House Votes to Scold Obama on Libya

[Guest]

The House has adopted a resolution rebuking President Barack Obama for dispatching U.S. military forces against Libya without congressional approval.

The vote was 268-145. The White House objected, saying the measure was “unnecessary and unhelpful.”

The measure by Speaker John Boehner says the president has failed to provide a “compelling rationale” for the nearly 3-month old operation to aid rebels battling Moammar Gadhafi’s forces. Democrats and Republicans complained that Obama ignored Congress’ constitutional authority to declare war.

The nonbinding measure insists that Obama provide Congress with details on the scope of the mission and its costs within 14 days. It also bars U.S. ground forces except to rescue an American service member.

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Why don't the video codes work anymore?

[Woody]

Praise God - they finally did something worthwhile.

[karl]

Why not take back the constitutional power to declare war? Presidents are not supposed to declare war (or to wage war under some other pseudonym) and ask permission afterward.

[Tom Wetmore]

This is just political theater...

Presidents have been taking military action without consent of Congress for a long time. Kennedy did it, Reagan did it. George HW Bush did it, Clinton did it. George W. Bush did it.

War was not declared on Libya. No need to get Congress to authorize it.

[karl]

Congress needs to take the authority and the responsiblity for declaring war.

World War II was the last war the United States fought with a formal declaration of war.

Good discussion of the subject here: http://jeffersonsrebels.blogspot.com/2011/03/stratfor-what-happened-to-american.html

[Dr. Shane]

Tom,

Kennedy was prior to the War Powers Act. Reagan stated he believed the War Powers Act to be unconstitutional. GHW Bush sought and authorization to use force from Congress as did GW Bush. Can you list specific military action that violated the War Powers Act that has been done by US Presidents other than Obama?

[Guest]

No! Don't tell me Tom just threw a bunch of NON-Facts out there for us to believe as though they were facts.

Good bs call Shane!

Ok, how's that....better?

[Dr. Shane]

Let's try a little nicer tone, Rich. I think Tom deserves the benefit of the doubt. I am not sure if Reagan violated the War Powers Act but if I recall my civics lesson right, he did not believe he was bound by it because he believed it to be unconstitutional. If Obama believes the same, I can respect that even if I disagree. However I have not heard Obama make that argument.

[Guest]

I fixed it up some....besides, Tom can take it as good as he can dish it out.

[bonnie]

Let's try a little nicer tone, Rich. I think Tom deserves the benefit of the doubt. I am not sure if Reagan violated the War Powers Act but if I recall my civics lesson right, he did not believe he was bound by it because he believed it to be unconstitutional. If Obama believes the same, I can respect that even if I disagree. However I have not heard Obama make that argument.

Go back and see what he said as a senator about this topic

[bonnie]

Canada Free Press

Barack Obama, the sensei of constitutional authority. From Harvard Law School graduate, to untitled part-time lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, to Illinois State Senator, to United States Senator, to President, Obama has become the Zen of constitutional law—he became the law. This explanation is as plausible as others are: either he took to heart the disdain and loathing that Harvard harbors against the original meaning of the Constitution, or he really just doesn’t understand the document.

Candidate Obama was asked two questions by the Boston Globe during his presidential campaign in 2007:

The Boston Globe: In what circumstances, if any, would the president have constitutional authority to bomb Iran without seeking a use-of-force authorization from Congress? (Specifically, what about the strategic bombing of suspected nuclear sites—a situation that does not involve stopping an IMMINENT threat?).

Obama: The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

The Boston Globe: Does the Constitution empower the president to disregard a congressional statute limiting the deployment of troops—either by capping the number of troops that may be deployed to a particular country or by setting minimum home-stays between deployments? In other words, is that level of deployment management beyond the constitutional power of Congress to regulate?

Obama: No, the President does not have that power. To date, several Congresses have imposed limitations on the number of US troops deployed in a given situation. As President, I will not assert a constitutional authority to deploy troops in a manner contrary to an express limit imposed by Congress and adopted into law.

In October of 2002, while doing what radicals do, hanging out and speaking at an anti-war rally, Obama called the war in Iraq a dumb war. He believed it was a dumb war because using military force to remove a dictator of unsavory character is just plain dumb. He was speaking at the anti-war rally because he opposed the war in Iraq on the premise that it was dumb, and he could quite possibly pickup a few votes along the way. Iraq was never a direct threat to the United States, so giving Saddam the boot with our military was bad foreign policy and dumb. Obama’s admirable and patriotic speech at the anti-war rally:

Now let me be clear. I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors.

At this juncture in their political careers, and after reading the statements regarding the president and war powers, Biden, Clinton, and Obama seem to repudiate the truth in perpetual paroxysms of prevarication. The truth is that which will only enhance their political expediency. After one week of non-war kinetic bombing of another country with our military, Obama relented to pressure to inform the American people why we are engaged in a war but not in a war. The delineation was 30 minutes in length. It happened at the National Defense University in Washington—war speeches are given from the Oval Office, and since this was a kinetic something or other, it warranted a historically non-war venue.

Parts of the speech contained Obama’s orthodox finger pointing—this is Obama’s default nuclear option: reference Bush, Iraq, and Afghanistan—which was delivered in a poorly orchestrated extraneous effort. The speech was a maze of incoherent, contradictory, and sophomorically disguised nomenclatures and terminology that were scattered about and lost in the maze along with Obama’s non-point.

Here is a summation of the speech as clearly as can be presented: There was no explanation why Congress was not consulted, no explanation of our military goal, and no explanation of the end game. Ousting Qaddafi is not the goal, but Obama wants him out. The military is not there to oust or kill Qaddafi, but his personal compound was bombed, but there is no connection. This mission is not to oust Qaddafi, but it is, but not really, technically, but if he did leave, it would not be because of our bombing. Disregard what Obama said two weeks ago about deposing Qaddafi, that is not what the goal is now, but if the goal is to oust Qaddafi, that is not why we are bombing Libya, except if maybe we are attempting to oust, but that is not the goal of this kinetic something or another.

With the assumption of being immune from self-indictment, Hillary Clinton made this bizarre and delusive statement defending Obama and herself regarding the bombings and their prior statements about presidential limitations of war acts:

Well, we would welcome congressional support, but I don’t think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama was speaking of several years ago. I think that this had a limited time-frame, a very clearly defined mission which we are in the process of fulfilling.

Obama’s razor thin veneer of a decoy for preventing the massacre of the rebels by Qaddafi was too far behind the curve for legitimacy’s sake; he will protect and bolster the innocent and covetously righteous seeking rebels that are fighting the good fight against Qaddafi. Yes, indeed they are. These rebels are fighting for the sake of…they defending against…they are rising up against…. Now who are these rebels again to whom we have committed our military? Why are we at a non-war with Libya? Hillary Clinton doesn’t know. Barack Obama doesn’t know. Joe Biden doesn’t know. The CIA doesn’t know. All that is known is that they are fighting Qaddafi. Mike Dunn, Retired Air Force General, was able to define the rebels perfectly:

It’s a poorly defined group of mutually hostile and suspicious tribes and factions that have thus far, at any rate, failed to coalesce into a meaningful military force. We’d like to think this is a group of democratic Jeffersonian type of people that just are fighting for their freedom, when in reality we don’t know a lot about them.

Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, who is steadfast for this non-war, summed the rebels up nicely: the rebels are largely a mystery.

Here is what we do know about the rebels: we do know that we do not know who the rebels are; we do know that we do not know why they are fighting Qaddafi; we do know that we do not know what the outcome will be if they win; we do know that we do not know whether or not they will commit atrocities against the overthrown government and other non-rebels of Libya; we do know that we do not know if Al Qaeda is involved with the rebels; we do know that we do not know if jihadists that have fought against American troops make up some of the rebels. That much we do know.

Here is what we do know about the non-war: we do know that we unleashed a kinetic military, time-limited, scope-limited, overseas contingency non-war against Qaddafi complete with rockets, missiles, and various other things that explode because he was killing the rebels, or citizens. We do know that Qaddafi’s troopers began disguising themselves as the John Q. Publics of Libya. We do know that our beloved rebels, not being of the patient sort, starting killing all the John Q. Publics of Libya. We do know that NATO is angry about this turn of events, and told the rebels to stick with killing the designated bad guys only or NATO will start unleashing kinetic whatnots upon the rebels.

We do know that NATO threatened to bomb the rebels if they kept killing citizens along with Qaddafi’s troopers parading around as citizens. We do know that if the rebels, who are citizens, keep killing the John Q. Public sector of this non-war, instead of Qaddafi’s troopers, who are dressed like citizens, who are dressed like the rebels, who are being imitated by Qaddafi’s bad guys, then NATO may be forced to give them all a taste of Kinetic…, including citizens.

During a time of war, the President should be supported. But what if the President insists he never started a war, but merely engaged in an overseas contingency operation, a kinetic military action, a time-limited, scope-limited military operation, that he initiated without consulting Congress or preparing the American people, then immediately handed over command of our troops to NATO, turning over leadership to a foreigner military leader for the first time, then let other countries volunteer our military to the operation to defend rebels that we have no idea who they are, or what they stand for, are we obligated to support this President for a non-war for which neither he nor the country know why we are there or what we expect the outcome to be?

Not one constitutional scholar, political pundit, or political adversary has been able to explain more perfectly and lucidly that Barack Obama’s bombing of Libya without congressional approval was unconstitutional and illegal other than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. But it was Hillary Clinton’s statement to Brad Sherman (D-CA), that manifested Joe Biden’s self-fulfilling prophesy that only a monarch would indiscriminately use military force without congressional approval:

She said they are certainly willing to send reports [to us] and if they issue a press release, they’ll send that to us too. The White House would forge ahead with military action in Libya even if Congress passed a resolution constraining the mission. She admitted the administration would ignore any and all attempts by Congress to shackle President Obama’s power as commander in chief to make military and wartime decisions.

All hail the Monarch of these United States, Barack Obama.

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[Guest]

Great article!

[bonnie]

Great article!

It's lengthy but you do have to wonder how Obama decides what face to shave in the morning

[Guest]

Originally Posted By: RLH

Great article!

It's lengthy but you do have to wonder how Obama decides what face to shave in the morning

Yes...this is true.