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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (178612)	12/23/2005 4:52:26 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Bilow, re: "To complain that there are lots of Republicans that are not veterans is silly." But that wasn't the point, was it? Of course there are many more Democrats and Republicans in Congress and in various administrations who did not serve than there are who did serve. What distinguishes many of the people on the Republican list, however, is the fact that they're such gunfighter-tough talkers willing to send others to war at the drop of a hat, or dollar, or barrel of oil, or to prove we're tough, or for some silly notion of maybe remaking civilization in our image, or something. It almost seems that they feel like warriors themselves when they send someone else to pull the triggers and take the bullets. And many others take the bait. How many times have we heard what a tough man President Bush is and how he can't be pushed around? And how many times have we had to listen to the "coward" label for those who strongly oppose the war in Congress? Cut and run? Murtha challenged as a coward by the Freshman lady Congressman and some in the administration calling him a cut and runner until they saw that it would backfire on them? Give it a rest. There are currently a lot more war wimps on the Republican side than there are on the Democratic side and simple statistics on the number of people who did not serve won't change that. Ed

To: Bilow who wrote (178612)	12/23/2005 8:19:22 AM
From: sylvester80	Respond to of 281500

NEWS: Daschle: Congress Denied Bush War Powers in U.S. By Barton Gellman Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, December 23, 2005; A04 washingtonpost.com The Bush administration requested, and Congress rejected, war-making authority "in the United States" in negotiations over the joint resolution passed days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to an opinion article by former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) in today's Washington Post. Daschle's disclosure challenges a central legal argument offered by the White House in defense of the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. It suggests that Congress refused explicitly to grant authority that the Bush administration now asserts is implicit in the resolution. The Justice Department acknowledged yesterday, in a letter to Congress, that the president's October 2001 eavesdropping order did not comply with "the 'procedures' of" the law that has regulated domestic espionage since 1978. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, established a secret intelligence court and made it a criminal offense to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant from that court, "except as authorized by statute." There is one other statutory authority for wiretapping, which covers conventional criminal cases. That law describes itself, along with FISA, as "the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . may be conducted." Yesterday's letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General William Moschella, asserted that Congress implicitly created an exception to FISA's warrant requirement by authorizing President Bush to use military force in response to the destruction of the World Trade Center and a wing of the Pentagon. The congressional resolution of Sept. 18, 2001, formally titled "Authorization for the Use of Military Force," made no reference to surveillance or to the president's intelligence-gathering powers, and the Bush administration made no public claim of new authority until news accounts disclosed the secret NSA operation. But Moschella argued yesterday that espionage is "a fundamental incident to the use of military force" and that its absence from the resolution "cannot be read to exclude this long-recognized and essential authority to conduct communications intelligence targeted at the enemy." Such eavesdropping, he wrote, necessarily included conversations in which one party is in the United States. Daschle's article reveals an important new episode in the resolution's legislative history. As drafted, and as finally passed, the resolution authorized the president "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons" who "planned, authorized, committed or aided" the Sept. 11 attacks. "Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words 'in the United States and' after 'appropriate force' in the agreed-upon text," Daschle wrote. "This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused." Daschle wrote that Congress also rejected draft language from the White House that would have authorized the use of force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States," not only against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. Republican legislators involved in the negotiations could not be reached for comment last night.