 Quote by russ_watter
You seem to be under the false impression that the label "war" requires a declaration of war in Congress. It certainly does not: "war" is a broad-based word that means to imply the international laws of war apply to the situation in Afghanistan and is a description of the fact that the military is invoked in a large operation. Whether people want to call it a "war" or "police action" really has very little legal impact. We don't need to get into a debate about the War Powers Act here, but it's passage showed Congress realized the Constitution's flaw regarding war powers and Presidents and Congress have since realized the War Powers Act is either unenforceable or UnConstitutional. Regardless, none of that political-administrative gamesmanship changes what is actually going on on the ground.
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But the international laws of war do
not apply. That's the point, there are no 'prisoners of war' that enjoy certain protected rights, there are no official delegations, no diplomatic immunity, and 'surrender' is impossible. (look down), that's why you can't use 'we are at war!' to justify certain things.
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And the entity is two groups: the Taliban and Al Qadea.
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No, these are not
sovereign. Because they can't surrender. If the Taliban says 'Okay, you won', the people under their (lose) command will just keep fighting because they're not in it because they were ordered to fight or payed to fight, they are in it because they
want to fight for ideological reasons.
The crucial difference of this is that there is no possibility of surrender, you have to take them out until the very last man. And they multiply like cockroaches. There is no clear point at which you can declare peace, therefore there is no war going on in the formal international definition.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...ussanal02.html
It may be called a 'war' in the colloquial view, but in international law it doesn't meet these criteria.
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Dual standard or not, your previous claim was clearly a misrepresentation of the reality.
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A: Which claim?
B: What does this have to do with any possible dual standards the US government has?
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The Constitution is a framework for a system of government, it most certainly does not define what constitutes a threat to national security and the claim that it is up to the USSC to interpret on an individual basis what is and isn't a national security risk is just plain silly. Youl couldn't possibly be under the impression that the USSC reviews all Pentagon documentation to determine what classification is appropriate. Such a thing wouldn't work in practice.
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I never said that it was up to them, I said it would be a healthier separation of powers if it were up to them.
And yeah, that's exactly what I'm suggesting, not per se the supreme court, but some court of impartial justices with no political allegiance.
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Obviously, classifications are assigned to entire classes of documents based on type and potential sensitivity and then later on an individual or group basis they may be declassified by the DoD or under a FIA request (which may involve court documents). But not declassifying documents that are classified as a matter of procedure along with tens of thousands of other documents most certainly does not constitute a cover-up.
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I never said it was a cover up. I'm saying that the USGOV is (of course) more likely to release documents that help their midterm election results, irrespective of the thread to national security.
This could be avoided by taking that out of their control and to an independent, like a court.
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This whole line of argument you're on against the concept/method of classification of documents is just plain illogical and silly.
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I suppose it would be too easy to ask for a citation here.
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