Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution states that the power to declare war
is granted to Congress. While the President is command in chief of our forces,
only Congress can declare the war.
So why is it that Congress holds this awesome responsibility, yet the
President can authorize major attacks on a nation without a Congressional vote
of war. Yes, Congress did vote to give President Bush authority to invade Iraq
in October of 2002. Even so, our military along with the British military was
launching major attacks in Iraq in September 2002 (see an article published by The Nation. We were bombing Saddam’s
major air defenses and crippling his military all while Congress and the
citizens of the nation were being lead to believe that President Bush was doing
everything in his power to diplomatically resolve the situation. In a sense he
was bullying Saddam into taking a defensive stance and strike back so that
President Bush could say “see he is an evil man who intends to harm us”, thereby
giving him more favorable support to attack.
Saddam was smart, he knew what trap was being bated and he refused to bite.
This just upset the President more and gave him greater ambitions to wage war.
His bullying tactics weren’t working so now that he had violated the
Constitution by starting this war without Congressional approval, he had to get
it.
He mustard up false intelligence to say that Saddam was developing Weapons of
Mass Destruction to use against the United States and it’s allies. A claim that
we now know to be wrong. An appropriate analogy to this would be two kids on a
long car trip. One child silently taunts the other child until such time that
the victim of the taunting lashes out against his aggressor. The taunting child
then screams to mommy and daddy that he is being picked on.
Proof emerged in the Downing Street memo that President Bush had plans to
launch an attack against Saddam Hussein in the summer of 2002. It even states
that intelligence would be altered to better the platform in which we would
attack.
The President, by offensively attacking a nation that was not a security
threat to the United States, committed a crime against the constitution. He did
not have sex with an intern, then lie about it. He did something far worse, he
waged a war that has caused our country irreparable harm. He has destroyed our
standing in the world, and in fact opened up Iraq to more terrorists, thereby
aiding our enemies in the war against terrorism, which could be construed as an
act of treason.
The President must answer to these crimes and be held accountable for them.
We have lost over 1600 American soldiers because of this war of lies. Our
countries economy is crumbling because of it, and now other nations who silently
opposed us are now taking stronger stances against us because they know how we
bullied Saddam.
We must start making amends with the world. I urge everyone who reads this to
please write your congressman and urge a full congressional inquiry into the
facts leading up to the war. It takes one member of Congress to start the
impeachment process, and this would be the appropriate avenue to try and get the
truth out. By subpoenaing top cabinet officials, past and present, perhaps one
will be compelled to tell the truth under oath or face the charge of perjury,
the same crime that led to the vote of impeachment for Bill Clinton.
Remember, George Bush said on the eve of the official invasion that “We are
doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq”. That has been proven wrong now,
so how can we trust him when he says the same thing about Korea.