âThe United States does not seek to fight the Syrian Government or
pro-Syrian-Government forces,â the State Department responded Wednesday
in a letter provided to TPM.
What? Until Trump stopped it a few weeks ago the US has been supplying weapons to the anti-Assad Free Syria Army for years. Check YouTube âFSA TOW missilesâ. Theyâve been whacking the Syrian army, Hezbollah and Iranian fighters in Syria for years using US provided anti-tank weapons.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) reacted with surprise when the House Appropriations Committee voted overwhelmingly in June to support her amendment sunsetting the 2001 AUMF and leaving eight months for Congress to write a new one.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) subsequently stripped the amendment before it reached the House floor for a vote as part of a much larger bill.
Ain´t democracy grand?
The AUMF needs to be sun-setted. It was bad enough when we didn´t have a crazy man living in the WH, but now we do.
âThe United States has sufficient legal authorityâŚâ
Wow! Brilliant! And so incisive! Just the kind of in-depth analysis I was looking for!
Iâll sleep better tonight, thatâs for sure!
Only the best people âŚ
What should be done (or at least discussed) is Congress finally getting around to.asking why Mattisâs current request for a new AUMF is unreasonable.
Now he might regret asking them for an explanation (let alone, a new âcredit cardâ), but until im inevitably made into an optimistic liar (again), im going to give Mattis some props.
âA false impression of disunity during a time of war.â
Hasnât Oceana always been at war with Eastasia?
Well, I think the AUMF was overly broad, and a really bad precedent. You end up with stuff like this:
From Albania to Uruguay, Algeria to Uzbekistan, Americaâs most elite forcesâNavy SEALs and Army Green Berets among themâwere deployed to 138 countries in 2016,
Maybe these missions were all perfectly justified, and maybe there weren´t very negative consequences in terms of our national self-interest, but I doubt it. The military needs oversight, and Congress should do its job instead of abdicating their responsibility.
We take these truths to be self evident, that the authorization âto use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,â clearly allows us to attack the military of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 in our campaign against an organization that did not exist at that time.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)
If I remember correctly, Barbara Lee was the only vote against the AUMF in 2001 in both the House and the Senate. Her objections to the bill have proved to be well founded:
That was mostly by choice/necessity.
Agree/pertaining to this point, ya speaking to the choir.
Having said that, that problem lies with GOP House n Senate leadership.
More war was what I was asking for just yesterday.
/s
This is all the more ominous after Tillersonâs comments about possible war with North Korea in his rare press conference the other day.
If I remember this right, Tillerson thinks âa couple hundred thousand deadâ on the Korean peninsula an ok price to pay.
And Tillerson doesnât have enough cred with the WH to get a REAL diplomat (vs a Treasury Dept retread) for the east asian deputy post.
Itâs gonna be a long, hot August.
I could go into a long, detailed discourse over why this is so wrong. But the fact that 16 years after its knee-jerk passage, the âLegalâ monstrosity that is the AUMF still exists as an âinstrumentâ of policy speaks for itself
As to what (whatâs left of) Foggy Bottom says in this case, Two words will suffice to express my opinion of what âStateâ thinks in this case.
Bovine Scatology