Whoa. All these arguements are making my head spin.
Here’s the deal.
on October 11, 2002, the House and the Senate passed HJ Res 114, which authorized the President to use military force against Iraq, “as he deems necessary and appropriate,” to defend the US against the “continuing threat” posed by Iraq and to enforce all relevent UNSC resolutions.
A use of force authorization is generally considered an acceptable way for Congress to allow the Executive to prosecute a war. A declaration of war may be undesirable in some circumstances because it would activate other laws that give the President a whole lot of power… which is fine if we are engaged in a total war, but probably not now.
More or less like Bricker states, some opponents of war believe that this authorization delegates the final decision on war or peace to the president. It is a long-standing and unquestioned Constitutional principle that Congress cannot give its enumerated powers (ie, those explicitly laid out, like declaring war, raising taxes, coining money, etc) to the Executive Branch, even if it votes to do so. (The main reason is that such action destroys the checks and balances of the Constitution.) This non-delegation of powers is the reason why the Supreme Court struck down the line item veto… but that’s another story.
So does this mean that HJ Res 114 will be ruled unconstitutional? Hardly likely. Courts generally view this power struggle between Congress and the President as a political question, and so they won’t rule on it. In a practical sense, the Congress gave the President all the authority he needs to go to war, even though there may be some good arguements that may be made to the contrary.
As far as SJ Res 23 goes, that resolution, passed on 9-14-01, does not “declare war on terrorism.” It authorizes the use of force “against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
Any connection between al Qaeda and Iraq would not, on its face, be sufficient under SJ Res 23 to authorize the US to use force against Saddam. It would have to be determined that Iraq “planned, authorized, committed, aided,” or harbored those terrorists that carried out 9-11.