Steven C. Clemons writes about this possibility in his column today.
Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran.
The President may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress or any broad discussion with the country.
The argument is that the President did this during his speech Wednesday night, and that speculation grew after U.S. forces raided the Iranian Consulate in Iraq.
The Moderate Voice says that if this is true, it would be a rejection of both the Baker-Hamilton Group recommendations and the concept of consulting Congress.
It's hard to believe that the POTUS would do such a blatant in-your-face thing to Congress. It would completely ruin any possibility of cooperation with Congress now that it is in Democrat hands. But as Joe Gandelman says, you can see the seeds of major conflict in this confrontation at Senate hearings yesterday:
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden bluntly told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice he did not think Bush had the authority to launch attacks to stamp out militant networks in Iran and Syria.
"If the president concluded he had to invade Iran ... or Syria in pursuit of these networks, I believe the present authorization granted the president to use force in Iraq does not cover that and he does need congressional authority to do that," said Biden.
"I just want to set that marker," added the Delaware Democrat, who later wrote Bush a letter asking for an "authoritative answer" on whether he believed U.S. forces could cross into Iran or Syria without congressional authorization.
In a testy hearing about Bush's new plan for Iraq, Rice said she did not want to speculate on the president's constitutional authority for such action.
"Obviously, the president isn't going to rule anything out to protect our troops, but the plan is to take down these networks in Iraq," she said.
Congress will want specifics, not more tap-dancing.
|