The Senate Blank Check for a War on Iran ?? from Bush and democrats?

The Senate's Blank Check for War on Iran


by Chris Floyd


by Chris Floyd





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As you may know – unless you rely on the corporate media for your news, of course – yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously declared that Iran was committing acts of war against the United States: a 97-0 vote to give George W. Bush a clear and unmistakable casus belli for attacking Iran whenever Dick Cheney tells him to.


The bipartisan Senate resolution – the brainchild (or rather the bilechild) of Fightin' Joe Lieberman – affirmed as official fact all of the specious, unproven, ever-changing allegations of direct Iranian involvement in attacks on the American forces now occupying Iraq. The Senators appear to have relied heavily on the recent New York Times story by Michael Gordon that stovepiped unchallenged Pentagon spin directly onto the paper's front page. As Firedoglake points out, John McCain cited the heavily criticized story on the Senate floor as he cast his vote.


It goes without saying that all of this is a nightmarish replay of the run-up to the war of aggression against Iraq: The NYT funneling false flag stories from Bush insiders. Warmongers citing the NYT stories as "proof" justifying any and all action to "defend the Homeland." Credulous and craven Democratic politicians swallowing the Bush line hook and sinker.


To be sure, stout-hearted Dem tribunes like Dick Durbin insisted that their support for declaring that Iran is "committing acts of war" against the United States should not be taken as an "authorization of military action." This is shaky-knees mendacity at its finest. Having officially affirmed that Iran is waging war on American forces, how, pray tell, can you then deny the president when he asks (if he asks) for authorization to "defend our troops"? Answer: you can't. And you know it.


This vote is the clearest signal yet that there will be no real opposition to a Bush Administration attack on Iran. This is yet another blank check from these slavish, ignorant goons; Bush can cash it anytime. This is, in fact, the post-surge "Plan B" that's been mooted lately in the Beltway. As you recall, there was much throwing about of brains on the subject of reviving the "Iraq Study Group" plan when the "surge" (or to call it by its right name, the "punitive escalation") inevitably fails. Bush put the kibosh on that this week ("Him not gonna do nothin' that Daddy's friends tell him to do! Him a big boy, him the decider!"), but that doesn't mean there isn't a fall-back position – or rather, a spring-forward position: an attack on Iran, to rally the nation behind the "war leader" and reshuffle the deck in Iraq.


Of course, the United States is already at war with Iran. We are directing covert ops and terrorist attacks inside Iran, with the help of groups that our own government has declared terrorist renegades. We are kidnapping Iranian officials in Iraq and holding them hostage. We have a bristling naval armada on Iran's doorstep, put there for the express purpose of threatening Tehran with military action. The U.S. Congress has overwhelmingly passed measures calling for the overthrow of the Iranian government. And now the U.S. Senate has unanimously declared that Iran is waging war on America, and has given official notice that this will not be tolerated. It is only a very small step to move from this war in all but name to the full monty of an overt military assault.


Now draw these dangerous streams together, and you have a portrait of the blunt and brutal group-mind at work in the leadership of the world's most powerful nation. The folly, fantasy and death-fetish of the Bush Regime – long evident to anyone who cared to see – were finally "revealed" in the mainstream media recently by the quasi-official Establishment oracle, Bob Woodward. His latest insider portrait, Plan of Attack, offers – in the usual, easily-gummed pabulum form – a few tastes of the bitter truth behind the Regime's mad, ruinous war crime in Iraq.


The corrosive nihilism at the heart of the enterprise ate through the gaudily-painted surface most tellingly in a single anecdote. Woodward asks George W. Bush how he thinks history will regard his adventure in Iraq. Bush, gazing out the window, shrugs and waves the question away. "History, we don't know," he says. "We'll all be dead." No fine, faith-filled talk here about God and Jesus and the immortal soul responsible for its actions throughout all eternity – the kind of zealous patter Bush favors in public statements. This was just the cold, rotten, meaningless core of his grand vision: "We'll all be dead." So who cares? Après moi, le deluge.


Who would have thought the floodwaters of this death vision would have risen so high again so soon? Yet here they are again, beating against the gates.


UPDATE: Jonathan Schwarz points out that all of the Senate's Democratic candidates for president voted for Lieberman's Iran War amendment: Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, and Joe Biden. Just in case you were expecting a saner foreign policy after the 2008 election.


UPDATE II: Meanwhile, George Milhouse Bush wants to make one thing perfectly clear: even in the highly unlikely (if not totally impossible) event that the Senate grows a rudimentary spine and tries to place the slightest obstacle in the way of a military attack on Iran, the Commander Guy will peremptorily veto it and instigate the mass murder anyway.


Spencer Ackerman at TPM Cafe found this gem of arrogant defiance in "a little-noticed letter from the White House to Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee." The main subject of the letter was a similar vow to veto any restrictions on Bush's ability to continue his war crime in Iraq. The passage concerning Iran might seem redundant now, after the Senate's vote on Lieberman's "Persia delenda

The Senate Blank Check for a War on Iran ?? from Bush and democrats?
That vote is only symbolic. It was not needed.





Presidents also have the right to attack other countries anytime they deem it necessary (and congress has the right to declare war). High school graduates know F.D.R. and Truman decided the outcome of World War 2, not congress.





The constitution gives presidents the right to attack countries without the permission of congress (Article II Section 2). Any attempt by congress to limit a president's constitutional right would violate "separation of powers".





1) Constitution:


Article II, Section 2


"President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States."


Article II, Section 1.


"The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America."





2) SUPREME COURT RULINGS:


a) Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763, 789 (1950) (President has authority to deploy United States armed forces "abroad or to any particular region")


b) Fleming v. Page, 50 U.S. (9 How.) 603, 615 (1850) ("As commander-in-chief, [the President] is authorized to direct the movements of the naval and military forces placed by law at his command, and to employ them in the manner he may deem most effectual")


c) Loving v. United States, 517 U.S. 748, 776 (1996) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (The "inherent powers" of the Commander in Chief "are clearly extensive.")


d) Maul v. United States, 274 U.S. 501, 515-16 (1927) (Brandeis %26amp; Holmes, JJ., concurring) (President "may direct any revenue cutter to cruise in any waters in order to perform any duty of the service")


e) Massachusetts v. Laird, 451 F.2d 26, 32 (1st Cir. 1971) (the President has "power as Commander-in-Chief to station forces abroad"); Authority to Use United States Military Forces in Somalia, 16 Op. O.L.C. 6 (1992).
Reply:Just goes to show that the US is a rogue nation.
Reply:sorry to long to read
Reply:Iran declared war on the United States in 1978 and has reaffirmed that position repeatedly. It does intelligent people well to remeber the lessons of World War Two. In the case of the Jews, if someone says they are going to exterminate you, believe them. In the case of France if someone declares War(Germany) on you believe it. They both ignored what was being said and they both paid severly for ignoring a threat.





If your neighbor repeatedly told you he was going to kill your dog would you ignore him, and if so if he does eventually kill your dog, who's fault is it? Yours or his...it's yours it's not like he didn't warn you. Iran is the same technically since President Eisenhower screwed up the relations with Iran they have wanted to destroy the US ever since.





Iranian Students were trying to build a Democracy during Ike's presidency and he chose to support the Sha a King over democracy and we have looked like Hypocrits ever since. He told the Sha to get the country under control without realizing that the middle eastern idea of getting control of something is to be done by fear and torture. So the Sha tortured and terrorized the citizens who were only seeking a Democracy. Now the only hope to avoid future generations being thrown into a World War again is to get a Democracy up an running in Iraq. Have you been to Iraq, I have, you should go and stay a while and talk to the citizens there. Because they do want the Democracy to work and most of them are pissed off because they don't have our standards of living yet. Which by the way America didn't attain over night we had to work for it. They are starting to understand that now. I hope we do kick the crap out of Iran and this time give it over to the students they aren't as ignorant as the religiously brainwashed masses of Iran.