The Unnecessary War Prevention Act of 2007

[gulliver]

Congress should propose laws that would prevent an Administration from driving America to war on false pretenses, without due diligence, and with political gain in mind. It would be interesting to see such an Act debated and to see Bush veto it. Could the Republicans vote against measures requiring a president to do all the things Bush didn't do? 1) Order his cabinet officers to do everything possible to avoid war and resolve the situation short of war, 2) Triple check any intelligence on which a prospective war is to be based, 3) Specify in writing the exact nature of the threat, 4) Specify the goal of the war in terms of short term and long term desired outcomes, 5) Estimate the cost of the war in lives and treasure.

In short, make it illegal to do what Bush and his administration did. It would be fun to see the look on Bush's face as he tries to explain to the press why he is against the proposed laws. It would be fun to see Republicans try to wriggle out of voting for the Act.

[orleans]

1. they should but they won't--because, technically, what happened isn't

suppose to happen. we have checks & balances to prevent this from happening!

(yeah, sure we do...)

[gulliver]

2. Yeah, that's just it.

We do have the checks and balances, but then we get in the heat of the moment like we did in 2002. Then the sorry ilk of a Bush/Cheney/Rove can exploit our patriotism, fear, ignorance, and anger to stampede us past all of the checks and balances. People in Congress and the media were afraid to ask for formalities like real evidence, real planning, real due diligence. "Wolf" had been cried.

I don't know if an Act can be written that would help enforce a rational, responsible process for going to war. But legislating such an Act would send a powerful message to the people that we all know what Bush did, and we don't want it to happen again. The Act would be both a repudiation of Bush and a brace for our checks and balances in the future. Again, what would the Republicans do with such an Act? Vote against it? How would Bush handle an Act that basically spells out what he did and makes it illegal (or resolved against) for the future.

Bush, Cheney, Rove exploited a vulnerability in our political system to our great loss. We should patch it -- in addition to continuing the investigation into how it was done.