Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker (R – TN) has promised “robust” hearings on President Obama’s authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) against ISIS when everyone returns from the Presidents’ Day recess. It’s looking like an uphill battle though.
The AUMF was presented as very limited in President Obama’s initial speech on it last week, which turned off the hawks. When the White House insisted the language was “deliberately vague” to allow all sorts of hawkish actions, they lost the doves.
White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough says the bill’s language was designed “to get a strong bipartisan supporting,” and demanded that Congress not “pass on the issue.”
The language is reading less as a compromise at this point than as a deliberate attempt at manipulation, trying to convince everybody that the wording is so vague it doesn’t mean anything, and trying to assure everyone in Congress that Obama will do whatever they’re hoping he’ll do.
In the end, there seems to be very little trust in President Obama just handling the war as he sees fit, and not much of an appetite to give him an AUMF which is a de facto blank check for a unilateral policy on a war he started on his own months ago.
And this cowardly "bi=partisanship" is supposed to be an acceptable substitute for leadership? This type of an approach has been characteristic of Obama's handling of every issue he's confronted since he took office; you see it worked for him when he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. And the results are just as typical: abysmal!! Someone needs to kick this lying little toad in the ass. His presidency is a disaster.
Where are the Democrats screaming about "illegal wars" now hmmmm?
Obama got us into this by not leaving a residual force. Its the Obama war now.
Obama has sat on his hands while ISIS took over Iraq and the middle east. He is a fool domestically and internationally. Obama has ruined our country.
You pick a fight with Russia over an area which is part of their near abroad.
You ruined health insurance. My health insurance is up to $450/month from just $200/month. My car insurance is currently only $25/month (from Insurance Panda) and renter’s only $15/month (from Eagle)…both private enterprise… but who knows when Obama will try to step in and socialize that?
With everything Obama touched in shambles, Barry needs a new job. You mean to tell me our troops are supposed to go re-train the Iraqi soldiers who shed their uniforms and ran? Again? Couldn't 5.6 billion be used for something more useful in our own country? The guy needs to step down before he is impeached.
The Republicans want war against Muslims in the Middle East, in multiple countries, for Israel, forever.