Y’know, I was about to respond to your other post, but I see that you are off on one of your wall-of-text, post-post-post crusades with posts multiplying like rabbits, so there is really no point.
Based on the odd claims you are making, you appear to be incapable of even understanding most of the statements to which you are replying. Since you are the only one who believes your fantasy and you appear to be a True Believer who is not capable of letting facts or reason persuade you of your error, there is really no point to continue this discussion.
There are others here who agree with me, including yourself back in July 2003.
I understand why you do not wish to continue the discussion.
You found out from me that the AUMF is “legitimate” based upon your own terms. The AUMF did authorize force IN ORDER TO enforce ALL UN Resolutions.
Your last two statements in the above cite are drastically flawed on several points.
(a) Had the UN clauses been followed there would have been no attack.
(b) The AUMF was morally and legally justified in October of 2002 because Iraq was in violation of international law at the time of the vote. As a Member state of the United Nations it was justified to demand that Iraq comply with international law or face the consequence of military force being used against it.
(c) No Fly Zone enforcement set a precedent that the use of military force was justified. So your argument is oblivious to reality on that score.
(d) Whether or not Iraq had the wherewithal or the intention to attack anyone was not the issue that enabled all fifteen members of the UNSC to vote unanimously to give Iraq one final opportunity to comply with international law one month after the AUMF was passed.
(e) There is no way that the AUMF dated October 10, 2002 was a violation of the UN Charter. That is because Iraq’s regime was in violation of international law and not in compliance with all of it’s disarmament agreements and without inspections since 1998. It is not a violation of the UN Charter specifically because it authorized the use of force ‘in order to enforce all relevant UNSC resolutions regarding Iraq’. When the AUMF was passed it certainly was a potential reality that military force and regime change were the only means to enforce all existing UNSC Resolutions against Iraq. When 1441 was passed with Bush’s concurrence, and then inspections resumed and then Iraq cooperated; then and only then did a decision to invade after the legal and legitimate and peaceful disarming of Iraq reality was clearly known, became a violation of the UN Charter.
And your second sentence is not correct because the AUMF was not a ‘rubber stamp’ since you yourself wrote that it would be legitimate if it authorized the U.S. to act with the U.N. to enforce the U.N. resolutions. And I have merely pointed out that the AUMF that passed in October 2002 actually authorized force in order to enforce all the relevant U.N. Resolutions with regard to Iraq.
I have seen no other poster who has agreed with you.
Your claim that I have ever agreed with you is nothing more than you projecting your desperate need for validation onto a twisting of my words.
I doubt that you understand why the sun appears in the East each day.
Since that claim is clearly wrong and I certainly do not believe that error, the only thing that I could have “found out from” you is that you are a one-trick pony.
And then you move on to one more wall of text filled with errors, distortions, and a failure of logic.
I pointed the FACT out that the AUMF precisely says that force was authorized in order to enforce the U.N. resolutions so according to your very own words the AUMF is legitimate. I could not agree more. The AUMF was legitimate. Bush did not abide by it.
Hey, there, NotfooledbyW, why not take a stab at two questions you’ve ducked repeatedly?
If Bush could easily use the AUMF Against Terrorists or the War Powers Resolution to invade Iraq, and the AUMF limited him as you say it did, why did he both ask for and sign the AUMF? You’re arguing both that Bush didn’t need it and that it sharply limited him.
What’s the difference between the AUMF and the Levin Amendment?
Re: (1.) Bush did not need the AUMF of October 2002. That is a fact. It is not my argument. The AUMF of October 2002 however did limit the authorization to use force in order to enforce all relevant UNSC Resolutions. That also is a fact. Bush did not abide by the AUMF because he did not need it anyway. So what is your point.
Re: (2.) The Levin Amendment differs mostly by not authorizing force until after the UNSC decides to pass a new resolution and that won’t fly. See Ntldbw Arggggghhhhh thread. But Bush could have pulled the same lie about Iraq’s non-compliance with a new resolution as well.
Bush could not have cared less about complying with the AUMF as passed. He was above the law, and I believe he thought military victory would be so swift and US troops would be greeted as liberators, so the WMD bogus lies would not matter at all.
Bush could have pulled the same lie about Iraq’s non-compliance with a new resolution as well. That is true. If you have some kind of argument against that fact, then present it. Do not rely on telling me to read the Levin Amendment, since I have read it.
Where does the Levin Amendment state that the UNSC determines compliance?
Bush could say Iraq failed to comply with the terms of the Security Council Resolutions and invade Iraq just like he did when he says Iraq did not comply with UNSC Res 1441, as John Mace agrees with the President on that big lie.
So, no attempt to answer my first question? Noted.
“Pursuant to a resolution of the United Nations Security Council” vs. “As [the President] determines to be necessary and appropriate.” Think on that for a bit.
The primary difference is that the AUMF that passed authorized force ‘if’ the UNSC did not pass a future resolution such as 1441. But we all know that the UNSC passed 1441 unanimously.
The Levin Amendment did not authorize force unless Iraq did not comply with a future amendment. So in the event that the UNSC does not pass a new resolution for Iraq to comply with, it is naïve to believe that Bush would have settled for no invasion because the UNSC failed to act. The very likely failure to pass a new UNSC resolution had the Levin Amendment passed, meant that Iraq would get no final opportunity to comply under the Levin Amendment. There would be another vote, and in the real world that we know now is true… the Senate switched to Bush’s Party and the House stayed under Republican control. Bush gets what he wants unless some Republican Senators join Democrats in blocking a vote on a second resolution that authorizes use of force because the UNSC failed to pass a new resolutions. It would be doubtful that Congress refuses to give Bush the war he wants on the terms he demands after the 2002 November national elections turned out the way they did.
The AUMF that passed solved the problem that the Levin Amendment suffered, of relying on the UNSC to do something critical to hopefully taking the peaceful route to disarming Iraq. It gave Bush the authority up front to enforce all current and future relevant UNSC resolutions regarding Iraq because Bush was potentially going to enforce all the current ones anyway. This put pressure on the UNSC to pass a 1441 and that worked. Once 1441 passed with Bush’s blessing, Bush himself tied the US to abiding by it. And the language is very clear in the AUMF that passed that Bush was given the authority to use military force ‘IN ORDER TO’ ENFORCE ALL relevant UNSC Resolutions regarding Iraq…
1441 was not ‘enforceable by war’ because 1441 was at the time Bush invaded Iraq 1441 was in the process of being enforced peacefully. Bush could not enforce 1441 through the violence of war when the UNSC members in a majority were satisfied that 1441 was being enforced through diplomatic means.
XT and T&D say Bush was not enforcing UNSC Resolutions when Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. Does anyone here disagree with XT & T&D on that.
And if the Levin Amendment had passed, and the UNSC did pass something along the lines of 1441, all Bush would have said, with all things going the same with the inspections, would be that Iraq failed to comply with the terms of the Security Council resolution.
Bush would lie just like he did anyway and say that S.H. did not let the inspectors in and that he had intelligence that left no doubt that Iraq was concealing the most lethal weapons ever devised from the 2003 UNSC inspection regime.
So what is the point with the Levin Amendment anyway?
There is no point. The argument in favor of the Levin amendment is mostly a diversion from the point that Bush lied about Iraq’s compliance and probably lied about having intelligence that Iraq was hiding something deadly from inspectors.
There are other differences: no hyper-broad “determines to be necessary and appropriate” clause, and very strict limits on what force could be used for.
Very likely, eh? What are you basing that on? What Bush said?
So, the Congressmen are excused for voting for the AUMF because the next Congress would have done so? Your various defenses of them keep making them come off worse and worse.
That’s a feature, not a bug. Tying to the process to the UN would have been a good thing.
And it gave him the authority up front to start a war if thought it was necessary. How did that work out?
Yes, he could, if he determined that it using force was necessary and appropriate in order to enforce them. That’s what the AUMF says. You need to deal with that.
He wasn’t acting as part of a UN force, no, but he had determined that invading was necessary to protect the US and enforce one or more resolutions, yes. He made this determination available to the Speaker of the House and president pro tem of the Senate, as the AUMF required him to do.
That would actually be violating the law, unlike Bush’s actions under the AUMF. You may as well argue that Bush could have just had Congress thrown in prison and instituted a planned war economy, yes, he could have, but it’d be a big deal and there would be legal grounds for stopping him.
No pre-authorization at all would have been ideal, but the point is that Congress had a choice to either work through the UN, or give Bush sole power. They went with the latter, and it bit us all in the ass. They should have known better, and those who did should be lauded for it.
Your mind-reading skills are as impressive as your logic, rhetoric, and courtesy, that is, not at all. You’ve seemingly based your entire worldview around the events of March 2003 and are paranoid, so of course you view anything else as a diversion, and a deliberate act to distract one from Bush’s decision to invade.
The strict limits mean nothing. Bush invaded according to him on the basis that Iraq was not cooperating with the UNSC inspections on all those WMD issues, and nothing else.
There is no reason to ‘excuse’ Congress for their vote in the first place. It was Bush that did not abide by the law they wrote.
Not only if he thought it was necessary. That is a lie being told for him. They authorized war 'in order to enforce ALL relevant UNSC resolutions regarding Iraq. And that included 1441 which he could not enforce on his own because he agreed to it in November 2002 and didn’t agree to it in March 2003. And he could not enforce 1441 because 1441 was being enforce the opposite way.
Under the Levin Amendment, he could only “use the Armed Forces of the United States to destroy, remove, or render harmless Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons-usable material, ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometers, and related facilities”.
That’s exactly right, there’s no reason to excuse them for the terrible law they passed, which led directly to a terrible war. It likely cost the Democrats the White House in 2004, so they paid a price, but what of us regular citizens, who are on the hook for a massive debt and suffered 5,000+ casualties, to say nothing of the hapless civilians of Iraq? We and they certainly have a bone to pick with Congress as well as Bush, Blair, Hussein, and so on.
Ahem: “The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate”. That’s not some standard boilerplate, meaning that the President gets to decide which units to deploy and which generals are in command. Note that the Levin Amendment doesn’t contain it. That language is very real and very meaningful, and it means that the President got to decide if war was necessary to defend the U.S. or to enforce UN resolutions. Not you, not me, not the UNSC, and not Congress. The President and only the President.
That is based upon many facts. The Yoo memo, already at war with Iraq enforcing No Fly Zones, Iraq was in violation of international law at that time, what the Bush
Admin said prior to September 2002, Bush’s popularity as War on Terror President, Bush was not interested in a peaceful disarmament process in contrast to his public posturing in September 2002. There is more if you are interested.
What made it “very likely” that the UNSC wouldn’t pass a resolution setting up a new inspection regime after the Levin Amendment being passed? Nothing you listed above is in reference to that.
When you cut any sentence in half you alter it’s meaning and significance. Then your further your alteration of the written language when you insert ‘or’ into the authorization clause of the AUMF as passed.
The wording ‘In order to enforce all relevant UNSC Resolutins with regard to Iraq’ is a significant part of what the language of the AUMF granting authority in order for Bush to use military force against Iraq. Your trick of inserting the word ‘or’ where it does not exist does not fly. It is inappropriate and it invalidates your argument. You can’t put words wherever you want them to suit the viewpoint you have chosen to believe.
Any one of the French, Russsian, and Chinese veto was more likely to be used if force was not readily authorized by Congress prior to passage of a new tougher UNSC resolution.
Seriously? I’ve seen you write that the President was authorized to use force in order to enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, without including the “the President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate”, (or the “defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq”, though it’s less germaine to this particular discussion) about six dozen times. So, how does this work, you’re allowed to cut sentences in half but I’m not?
What a bizarre non-sequitor…the above has nothing to do with what you or I wrote.
Guess what? The wording “the President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate” is a significant part of the language of the AUMF granting authority in order for Bush to use military force against Iraq.
As for this “or” business…skip down to the next section of the AUMF:
To use the authority granted to him by the AUMF, the president has to make available his determination that reliance on peaceful means either will not protect the U.S. or is not likely to lead to enforcement of UNSC resolutions.
But, under the AUMF, he could have determined that force was necessary to protect the U.S. and not to enforce UNSC resolutions and still been able to use force. Given that he didn’t, this is all academic.
Because that makes no sense…the nations that were reluctant to go to war are less likely to pursue a peaceful inspection & disarmament regime if the nation that’s pressing to go to war hasn’t authorized its Commander-in-Chief to go to war?
Your modification of the language in the enforcement clause is improper. I’ll re-explain that in detail when I have time. You cannot change wording and think it is valid.
In the meantime please refresh your memory of Senator Clinton’s speech on the floor of the Senate before her Iraq vote.