Can Democrats End the Iraq War? Media flunk constitutional question on war funding

[The Sushi Bandit]

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3110

Summing up the media's conventional wisdom about the congressional vote to approve funding for the Iraq War with no timeline for withdrawal, the Los Angeles Times wrote on May 25: "Unable to overcome the president's veto of their plan to set a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops, Democrats have been left to focus on what to do next."

That, in a nutshell, is what was wrong with the coverage of the war funding debate. In fact, if the Democrat-controlled Congress wanted to force the Bush administration to accept a bill with a withdrawal timeline, it didn't have to pass the bill over Bush's veto—it just had to make clear that no Iraq War spending bill without a timeline would be forthcoming. Given that the Constitution requires Congress to approve all spending, Bush needs Congress's approval to continue the war—Congress does not need Bush's approval to end the war.

<SNIP>

Actually, the Constitution gives Congress the power "to raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years." The limit on the length of military appropriations was explained by Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist Papers (No. 24) as "a precaution which, upon a nearer view of it, will appear to be a great and real security against the keeping up of troops without evident necessity." In Federalist No. 26, he elaborated:


The legislature of the United States will be OBLIGED, by this provision, once at least in every two years, to deliberate upon the propriety of keeping a military force on foot; to come to a new resolution on the point; and to declare their sense of the matter, by a formal vote in the face of their constituents.

[whistle]

1. No, because democrats are caught up in the same "peace with honor" nationalism crap

....so the next president whether he or she is a democrat or reThuglican will remain committed to victory for the next eight years and will spend trillions and sacrifice 50,000 more men and women to fighting in Iraq and neighboring countries, or worse escalate the conflict into a global war and blow away half the planet!

Not even a Ron Paul type will have the guts to just stop the fighting and bring the troops home. What America needs now is a messiah type leader and I don't know of any person in the American political landscape today who would fit that profile who could be elected president and leader next year.

[The Sushi Bandit]

2. but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years!

Where are the people who make the congress know what the law is?