Reply #42: Congress's abandonment of its responsibilities under WPA of '73

[EVDebs]

The Offer Congress Can't Refuse

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet. Posted January 24, 2006.


The Justice Department's most recent defense of Bush's illegal wiretap program makes clear that there is no room in the president's plans for Congress.


http://www.alternet.org/story/31219 /

""The DoJ uses its 42-page "defense" of wiretaps to explain exactly what they think Congress intended by the 2001 AUMF. And the gist is this: When Congress passed this piece of legislation, it handed over their say-so in this country's defense.


The AUMF authorization transforms the struggle against al Qaeda from a zone in which the president and the Congress may have concurrent powers into a situation in which the president's authority is at its maximum because it "includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate."

The DoJ report has an inherently schizophrenic nature. The first half focuses on the supreme knowledge they seem to have about Congress's intent in passing the AUMF -- namely Congress's alleged pre-emptive support of whatever action the president might take. And yet, it spends the other half declaring war on the very branch it claims granted it such power.""

Both the AUMF and the Iraq War Joint Resolution embed the War Powers Act of 1973. In each case Bush was allowed by resolution '...as he determines...' to define what is truth.

This shockingly simple fact is behind our current national dilemma. How can we manage to get through another three more years ... knowing that the same trick will be pulled on the public again and again and again ? Congress wills it (Deus Volt !, is the battle cry) ???.


AUMF link from Sept 2001
http://news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/terrorism/sjres23.es.html

Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq Oct. 2002
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021002-2.html

War Powers Act of 1973
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/warpow.html