As David's been discussing, Charles Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, says there should be a boycott of law firms defending Gitmo detainees. Too bad one of those firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison is representing Scooter Libby in his trial that starts Monday.
Guess Scooter won't be honoring the boycott.
--Josh Marshall
The Pentagon is disavowing the comments made by Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Stimson, saying they don't represent the views of the Department of Defense or the thinking of its leadership.
--David Kurtz
I've been digging a little deeper into the incendiary comments made in a radio interview this week by Charles Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, who suggested that corporations should consider boycotting law firms representing the detainees at Guantanamo. Some of those law firms are among the nation's largest and most respected firms.
In an earlier post I noted the odd convergence of events. On Thursday, Stimson called out defense attorneys during an interview on Federal News radio. On Friday, an unnamed senior administration official showed up in a WSJ op-ed piece written by Robert Pollock essentially saying the same thing about a boycott that Stimson had said the day before. And all of this was apparently prompted, if that's the right word, by a FOIA request from conservative talk radio host Monica Crowley for the names of all the lawyers and law firms representing detainees.
In response, I heard from TPM Reader WS, who works for a St. Louis television station and says he was invited by the Department of Defense to fly down to Gitmo last month for a tour of the detainee facilities. In a phone interview, WS told me that Stimson, Pollock and representatives of Federal News radio were all with him on the trip to Gitmo. Also in attendance were a Department of Defense lawyer and a Marine Corps press flack. While Crowley has visited Gitmo recently, according to her website, she was not on this particular trip, according to WS.
The group flew to Gitmo from Washington, D.C., on December 20, aboard a government-owned Gulfstream jet, according to WS. The tour lasted 6-7 hours, he said, and the group returned the same day. No cameras or other recording equipment was allowed. Stimson served essentially as a tour guide for the media representatives, on a trip intended to emphasize that the detainees are well-treated and well-cared for. Stimson told WS that he was trying to schedule at least one similar media tour to Gitmo each month.
WS says they were shown detainees, coming within 20 feet of detainees who were in a fenced exercise area, and that they appeared to be in good condition. Stimson claimed that the detainees received better treatment than if they were treated as prisoners of war in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, and that the new prison facilities at Gitmo were modeled after prisons in Michigan and Indiana, according to WS. Stimson touted the presence of an office of the International Red Cross on-site, WS says.
Stimson also complained that detainees were taking advantage of visits by their lawyers to convey information about their treatment at Gitmo with the intention of making Gitmo look bad, but WS said Stimson made no other mention of detainee lawyers and did not make any mention of a boycott.
Incidentally, WS has no idea why he in particular was invited on the trip, but he couldn't resist the chance to go to Cuba. He has no plans to air an account of his trip.
--David Kurtz
Nothing like a little coordination between the Pentagon and the right wing noise machine.
The suggestion by Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, that corporations should consider boycotting law firms who are doing pro bono work representing detainees at Gitmo, came after he received a FOIA request from conservative radio host and former Nixon groupie Monica Crowley seeking a list of all the lawyers and law firms representing detainees.
Later, during a radio interview (not with Crowley), Stimson--who was a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., specializing in felony domestic violence and child abuse cases before going to the Pentagon to oversee the detainee program--read from the list produced to Crowley and indicated that he expected the names of the lawyers and law firms to be a big story in coming days:
“I think the news story that you’re really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA request through a major news organization, somebody asked, ‘Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there?’ and you know what, it’s shocking.”
For her part, Crowley made a recent trip to Guantanamo and on her radio show is marking the fifth anniversary of the detainee facility there: "We're there, we're fair, and we're not going anywhere!"
As the New York Times noted, the fifth anniversary of the Gitmo prison was also the peg for a Robert Pollock op-ed in Friday's Wall Street Journal which cited the list and attributed this quote to an unnamed “senior U.S. official": “Corporate C.E.O.’s seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists.”
A series of completely unconnected random events, I'm sure.
--David Kurtz
The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.The comments by Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, produced an instant torrent of anger from lawyers, legal ethics specialists and bar association officials, who said Friday that his comments were repellent and displayed an ignorance of the duties of lawyers to represent people in legal trouble.
Stimson is himself a lawyer, sad to say. Here's the money quote:
I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.
The Administration has already done virtually everything possible to deny detainees any hope of justice. Encouraging boycotts of the law firms representing detainees is an effort to close off any last chance that the detainees will be treated in accordance with Anglo-American legal standards.
Each of us will mark our own low point of the Bush presidency. This is on my short list.
--David Kurtz
If you haven't seen it already, check out Murray Waas' preview of the upcoming trial of Scooter Libby, which will likely open a window on the Imperial Vice Presidency.
--David Kurtz
The top FBI official for San Diego, on the firing of U.S. Attorney Carol Lam: "I guarantee politics is involved."
It's just stunning to have a FBI agent blast the Department of Justice and the White House like this.
Lam prosecuted the Duke Cunningham case and is in charge of other high-profile public corruption cases involving Republicans.
--David Kurtz
There's our first hint of what happening.
From the NYT: "A recent series of American raids against Iranians in Iraq was authorized under an order that President Bush decided to issue several months ago to undertake a broad military offensive against Iranian operatives in the country, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday."
--Josh Marshall
Harvard lecturer and former TPMCafe America Abroad blogger Juliette Kayyem appointed Massachusetts Director of Homeleand Security by new Gov. Deval Patrick.
--Josh Marshall
The Senate as it stands now: seven Republicans against escalation, nine more with their toe in the water.
--Paul Kiel
So Joe Lieberman, now that he's been reelected, doesn't think it's worth pursuing the administration's disastrous handling of Katrina.
What do Louisiana and Gulf Coast lawmakers think about it? the '08 hopefuls? Lieberman's Senate colleagues? We've been calling around to get reactions, and we got our first: Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-LA).
--Paul Kiel
New CNN poll: Sixty-six percent against escalation; on question of whom Americans have confidence in when it comes to handling Iraq, Congressional Dems hold 17-point edge over Bush.
--Greg Sargent
Over at TPMmuckraker, Paul has been following the nasty, brutish (and short) Senate battle over earmark reform. Democrats had barely taken down their election-season "Ethics Reform" banners before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) went bare-knuckled against a bipartisan push to make public the sponsors of billions in "earmarked" expenditures.
Reid's proposal would have only required sponsors of earmarks for state and local projects -- a new tennis court, an updated rec center -- to identify themselves. Of course, those are just the earmarks that lawmakers already take credit for -- it's part of how they stay in office. And though he sure did try, Reid couldn't corral his fellow senators to help his plan succeed.
Let's put this in context. This was never an argument about what should be reported, this was an argument over what lawmakers tell the public. In the Senate (and the House) there are, I guarantee, meticulously detailed records of who asked for which earmarks, which were granted, and how much they were worth. Earmarks -- pork, if one's feeling uncharitable -- are the most basic unit of political favors, and they aren't doled out without the expectation that at some point, the favor will be returned. With some 14,000 such favors being passed out each year, the granters would be foolish not to keep lists somewhere.
If it's so important to the lawmakers, isn't it important to the voters also?
Update: Whoops. While I was writing this, a chagrined Reid acceded to the will of the majority. With a few tweaks, he's withdrawing his objections to the tougher earmark reform rule.
--Justin Rood
Rough stuff: Rep. Doolittle (R-CA) fires wife from kickback job.
Update: More fun with Doolittle here.
--Josh Marshall
Is the whole 'surge' plan a set up? Check out this nugget that Sullivan found in John Burns' latest piece.
--Josh Marshall
Not what they were looking for apparently. This just out from the San Diego Union-Tribune ...
The Bush administration has quietly asked San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, best known for her high-profile prosecutions of politicians and corporate executives, to resign her post, a law enforcement official said.Lam, a Bush appointee who took the helm in 2002, was targeted because of job performance issues – in particular that she failed to make smuggling and gun cases a top priority, said the official, who declined to be identified because Lam has yet to step down.
Lam has had high-profile successes during her tenure, such as the Randy “Duke” Cunningham bribery case – but she alienated herself from bosses at the Justice Department because she is outspoken and independent, said local lawyers familiar with her policies.
We'll have more on this.
Update: Some context here.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read: the president rolls out The New Way Forward at that most reliable of backdrops, an army base, but... the old magic is gone.
--Paul Kiel
Compare and contrast ...
CNN ...
In Washington, a U.S. official confirmed that six Iranian officials were detained for questioning. But he disputed accounts that troops broke open a consulate gate and conducted a raid."No shots were fired. No altercation ensued," said the official. "It was a knock on the door and, 'Please come out.' "
NYT ...
American troops backed by attack helicopters and armored vehicles raided an Iranian diplomatic office in the dead of night early Thursday and detained as many as six of the Iranians working inside.
The Times piece has more good details on just what happened yesterday in Erbil -- later in the day US troops got in an armed stand-off with Kurdish troops, with tensions over the consulate raid apparently being the triggering event.
You remember the Kurds. They're the ones who like us ...
--Josh Marshall
A written answer it'll be very interesting to see. From today's Condi testimony ...
Sen. Webb: And this is a question that can be answered either very briefly or through written testimony, but my question is: Is it the position of this administration that it possesses the authority to take
unilateral action against Iran in the absence of a direct threat without congressional approval?Secy. Rice: Senator, I'm really loathe to get into questions of the president's authorities without a rather more clear understanding of what we are actually talking about. So let me answer you, in fact, in writing. I think that would be the best thing to do.
Sen. Webb: I would appreciate that.
--Josh Marshall
Bill Arkin sees another clue about apparent White House plans to pick a fight with Iran and Syria. I don't think it's too much to say that the addition of 20,000 US troops into Baghdad is a footnote in comparison to the trouble this portends. The Veep's office and the nutjobs are still running the show. Condi is still a mere cipher.
--Josh Marshall
Shocking, right?
From Newsweek ...
Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.Lieberman’s reversal underscores the new role that he is seeking to play in the Senate as the leading apostle of bipartisanship, especially on national-security issues. On Wednesday night, Bush conspicuously cited Lieberman’s advice as being the inspiration for creating a new “bipartisan working group” on Capitol Hill that he said will “help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror.”
--Josh Marshall
Relative to what I said below about expanding operations against Iran and Syria, note Joe Biden's exchange today with Condi Rice in which he warned her that an attack on Iran would "generate a constitutional confrontation in the Senate, I predict to you."
A comment like that doesn't come out of the blue.
This is a dangerous time for the US for many reasons. One reason is that I'm not sure the real issues are getting aired for the American public. In itself, I doubt the 'surge' is the big issue on the table. I think we're talking about escalation on an entirely different level. Or that's the real issue in the background, as yet unstated -- high-stakes reckless gambits aimed at busting the White House out of the box they've gotten themselves and us into. Remember, build the chaos outwards.
--Josh Marshall
I'm getting some hints that this raid on the Iranian consulate in northern Iraq may be part of something much bigger. Is there a classified presidential directive to the CIA and DOD to take down Syrian and Iranian operations inside Iraq, even so far as operations into Iranian and Syrian territory? And is the aim here to provoke a conflict with one or the other of these states? To provoke an attack from Iran perhaps? The plan from the neocons was always to build the chaos outwards. Never too late, I guess. Watch this. Something's up.
Steve Clemons has more.
--Josh Marshall
Rudy Giuliani, during a visit to Sean Hannity's alternate universe last night: "I think it was only a month ago that many of these Democrats were talking about increasing the number of troops in Iraq." See the video here.
--Paul Kiel
The Pentagon is still refusing to declassify the number of enemy attacks during the bloodiest months in Iraq.
--Paul Kiel
I don't usually do a lot linking or commenting on John Derbyshire at The Corner. But, via Andrew Sullivan, Derbyshire makes a pretty damn good point about President Bush's latest 'policy' on Iraq.
According to Bush, defeat is not acceptable in Iraq. Okay, heard that before. We can't leave before victory is achieved. Check.
But the logic of the 'surge' is that we're also cracking down on Maliki. We're giving him one more chance to get it right. And if they won't do their part, we're outta there. Or in other words, we pull up stakes without acheiving victory.
But President Bush's oft-restated promise to stay in Iraq forever sort of gives Maliki the wink-n-nod that it doesn't really matter what he does. We're staying regardless.
So the whole thing is silly and makes no sense in the the simplest logical terms.
Of course, we might also mention the point that the incomparable John Burns made on Anderson Cooper's show last night: that it's silly to really believe that Maliki is going to try to crush the Mahdi Army when they a) give him the votes to remain Prime Minister and b), more importantly, those are the fighters Maliki is planning on using the Civil War really gets cracking. As Burns put it, they're Maliki's Plan B.
--Josh Marshall
This just out from Bloomberg ...
U.S. forces in Iraq raided Iran's consulate in the northern city of Arbil and detained five staff members, a state-run Iranian news service said.The U.S. soldiers disarmed guards and broke open the consulate's gate before seizing documents and computers during the operation, which took place today at about 5 a.m. local time, the Islamic Republic News Agency said. There was no immediate information on whether any of those detained are diplomats.
The raid follows a warning yesterday to Iran and Syria from President George W. Bush in his address to the American people on a new strategy for Iraq. Bush accused Iran and Syria of aiding the movement of ``terrorists and insurgents'' in and out of Iraq and said the U.S. will ``seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies.''
I trust we can treat it as a given that the timing here is not coincidental. Also, isn't this a little iffy in terms of diplomatic protocol? Breaking into a consulate and seizing documents and computers?
Late Update: TPM Reader RB chimes in ...
I don't agree with raiding the iranian consulate unless they were actively using as a base rearm fighters. But if there is one thing in the world the Iranians don't have much moral authority on vis a vis the US it is respect for international law in relation to consulary rights and the rights of employees within.Historical irony abounds.
Doesn't change the larger issue. But, yeah, good point.
Later Update: US forces appear to be disputing whether the building was really a consulate, in the official diplomatic sense.
--Josh Marshall
Romney: Who's to blame for my past liberalism? Why, the liberals, of course.
--Greg Sargent
Today's Must Read: The New York Times on how the president's plan compensates for handing over more command to the Iraqis by keeping them on a short leash.
--Paul Kiel
I'm watching Mitch McConnell here on CNN. I love his new line: Sure, what we've been doing in Iraq hasn't worked in Iraq. But it's worked great in America -- i.e., because we haven't been attacked. I guess this is just a different formulation of the same imbecile argument. But I thought it was worth noting.
--Josh Marshall
Fineman: "George W. Bush spoke with all the confidence of a perp in a police lineup. I first interviewed the guy in 1987 and began covering his political rise in 1993, and I have never seen him, in public or private, look less convincing, less sure of himself, less cocky. With his knitted brow and stricken features, he looked, well, scared. Not surprising since what he was doing in the White House library was announcing the escalation of an unpopular war."
--Josh Marshall
I think William Arkin hits on the one genuine piece of news in the president's speech: the direct threats of military force against Syria and Iran. I guess that counts as escalation too.
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Mikulski (D-MD): "This is a reckless plan - it is about saving the Bush presidency, not about saving Iraq."
--Josh Marshall
President Bush has seen the Saddam execution video (not clear which one) and said today that it ranks just behind Abu Ghraib as the most damaging mistakes the U.S. has made in Iraq, reports NBC's Brian Williams:
Upon exiting the West Wing, I phoned one particular detail into MSNBC: Toward the end I asked the President if he'd seen the Saddam Hussein execution video. He said he had, and when I asked where it "ranked" (among the mistakes of the war) he indicated it was just below Abu Ghraib in terms of damage -- meaning slightly less damaging. The President also noted the damage done at Haditha.
The President's comments came in a not-for-quotation background briefing with select reporters in advance of tonight's primetime address on Iraq.
--David Kurtz
No need to wait till 9 PM...
Here are early excerpts from President Bush's speech tonight. Our favorite: "Victory [in Iraq] will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship."
--Paul Kiel
Here's the video of John McCain wishfully reading the tea leaves of Joe Lieberman's reelection.
And yes, the exit polls show he's dead wrong.
--Paul Kiel
So where do they stand? As Greg points out here, there are reportedly at least ten Republican senators who will vote against the president's surge plan in the non-binding senate resolution the Dems plan to bring to the floor. Who are they? And how many Republican senators up for reelection in 2008 are going to vote for the 'surge'?
If you've seen specific senators quoted on this, let us know. Or give your senator a ring. We'll keep a list.
--Josh Marshall
We're sitting here listening to an interview with Sen. McCain. And he's just made the argument that if the message of the 2006 election were really to wind up our involvement in Iraq, then Joe Lieberman wouldn't have been reelected in Connecticut. Now, I know Lieberman's a pretty touchy topic. But even in the most generous interpretation, didn't Lieberman run his whole general election campaign asking Connecticut voters to look beyond his position on Iraq which most of them disagreed with?
Late Update: As a number of readers have noted, in the general election, Sen. Lieberman was actually talking about ending the war in Iraq, just not in perhaps as precipitous a way as he claimed Ned Lamont would do. He certainly wasn't talking about an open-ended commitment or an escalation. Here's one of Joe's ad for an example.
--Josh Marshall
Gen. William 'Our Strategic Enemy is Satan' Boykin gets bounced at the Pentagon.
--Josh Marshall
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has called for a delay in the executions of Saddam's two co-defendents.
The BBC is reporting that "as president, Mr Talabani has no power to annul or delay the executions."
That's not my understanding, though.
In the lead up to Saddam's execution, Maliki had to come up with a workaround because Talabani, an opponent of capital punishment in general, wouldn't authorize it. The two eventually compromised. And Talabani wrote Maliki a letter -- of questionable constitutional significance -- saying he had no objection to the execution proceeding, which of course it did.
--Josh Marshall
Curious to see what "authentic conservative" Mitt Romney looked and sounded like in real time back when he was a liberal?
We've got some video of Romney in 1994, forcefully declaring his support for abortion rights and distancing himself from Ronald Reagan.
Sit back and view it here.
--Greg Sargent
Former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chair Ken Tomlinson -- betting man and liberal bias hound -- withdraws his nomination to chair the Broadcasting Board of Governors.
--Paul Kiel
So where does Commander in Chief wannabe Rudy Giuliani stand on the "surge"?
He won't say.
--Greg Sargent
Today's Must Read: The Washington Post on how Bush got the generals to follow his New Way Forward.
--Paul Kiel
The Man the Myth. John Solomon does his first 'online chat' at the Washington Post website tomorrow at 11 AM.
--Josh Marshall
A first wave of additional U.S. troops will go into Iraq before the end of the month under President Bush’s new plan, a senior defense official said Tuesday.Up to 20,000 troops will be put on alert and be prepared to deploy under the president’s plan, but the increase in forces on the ground will be gradual, said the official, who requested anonymity because the plans have not yet been announced.
--Paul Kiel
Paul Kiel's got more of our run-down here on the war-financing issues related to President Bush's claim to be a king. But it occurs to me that this 'debate' is really only a debate if you see this not as wrestling over policy between the president and the Congress but as President Bush as an epochal figure, a man of destiny in a grand historical struggle who has powers to answer to grander than Congress or the constitution. I know that may seem like hyperbole saying that. But if you listen to this conversation, I really think that's the subtext. Sure, Congress has the power of the purse, the thinking seems to go. But this is bigger than Congress. Bigger than the niceties of the constitution. This is his rendezvous with destiny in Iraq, the key battle in World War IV or IX (I don't remember which we're up to.)
At a certain level this isn't that complicated. The president and the Congress have a set of intentionally countervailing powers. And it is within that framework that we, as a nation, hash out our direction on great matters of the day like this one. But what I'm hearing is that what President Bush is up to in Iraq is bigger than all that.
And that leaves us in the dangerous position of the constitution vs. the president's grandiosity.
--Josh Marshall
Santorum headed to K Street.
Sort of like the journey of the Salmon returning to the ancestral stream, I guess. Maybe I'm watching too many Salmon docs.
--Josh Marshall
All in the family: Incoming White House counsel Fred Fielding isn't the first of his family to work for the administration. His daughter Alexandra joined Lynne Cheney's staff in 2002.
Maybe she put in a good word for dad?
--Justin Rood
While we're all talking about the president's 'surge' plan, I want to make sure everyone sees Fred Kaplan's piece in Slate yesterday. It's a good example of why the most appropriate name for what the president is planning is neither 'surge' nor even 'escalation' but rather 'punt' -- a strategically meaningless increase in troops meant to allow the president to avoid dealing with the failure of his policy and lay the ground work for getting the next president to take the blame for his epochal screw-up.
One of the ironies of the current 
situation is that in the early months of the occupation, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who's slated to take over in Iraq, was the general on the ground who all the sharpest people on military affairs thought was the one guy in charge over there who really understood what kind of a battle he was engaged in. In short, counter-insurgency, or rather, heading off an insurgency by prioritizing real reconstruction and hearts-and-minds work rather than kicking people's doors down.
He spent last year co-authoring the Army's new counterinsurgency field manual. But look at what the manual says. Counter-insurgency operations require at least 20 combat troops per 1000 people in a given area. And look closely. That's not just military personnel, but combat troops.
Kaplan runs through the numbers. But the key points are that you'd need 120,000 combat troops to mount real counter-insurgency operations just in Baghdad. We currently have 70,000 combat troops in the whole country. So concentrate all US combat personnel in Iraq into Baghdad. Then add 20,000 more 'surge' combat troops. That leaves you 30,000 short of the number the Army thinks you'd need just in Baghdad.
Needless to say, Iraq isn't just Baghdad. And if you know anything about how insurgencies work you know that if we actually had enough troops in Baghdad (remember, to even get in shooting distance of that you need to evacuate the rest of the country) the insurgents would just fan out and start literal or figurative fires where we're not.
What this all amounts to is that 20,000 or even 50,000 new combat troops don't even get you close to what the Army says you need to do what President Bush says he's now going to try to do. To get that many troops into the country you'd need to put this country on a serious war-footing and begin drawing troops down from deployments around the globe. All of which, just isn't going to happen, setting aside for the moment of what should happen. And that tells you this whole thing is just a joke at the expense of the American public and our troops on the ground in Iraq.
What's sad about this (and it's hard to know where to start on that count) is that a few years ago, much, much more would have been possible with more troops on the ground. Alternatively, if the president and his key advisors hadn't lied to the country about the number of troops required to stabilize and police Iraq (then-Army Chief of Staff Shinseki said 400k+, I think) we might not have pulled the trigger in the first place.
We're living in the wreckage of the president's lies. And this is just one more of them.
--Josh Marshall
Game on. Sen. Kennedy introduces legislation that would make President Bush get specific authorization through Congress for a troop "surge."
--Paul Kiel
Lobbyists? What lobbyists? Republicans, headed up by the "un-Santorum," create the un-K-Street-Project. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
I've been making an extra effort to pull my weight tonight on the baby front. So I've only caught fleeting moments of muted TV coverage and a few stray headlines. But one thing is clear. And that is that official Washington -- or a lot of it -- doesn't get that democracy matters. The constitution gives the president great power and latitude in the exercise of his war powers. But not exclusive power. The president is not a king. Anybody who knows anything about the US constitution knows that it was designed specifically so that the president's need to get the Congress to finance his wars would be an effective brake on the vast power he holds as commander-in-chief.
In practice, Congress's power to declare war is little more than a nullity. War financing is where the constitutional rubber meets the road. It's true that war declarations were far more regularly invoked before the last half century. But anyone who doubts that the framers saw the power to finance or not to finance as the Congress's real power need only familiarize themselves wtih English constitutional history of the 17th and 18th century which was the framers' point of reference.
I'm actually probably a lot less inclined to want the Congress trying to constrain the president's hands with the power of the purse than a lot of readers of this site -- not in this case specifically, but just in general, at an instinctual level. But over time -- specifically over the the last five years -- I've come to believe that this isn't so much political wisdom or maturity as a less creditable inability, in spite of everything, to see that we have a president who has a basic contempt for our system of government and the rule of law and that the normal rules of inter-branch comity simply aren't in effect.
The way this is 'supposed' to work is that when the president takes a dramatic new direction like this he consults with Congress. That way, some relative range of agreement can be worked out through consultation. National unity is great. Or at least that's the theory.
But here we have a case where the president's party has just been thrown out of power in Congress largely, though not exclusively, because the public is fed up with the president's lies and failures abroad. (Indeed, at this point, what else does the Republican party stand for but corruption at home and failure abroad? Small government? Please.) The public now believes the war was a mistake. Decisive numbers believe we should start the process of leaving Iraq. And the public is overwhelmingly against sending more troops to the country. The country's foreign policy establishment (much derided, yes, but look at the results) is also overwhelmingly against escalation.
And yet, with all this, the president has ignored the Congress, not consulted the 110th Congress in any real way, has ignored the now longstanding views of the majority of the country's citizens and wants to plow ahead with an expansion of his own failed and overwhelmingly repudiated policy. The need for Congress to assert itself in such a case transcends the particulars of Iraq policy. It's important to confirm the democratic character of the state itself. The president is not a king. He is not a Stuart. And one more Hail Mary pass for George W. Bush's legacy just isn't a good enough reason for losing more American lives, treasure and prestige.
--Josh Marshall