Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
I heard NATO was taking charge of Libya. Just to let you know the value we place on Libya we fired over a 100 Tomahawk missile at somebody in Libya and over 41,000,000 each. These are valuable targets. Can we find a cheaper way to kill people.
Further, had President Barack Obama waited for Congress to return from recess, more Libyans would have been murdered by the regime of Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters. “It is well within, as he described and others described, well within the president’s constitutional authority to take this military action,” Carney said. “The list of precedents is quite long. But he believes that consultation with Congress is important and wants to hear their thoughts about the mission, about the situation in Libya and about our overall policy there.”
As a candidate for president, Obama told The Boston Globe in an article published Dec. 20, 2007 the president must seek authorization by Congress before taking military action. “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” Obama told the newspaper. The constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress. President George Washington, part of the Constitutional Convention, believed in a limited role for the executive branch in declaring war.
Washington declined to take military action in response to the Chickamauga Indians in 1792 without the approval of Congress, citing that for the president to take such action would be monarchial. “The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure,” Washington said. Carney did not cite specific precedents, but previous presidents have taken military action without congressional approval.
MORE
Members of Congress from both parties have raised objections to the president ordering U.S. airstrikes in Libya to enforce a no-fly zone against the government of dictator Moammar Gadhaffi. Obama himself, as a presidential candidate, said in 2007 that, “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
In a letter Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) asked the president why he did not seek more input from Congress. “It is my hope that you will provide the American people and Congress a clear and robust assessment of the scope, objective, and purpose of our mission in Libya and how it will be achieved,” Boehner wrote.
Carney said Thursday that he believes most of the points Boehner brought up were answered. “We believe, and the president believes very strongly, that consultations with Congress are important,” Carney said. “It’s part of his responsibility as president on an issue like this to consult with members of Congress, and he has done that. He has instructed senior staff here to do that, and we have in a very substantial way consulted with Congress, and we’ll continue to do that.”
MORE
