Where is the authority coming from? If the President is relying on the War Powers Act to be the stepping stone to a greater war anywhere, this is Day 90 and counting.
This is an election year and Congress is sidestepping it's responsibilities to appear to be out of the picture. It is time to start reviewing where the authority is coming from and file suits to end this aggression.
June 18, 2014
Associated Press
This is an election year and Congress is sidestepping it's responsibilities to appear to be out of the picture. It is time to start reviewing where the authority is coming from and file suits to end this aggression.
June 18, 2014
Associated Press
...In addition, (click here) an authorization for the use of military force in Iraq, passed by Congress in 2002, is still on the books and could potentially be used as a rationale for the White House acting without additional approval. Before the outburst of violence in Iraq, Obama had called for that authorization to be repealed.
Some lawmakers were outraged when Obama launched military action in Libya in 2011 with minimal consultation with Congress and no formal authorization from Capitol Hill. More recently, some in Congress have complained that the White House did not consult on final plans for releasing five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for freeing detained American Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
Some lawmakers were outraged when Obama launched military action in Libya in 2011 with minimal consultation with Congress and no formal authorization from Capitol Hill. More recently, some in Congress have complained that the White House did not consult on final plans for releasing five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for freeing detained American Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
White House officials offered no timeline Wednesday for how soon Obama might decide on how to respond to the fast-moving militants from the group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, which has seized Mosul, Tikrit and other towns in Iraq as the country’s military melted away.
We have to close the gap on any potential for war escalation. The British press has been driving fear about al Qaeda all over again. By January 2015, if there are enough votes for war in the Congress, it might be Bush's Iraq all over again. Returning to war has to be a re-election issue. Pictures of bin Laden all over again. I doubt he looks the same right now.
We have to close the gap on any potential for war escalation. The British press has been driving fear about al Qaeda all over again. By January 2015, if there are enough votes for war in the Congress, it might be Bush's Iraq all over again. Returning to war has to be a re-election issue. Pictures of bin Laden all over again. I doubt he looks the same right now.
Last updated at 14:06 ET
19 June 2014
19 June 2014
By Frank Gardner
BBC security correspondent
Nearly 13 years (click here) on from the devastating 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda, the group, its affiliates and its descendants, in all their various guises, are still in business. So who are they? And how, despite such a vast multinational effort, has this happened?
There is little left of the original al-Qaeda organisation as founded in 1989 by Abdullah Azzam and Osama Bin Laden in the wake of the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan. Bin Laden himself was tracked down and killed in Pakistan in 2011.
His successor, an uncharismatic and reclusive Egyptian surgeon called Ayman Zawahiri, is still at large, issuing occasional statements online but criticised by jihadists for being increasingly irrelevant to today's fast-moving events....
Iraq is not NATO. We have no obligation to Great Britain if they want to fight wars around the globe. Sometimes imperialism is a bad habit that is hard to break.
Iraq is not NATO. We have no obligation to Great Britain if they want to fight wars around the globe. Sometimes imperialism is a bad habit that is hard to break.
