President Obama formally notified Congress today of the beginning of airstrikes against the Iraqi town of Amerli, as required under the War Powers Act. Administration officials say the attack was “consistent with the military missions we have outlined to date in Iraq.”
Under the War Powers Act, the president is allowed only to launch such unapproved operations in the case of “a national emergency,” which would be a difficult case to make in Iraq, and also he can only continue the war for 60 days without a Congressional authorization for the use of military force.
The 60 day clock really should have been ticking from the start of airstrikes earlier in August, but could be argued to begin with the Amerli strikes, which are what the administration notified Congress about.
Either way, continuing the war beyond 60 days would be a blatant violation of the law, though not one without precedent. In 2011, President Obama informed Congress of the attacks in Libya, and continued US military involvement in the war for months after the 60 day deadline passed without authorization.
Informing Congress at all suggests the president views the new Iraq War as likely to last more than 60 days, though he has shown a reluctance to seek actually Congressional approval for any of his wars, viewing the notifications as good enough.
In Libya, President Obama argued the war wasn’t technically a war, and that US obligations under NATO required its continuation with or without Congress. The former is going to be an even harder case to make in the Iraq War, though NATO is expected to discuss ISIS at this week’s summit, and may expand the war into an overall NATO operation, which President Obama has suggested in the past trumps Congress.
Das Reich lives again! Herr Obama continues the never-ending rape of Iraq under one guise or another. Powell said you break it you bought it, and indeed we have.
I can't imagine the decision to overthrow Iraq took into account the notion that we have spent FAR more in $$ and prestige than was initially calculated.
Was it really so bad to leave the Iraqis alone? I wonder how it would be today, had the Bush Crime Family not intervened? What would the price of oil be like? Certainly it would have continued to flow, creating better lives for all those Iraqis who would have still been alive?
Hey, you're not supposed to ask questions like that!
In the New American Empire, peace is never an option. Get that straight!
"Get that straight," indeed. The "national emergency" is that we were ever in Iraq (and everywhere else abroad) to begin with.
Preaching to the choir here, but it doesn't matter who the President is or was. Same goes for Congress. They all march to the same, dollar-denominated drumbeat. The vetting process is VERY thorough.
If Saddam Hussein were still running Iraq, you couldn't run large scale terrorism there. And he'd still manage that with a much lower incarceration rate than the USg's drug rackets entail. Iraqis would largely be left alone.
After 60 days congress wouldn't do anything anyway because they're all for perpetual war.
Hopefully, the Empire will fail again, and leave with their silly weapons, slogans, nasty rashes, intestinal worms, nightmares, hubris, fake patriotism, propaganda,psychoses, paranoia, and their bloodthirsty christain god.
But they will never admit to failure…and they will always find another victim to grind under their heels…and they will never leave.
I'm not so sure they did fail.
In August of 2000, Saddam Hussein announced he was going to sell Iraq's oil for euros instead of dollars. The first thing invading U.S. troops did was take over the Ministry of Oil and switch back to dollars. Mission accomplished.
Same story for Libya. They were about to switch to a gold-backed dinar.
Same story for Ukraine. All the pipes that feed Russian oil to the EU, in particular Germany, go through Ukraine.
Many countries are working out trade deals that circumvent the dollar. Interestingly, none of the OPEC nations are a part of this.
A tiny group of political and financial elite have asserted themselves the exclusive privilege of creating money out of nothing. Lately they've been creating a whole lot of it:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE/
It inflated the tech bubble, and the housing bubble. Now it's inflating stock and bond prices while the economy stagnates. The value of these Federal Reserve Magic Tokens is maintained by forcing as much of the world to buy oil with them as possible. U.S. foreign and military strategy can be understood in this light. Iran in particular is a threat to this monetary monopoly. Avoiding death and destruction and chaos is not their measure of success. To the contrary, it advances their cause.
It is the congress responsibility to do so, as when John McCain supported ISIS and to show the world who the USG/congress supporting is non but ISIS and those who might become the second ISIS if USG continues supporting them.
It is Barack Hussein Obama's responsibility, to make it up to the people who trusted him, so is the us Democratic Party political wing to push for a free of any charge to governments of the region providing them with military equipment that they need ( Israel-Saudis-UAE not qualified) so that they can defeat the Saudis/UAE barbarians once and for all.
Afghanistan and us military equipment that they are going to live there, is a good source of help. Is close to Iraq and Syria and costs less to leave it for Taliban to create another Islamic caliphate sanctuary for the people of Afghanistan with American ammunition and hardware.
Catching William Bennett and Bing West on and off / in and out of where the radio's on. I'm hearing from Bing West a certain charlatan-voice pattern that I remember from e.g. Ludwig Halbig (I'd suggest there are charlatan training centers somewhere…). Also picking up some old themes. From memory:
In response to a caller asking if he should be telling his grandkids they'll pretty much be fighting in Iraq forever: ~they don't have to … less than one percent do… you don't wanna serve your country that's fine, plenty do.~
Probably prior to that: ~every single one of my marines would be saying "yeah let me over there."~
Of course, about one year ago, active military were sneaking their faceless pics out telling the world they really don't want to fight for AQ in Syria. That was basically the strongest message they could get behind in a unified way (the less obvious contradictions surrounding ISIS would be dividing them now). I identified with that from my own experience: it's extremely hard to tell a war sl-t that you don't/didn't especially want or approve of the war after low-lifes spend months trying to create that impression. As property, you're also a propaganda prop. They don't just dress you funny, they turn you into their astroturf. If only you could get some word out…
From at least three wars, pattern I see runs: make someone evil, make a ~'defining event', cut off sympathy for the 'collaterals' everybody half-understands will be maimed or killed in the process of burning their witch… But the key is: there's then a remainder –a holy people– that salesmen need to-be-seen-with. The ones that everyone agrees to wax 'concerned' about–that it'd be hard to sell them on being unconcerned about (at least at the beginning). Among those are 'troops:' a salesman needs to be seen-with-them, so to speak, just like the old politicians-kissing-babies bit. Ergo, "support our troops," and "every single one of them is eager to go burn your witches. Just that the bleeding hearts won't let 'em." Both basically the same lie generally told prior to screwing 'troops' with another 'national' misadventure.
And there it is laid bare in your final paragraph. The real barbarians in this so-called War On Terror are we, the secular Western fundamentalists. As long as global supremacists of whatever stripe are in charge the world will NEVER run out of 'witches to burn' (staggering turn of phrase btw), nor "a holy people" (dead-on memorable), to sanctify and mourn when blowback comes. The fundamentalist nature of the bipartisan crusade for hegemony in this country becomes crystal clear when an American Secretary Of Stare can go on national TV and proudly proclaim that the death of five-hundred thousand Iraqi children is "worth it". My God, worth what? Just as one person's freedom-fighter is another person's terrorist, one people's 9/11 heroes are another people's collateral damage. It is not only foolish, it is profoundly inhuman to belittle the suffering of the other side's non-disputants.
Curious if "Secretary of Stare" was an intentional misspelling…haven't heard such a thing yet, but the current one does look like corpse…
My God, worth what?
Right question. There's a 'famous' line from a Charles Forte book (semi-new to me, maybe not to you)…once apparently misquoted as 'I think we're farmed,' it's on the web as 'I think we're property' e.g., at http://www.resologist.net/damn12.htm . It was part of the answer to the recurring theme of why hypothetical (perhaps slipping towards articles-of-faith) beings don't make an effort to come talk to humans –the premise being, as Forte identified, that we'd be inherently more interesting to them than, say, our livestock are to us… …If television could serve hay, would you ever speak to your meat? Name the meat-units? Phone them and tell them you care? This also explains Albright's perspective. Yea, e'en though she spoke out loud, it's not really fair to say she communicated with us.
Sorry persnipoles, I can't seem to reply immediately below your response.
No, "Stare" was just a typo on my end (Kerry is a lugubrious fellow though), but in all truth, and I hesitate to ask because it doesn't change the point you make, did you intend "reminder" or "remainder"? The vets remain with us for generations, and are the most visible reminder many of us have to the wars we wage. As such, they are fodder for the "salesman" (another bon mot) running for re-election and the japing ninnies of the finktanks and media telling the soldiers what they (the servicemen) think about our endless wars and police actions. Lo these twenty years you can't swing a cat without hearing a stenographer sizing up the next Hitler to be overthrown or your local jackass talkbot cheerleading for the next Islamic domino to topple. How is it in our interest to destabilize the whole of the Middle East and provoke the icy resolve of Maximum Vlad? Is the Monroe Doctrine for America alone? We've departed from our senses. We've papered the world with bad debt but rarely pass up the opportunity to antagonize our largest creditors. American culture, a war culture, is sick and ruinously expensive.
I've talked about insects. I don't remember ever having talked to one. But I have never, and I mean never, named an insect. We should fear this day, a day that has come, when our leaders have convinced themselves that the only way they can lead is at Olympian remove and with Olympian disdain.
Definitely 'remainder.' The process makes witches and needs a remainder from a given cycle of witch selection … for one reason, just to still have folks to sick on the witches that don't feel like witches (i.e., next) themselves–and that remainder would be a diverse set, each subset having potential uses, 'troops' having at least two… . 'Reminder' might change the point some (in my little world).
…I've wondered if it was a coincidence that Ben-Zion Netanyahu wrote on the Inquisition…while his son apparently sought to replace dem commies with da terersts.
…s'ppose I've never called an insect by name because I could never read his collar tags… Doesn't make me feel Olympian…but I s'pect there are those for whom it would if I were that insect…
America has been cursed by its own self-inflicted warns- wars upon wars based on false flags. Who ask that country to rule the world? America will soon return to Libya after Iraq, that will strangle their economy more and more.
Good God Washington annoysd