What John Yoo Says
Posted on Mon Jul 16, 2007 at 12:26:08 PM EST
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The Daily Kos FP on what John Yoo says and how this means President Bush can attack Iran without Congressional authorization:
[John Yoo wrote that] the AUMF is "an express affirmation of the President's constitutional authorities by Congress." Not an authorization to use force, then, but an affirmation. An affirmation of what? That the power to use military force exists independent of this (or any other) act of Congress.
John Yoo is, of course, full of it, as Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman explained:
BA: The president has to get another authorization for a war against Iran. It isn't up to Nancy Pelosi or the House to prevent him; he doesn't have the constitutional authority to just expand the war. He does not have the authority to unilaterally invade Iran.... Air strikes would be an invasion. It's an act of war of an unambiguous variety....On a major incursion into another large Middle Eastern country, I believe that, when push comes to shove, the president will once again request the explicit authorization of Congress. When he was contemplating the invasion of Iraq, he was in a much stronger position politically -- and he was still obliged to request authorization
More.
Which reminds me, as Glenn Greenwald noted, John Yoo believes that the Congress can end the Iraq Debacle by not funding it:
Even John Yoo -- the most radical worshipper of limitless executive power and one of the architects of the administration's radical theories of lawlessness -- said in a February Op-Ed in The New York Times:The fact is, Congress has every power to end the war -- if it really wanted to. It has the power of the purse. . . . Not only could Congress cut off money, it could require scheduled troop withdrawals, shrink or eliminate units, or freeze weapons supplies. It could even repeal or amend the authorization to use force it passed in 2002. . . . But to stop President Bush's proposed troop surge, Congress doesn't have to do anything. It can just sit back and fail to enact the periodic supplemental spending measures required to keep the war going. Congress has wielded considerable power by just threatening such measures, as with President James K. Polk in the Mexican-American War and President Ronald Reagan in Lebanon after the 1983 barracks bombing.That Yoo and company recognize this power is not a sign of their reasonableness. They hardly have a choice. The Constitution unambiguously and expressly assigns these powers to Congress in Article I -- so clearly that even the Cheney wing does not dare deny these powers.
That impeachment proponents do not even recognize a Congressional power that even John Yoo accepts without question is indicative of the intellectually bereft argument that has to be made against defunding in order to prop up support for impeachment.
Yes, it is this type of argument that makes me strongly against what many impeachment proponents are doing to argue for their cause. And let's be clear, their cause is impeachment, not checking the President. Their cause is impeachment, not ending the war in Iraq. Their cause is impeachment, not stopping war with Iran.
Impeachment is the holy grail. Nothing else.
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