Tuesday, December 20, 2005
(9:35 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Ausnehmezustand
I'd be surprised if Congress knew that they were suspending the constitution when authorizing the President to use force to defeat al-Qaeda:President Bush and two of his most senior aides argued Monday that the highly classified program to spy on suspected members of terrorist groups in the United States grew out of the president's constitutional authority and a 2001 Congressional resolution that authorized him to use all necessary force against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.My question -- if Iraq is a seamless part of the War on Terror, why did he need to go get authorization from Congress separately?
I'd imagine that the motivation in the back of the mind of at least some members of Congress was that Bush was obviously going to invade Iraq regardless, and if we had to have a war, they didn't want to see what would happen if the war was obviously illegitimate.
