass 1441 and resume inspections without the President of one of their member states being authorized to independently go to war over it, then the UN is foolish and worthless and the U.S. should bypass it whenever anything important is at stake.
If Hussein wouldn’t cooperate with a new UN inspection regime without the President of one of its member states being authorized to independently go to war over it, then Hussein deserved to be overthrown.
Thus, Bush being in the wrong requires a competent UN and a cooperative Iraq. Either those conditions existed, or they didn’t. I say they did.
Human Action: But you’re ignoring the loud chorus call in March of 2003 by Democrats who voted for the AUMF and who didn’t think it gave Bush the authority to invade Iraq when he did. Kerry, Clinton, Edwards, Feinstein… They’re all on record, before the invasion, of saying Bush was overstepping his authority.
Just to be clear, I’m being completely facetious about that!
Right, the idea that Congress didn’t think Bush was perfectly legally justified (under domestic law) in doing what he did is backed by zero evidence, and even when NotfooledbyW narrows things to “perhaps less than a dozen Senators who cared about the UN language in the AUMF”, he’s still unable to find any that said the war was a violation of the restraints they put in the AUMF.
And really, if “less than a dozen” Senators “cared” about language of the bill they voted for, could Bush even be said to have violated the spirit or intent of the law? I think it’s plainly obvious that he didn’t violate the letter of the law, but why should the intent of “less than a dozen” trump the intent of the other 65+ Senators who voted for the AUMF? Thus does NotfooledbyW undermine his own argument.
And I have never met anyone who believes anything else. Hypothetical gullible folks aside, that Bush was going to invade Iraq was a pretty well established assumption among every educated person who watched his scheme play out.
Which is entirely irrelevant when we have numerous quotations from Democratic senators, notably Senator Clinton, actually cheering Bush on in the first week of March. We have Bush’s statements prior to the 2000 election saying that he wanted to attack Iraq. We have the whole PNAC letter writing campaign between 1998 and 2000 following which Bush brought most of the PNAC players into his administration. What sort of idiots do you think the Democratic senators were to fail to realize what Bush intended? I think you owe a number of them an apology.
Trying to claim that Bush acted alone when he took us to war when every senator should have been able to predict that he would do just that at the time the AUMF passed and when many of them were cheering him on in the days immediately preceding the invasion is nonsense. It is specious to claim that he acted alone when he clearly had the support of a majority in Congress, including a majority of Democrats in the Senate and 40% of Democratic Representatives. They had the opportunity to vote for the Levin Amendment that would have made explicit the conditions under which the president could act, and only 21 Democrats voted for it.
Your position is that 29 Democratic senators, (including Clinton, Kerry, Biden, Lieberman, Reid, Schumer, Feingold, and others), were so stupid as to have not ever noticed the widely published PNAC statements or Bush’s public endorsement of them and so chose to vote down the Levin amendment and just hope that Bush would suddenly become trustworthy. I have not been able to find any evidence that any of them began protesting the military build-up prior to the war, when one after another, the administration’s lies about WMDs were revealed while the UN inspectors repeatedly came up empty-handed. So, they handed him the keys to the hen-house, never raised a word of protest when he started talking about fixing a big chicken dinner or when he headed out the door with an axe in his hand, sat back and declared how good a chicken roast would taste right now, and you want to pretend that he acted alone.
There is no counter-point in your argument to mine. So I do not know why you are making it. It’s no secret that Bush wanted to knock off S.H., and it should be no secret that Bush didn’t really need Congress to authorize the invasion that Bush alone decided to start.
Before Bush began his public proclamation campaign that his first and strongest desire was to disarm Iraq peacefully through the UN, he held a view that he did not need a specific authorization to use force as I posted in post #219.
Here it is again:
I also posted this to show that ‘knowing Bush wanted WAR’ is meaningless information. The question Senators and Congress people considered was whether Bush actually steering the nation away from his and Cheney’s Iraq invasion madness and was serious about going through the UN to disarm Iraq peacefully. And there is not much to discuss with someone who thinks the inspection process was irrelevant and refuses to even think about inspections.
Sen. Rockefeller knew Bush wanted war… But I believe him when he said he authorized Bush to use force to enforce the sanctions if the sanctions failed. 1441 was passed and did not fail. Bush was in no way ‘using force’ to enforce UNSC 1441 or any preceding UNSC resolution that was covered by 1441 as a final opportunity for S.H. to comply.
That was a correct view in March 2003 because Iraq was not a threat while it’s regime was cooperating proactively under UNSC Res 1441 and working toward being peacefully disarmed. That was not the case in October 2002 when Rockefeller had to make a choice. Iraq was in full violation of international law in October 2002.
Bush talked the talk in October 2002 that Iraq was so much not an ‘imminent threat’ that even he was willing to consider allowing the UNSC to disarm Iraq peacefully.
So how can it be that after three months of successful inspections and all of Bush’s proclaimed evidence against Iraq being systematically publically debunked by the insspectors that Bush could announce in March 2003 that Iraq presented such a threat that he had no choice but to invade?.
I guess if one has no thoughts about inspections they can have no thought about how significant the reduction of threat was from October 2003 to March 2003.
But that exchange you had with Tee in July 2003 still intrigues me T&D:
Did it startle you when I began making the point that the AUMF does in fact require Bush to authorize ‘all’ relevant Resolutions regarding Iraq including the one *1441 that gave Iraq a FINAL OPPORTUNITY to comply?
You said it yourself there T&D. “The U.S. (Bush) acted unilaterally not to enforce U.N. directives” … But now you appear to prefer pushing the idea that it was Congress, the entire U.S., that wanted and authorized Bush to act unilaterally and not ‘enforce’ UNSC Directives such as 1441.
If I could only get you to think about UNSC inspections during the four months between the AUMF vote when Iraq was in major violation of international law and Bush’s ‘public’ decision to invade during the FINAL DAYS OF DECISION in March 2003 when Iraq was engaged in proactive cooperation with UNSC inspectors and was not therefore in violation of international law, had that cooperation been allowed to continue by GW Bush.
It was Bush who made that decision to end Iraq’s cooperation. It was not Congress, not matter how much you want it to be.
If only someone had proposed an amendment to the AUMF that would give Congress one more layer of approval before Bush could actually initiate a war. If only we had the record of Democrats voting AGAINST such an amendment so we could see how serious they were in making sure they didn’t grant Bush a blank check.
I guess we will never know, since no such amendment was put up for a vote.
Why are you arguing against the fiction that I am pushing an idea that Congress didn’t think Bush was perfectly legally justified under domestic law in doing what he did? Bush was perfectly legally justified in doing anything with the US Military he wanted to do at least for sixty days. By the time Congress could have cut off funding for continued military action in Iraq the House and Senate were both controlled by Bush’s party. The point is moot whether it was illegal for Bush to sidestep the AUMF’s language. That does not make it justified for all of us to ignore what the AUMF said or pretend that certain language was not written there.
I am pointing out the genuine indisputable fact that the AUMF authorized the use of military force ‘in order to enforce ALL relevant UNSC Resolutions regarding Iraq’ and that Bush did not in any conceivable way abide by that requirement.
I make that point to dispute the argument by those on this forum who have incorrectly assumed that the AUMF was a blank check for war. It is clear that it was not. Had Bush complied with the language in the AUMF and not ‘defied’ UNSC Resolution 1441 there would have been no war and Iraq would have been disarmed peacefully.
I make that point because it PROVES that Bush ‘decided’ on his own to end inspections.
I make that point as well as T&D did in July 2003 when he wrote " *the U.S. acted unilaterally, **not to enforce *U.N. directives" *see my preceding post.
Bush did act ‘unilaterally’ **NOT TO ENFORCE **UNSC Resolution 1441 or any other UNSC Resolution.
Whether that violated US Domestic law is not my concern as I have already explained.
My concern is why people ignore what the AUMF wrote about ‘enforcing all UNSC Resolutions’ so they can put shared blamed across all of Congress because they refuse to hold Bush solely accountable for defying the language of the domestic law known as the AUMF and UNSC Res 1441 that he committed the U.S. to abiding by that international law too.
If you wish to argue that Bush did not violate domestic law when he ignored the language put in the AUMF by Congress during negotiations you need to find somebody else to argue that.
I’m not saying what Bush did was necessarily illegal, I am saying Bush did not abide by the language in the AUMF so it is ridiculous to blame those who voted for the AUMF for Bush’s blatant act of ignoring what it said.
The majority from both parties and among the general public felt there was sufficient threat in October 2002 that confronting Iraq backed up by the ‘real’ threat of the use of military force was the proper course to take.
None here can state that the Levin Amendment would have passed and Bush would have agreed to it and that Bush would not have held out for another month hoping to turn the one vote Dem majority in the Senate into a Republican majority that would give him whatever he wanted.
Bush wanted to show Iraq that He had the authority to use force if Iraq did not submit to UN inspections and be brought into compliance with international law.
There was a slim majority of Americans who say they did not care if Iraq had WMD and I believe you were one of them John Mace.
So your position was so far from ever being carried in the post-911 world that there was very little political use to hold it.
Iraq was in fact considered a threat in October 2002 because it was in major and serious violation of international law from 1998 to 2002. You can certainly disagree and find comfort in your little circle of non-caring friends, but you cannot wish away the reality most the civilized and free world agreed that Iraq certainly needed to be brought into compliance with all of its disarmament obligations following the surrender to the international coalition in 1991.
Er…since when is that fiction? You provided a list of excuses why Congressmen might have refrained from speaking out about Bush’s supposed violation of the law, which certainly implies that they thought he was breaking the law, but chose to keep quiet (due to, you suggested, lack of care about the text of the law, belief in the President’s possession of new, concrete intelligence, “cliches” ruling the day, etc).
Bush sent the letters that the AUMF required him to, it was quite clear what law he was acting under.
Which doesn’t keep the Democrats from saying the war was illegal, if it was. They didn’t say that because it wasn’t illegal.
I’m not ignoring anything, or pretending anything.
That is a fact.
That isn’t; and Bush did abide by it: he found it necessary and appropriate to enforce one or more UNSC resolutions through the use of force.
It wasn’t totally blank, since it was limited to Iraq, and not the whole Middle East as the President’s draft was. The payee on the check was filled in, so to speak, but not the date or the amount.
Has that ever been disputed?
I don’t ignore it, I just understand it. Not the same thing.
Bush is (more or less, as he did have advisors and allies) solely to blame for deciding to invade Iraq when he did. Congress is solely to blame for passing a law which empowered Bush to make that decision.
Holding Congress accountable for what they did in no way excuses what Bush did. Your refusal to see that explains a lot of your froth and bluster on this topic.
Bush could well have found it appropriate and necessary to use military force against Iraq but what he was doing had absolute nothing to do with enforcing any or all relevant UNSC resolutions regarding Iraq.
All UNSC resolutions were being enforced by peaceful means at the time that Bush launched the invasion. Tomndebb said the truth about this in July 2003. He said Bush did not enforce UNSC Directives. T&D is correct. You are just plain wrong.
It absolutely excuses Bush for his blatant disregard of the language that some Congress members wanted in the AUMF. You are spreading blame across all Congress for what Bush did that defied Congress’ intent.
And had Bush abided by what Congress sought and complied with the AUMF’s specific intent, there would have been no invasion and civil war in Iraq with US troops in the middle of it. The UNSC would have successfully disarmed and enforced all relevant Resolutions through peaceful means.
Your desire to spread blame among many denies holding Bush accountable for his specific solitary actions that he took.
Congress should not be blamed or criticized for passing a law at a time that Iraq was in violation of international law with regard to WMD matters.
Bush is justifiably blamed for starting a war against Iraq when Iraq was not in violation of international law because it was complying with UNSC 1441 which Bush gave his assent to pass.
If Bush decided to end inspections it is not disputed that the fact related to that is not disputed. Bush in no way enforced UNSC Resolutions when he decided to end inspections.
Had you changed my post by inserting “Bush” within Quote tags, you would be in violation of board rules to refrain from tampering with text. It would almost appear that you refuse to use the Quote tags explicitly so that you can mangle quotes without being reprimanded. Since you refuse to use the Quote tags, you will now be issued a Warning every time you distort a quotation from another poster using your odd and difficult to parse style.
Setting aside your deliberate attempt to change my statement, you will note that I am consistent. In 2003 I pointed out that the U.S. acted unilaterally. That was true then and remains true, today.
A majority of Congress including a majority of Democratic Senators and a high plurality of Democratic Representatives supported Bush when he went to war in March 2003. When it was clear that he was going to invade on trumped up lies, they took no action, not even a symbolic one, on the House or Senate floor to stop him. They made no public protests (then or later) that he was not acting in compliance with the AUMF. Many of them publicly supported his actions.
The idea that Bush acted “alone” is simply wishful thinking by a single individual who started this whole train of threads by whining that it was not fair to note Democratic involvement in supporting Bush’s actions and who has carried on the same insupportable claim in one-trick-pony fashion for all the months since then.
If I changed what you meant , please spell it out.
You wrote that USA did not enforce U.N. directives. Does that mean Bush did enforce UN directives /Resolutions as Human Action claims he did?