Congress abdicates war powers. (Insider Report).

The October 11th AP report on Congress' approval of a "use of force" resolution against Iraq appeared pretty definitive: "Congress approved the use of America's military might against Iraq, reinforcing President Bush's insistence that Saddam Hussein's government had no other option but to disarm.... After days of solemn debate, both the House and Senate passed and sent to the White House a resolution authorizing the president to use military force, if necessary, to compel Iraq to get rid of its biological and chemical weapons and disband its nuclear weapons program."

Omitted from this description was recognition of a key fact: By passing that resolution, Congress abdicated its solemn responsibility to decide whether our nation will go to war. The power to make that decision was surrendered to President Bush--an act that violates the constitutional assignment of powers.

As Alexander Hamilton observed in 1793, "It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War." A year later, Hamilton observed, "war is a question, under our constitution, not of Executive, but of Legislative cognizance. It belongs to Congress to say whether the Nation shall of choice dismiss the olive branch and unfurl the banners of War." In 1848, Abraham Lincoln noted: "Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars.... This, our [Constitutional] Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the ...