It starts , as I have long maintained, by rightfully framing this conflict as an OCCUPATION and not a WAR. As such, Bush is an Occupation President ~ not a War president ~ A term that we in the blogosphere have been using for four years and which implies far more responsibility for its moral failure than he is willing to assume.

Excerpt: Using the term "war." Literally, a war is a battle between two armies over territorial control. It is over when one army defeats the other. That happened in May, 2003, with the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime and when President Bush stood on that battleship under the "Mission Accomplished" banner. At that point an "occupation" began - an "occupation" of a country engaged in ethnic and religious conflict. Bush is technically no longer a war president; he is an occupation president. "War" has given the president a chance to claim extraordinary powers. There are other terms to use: occupation, military engagement, military operation, and so on. If Senator Jim Webb can use the term "occupation," as he did in his campaign, so can every other elected official.

Allen L Roland     http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2007/05/28.html

The Framers Got It Right: Congress Is the Decider

By George Lakoff and Glenn Smith

 Friday 25 May 2007

The Rockridge Institute issues a call to action in response to Congress's passage of the Iraq supplemental spending bill.

Critics of Congress's passage this week of the Iraq supplemental spending bill lament a lack of political courage. But Congress would find it easier to act courageously if the public understood the constitutional stakes. And that public understanding requires correct and persistent framing by Congress itself. What needs to have been framed - indeed what still needs to be framed - is Congress's constitutional responsibility and power to set the course on military missions like Iraq.

 Here is what two of the country's most distinguished scholars on Constitutional powers testified to Congress on January 30, 2007:

"Congress possesses substantial constitutional authority to regulate ongoing military operations and even to bring them to an end."

- David J. Barron, Harvard Law School

"The legislative judgment to take the country to war carries with it a duty throughout the conflict to decide that military force remains in the national interest. ... Congress is responsible for monitoring what it has set in motion. In the midst of war, there are no grounds for believing that the President's authority is superior to the collective judgment of its elected representatives. Congress has both the constitutional authority and the responsibility to retain control and recalibrate national policy whenever necessary."

- Louis Fisher, Constitutional Specialist, Library of Congress

Here's what this means:

 1  |  2  |  3  |  4