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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Did anyone get a wartime bump from Vietnam? Something tells me that one of the reasons Kennedy escalated matters was because they didn't think his Presidency would survive not taking a strong stance against communism somewhere...
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.""It can't be Warren, and it can't be Sanders" - a voice from Wall Street executives
Warren launched an exploratory committee for president last month, vowing to take on the "corruption" that is "poisoning our democracy." Sanders, for his part, has yet to publicly announce a bid for the White House—but Yahoo News reported on Friday that the Vermont senator plans to launch his campaign "imminently."
"The result is a kind of nervous paralysis of executives pining for a centrist nominee like Michael Bloomberg," Politico noted, referring to the billionaire former New York City mayor, who is reportedly considering a self-funded presidential bid.
According to Politico, Wall Street executives who want Trump out of the White House mentioned "a consistent roster of appealing nominees" they would find acceptable outside of Bloomberg, who the outlet describes as Wall Street's "platonic ideal."
This "roster" reportedly included Democratic Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), and Kamala Harris (Calif.); former Vice President Joe Biden; and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas).
Not sure about the credibility of the source, so make of that what you will.
Thank God congress would never permit him to pull something like that,an out going president attempting to pull a fast one would be met with "Yes mr president of course,let me get a pen *makes rude hand gestures as he's leaving the whitehouse*
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Edited by Ultimatum on Jun 20th 2019 at 5:17:02 PM
have a listen and have a link to my discord serverIt’s possible that in such a situation the military would either delay and demand orders in triplicate or the cabinet would invoke the 25th.
I would expect military bureaucracy to stop Trump starting a war on his way out.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
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I don’t think it ever made it to a full house vote.
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I wouldn’t be so sure of that. The military in general is very supportive of Trump and I’m sure he could find enough willing officers to do such a thing, especially if the new President is considered anti-military.
Edited by Mio on Jun 20th 2019 at 1:37:08 PM
I doubt that. The EPA and Do J employees who signed up because they want to help the environment and serve justice probably hate him more.
Regardless, no one is at the point of no return. Both Trump and Rouhani have publicly declared they do not wish to see war. Only each country's more bellicose factions, the Boltons and Revolutionary Guard, want it to happen.
Life is unfair...Remarkably enough, war remains unpopular in the US, and there's a quite vocal section of Trump's base which is very isolationist and anti-war, to the extent that Breitbart was flooded with comments bemoaning how "Trump is selling out to the war establishment" when he launched a few missiles at Syria. The question is whether Bolton, Pompeo, and the other Iran hawks can bend his ear and either convince him to go to war, or convince him to take steps to escalate until some stupid or catastrophic incident demands war, and Trump will look weak if he doesn't. (It's really, really, hard to overstate how much Bolton despises and wants to invade Iran. This is a guy who gave a speech in 2016 to the MEK, [an anti-Iran group that used to be listed as a terrorist group until 2012 or '14] where he had lines about overthrowing the Iranian regime before the 40th anniversary of the revolution [which would be this year, BTW] and how they would be celebrating in Tehran by 2019. See here
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If they frame it in terms of Trump looking weak after some kind of provocation or after Americans get killed or attacked somehwere, despite his instincts towards isolationism, I'm willing Trump will be looking for a war in not time.
Only Congress can declare war, but IIRC the president as Commander in Chief still has the ability to make war for up to 90 days without Congressional approval, as per the Constitution. Also, there is the AUMF thing, as last week the admin was trying to argue that it would allow them to attack Iran, trying to build a link between Al-Queda and Iran. Having declared the IRGC a terrorist organization earlier in the year is probably also a step along this road.
But insisting there’s a nefarious, continual relationship matters greatly. In 2001, Congress passed an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), allowing the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”
Which means that if the Trump administration truly believes Iran and al-Qaeda have been in cahoots before or after 9/11, then it could claim war with Tehran already is authorized by law.
That chilling possibility was raised during a House Armed Services Committee session early Thursday morning by an unlikely pair: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a top Trump ally, and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), a Pentagon official in the Obama administration.
“The notion that the administration has never maintained that there are elements of the 2001 AUMF that would authorize their hostilities toward Iran is not consistent with my understanding of what they said to us,” said Gaetz. “We were absolutely presented with a formal presentation on how the AUMF might authorize war on Iran,” added Slotkin right after, although she noted no one said they would use it to greenlight a fight.
It doesn’t help that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an anti-Iran hardliner, told lawmakers behind closed doors in May that he felt Americans would support a war with Tehran if the US or its allies were attacked, congressional sources familiar with that conversation told me.
The Trump administration already blames Iran for multiple attacks on oil tankers in a strategic Middle Eastern waterway, including two Thursday on Japanese- and Norwegian-owned vessels.
None of this means the US and Iran are going to war anytime soon, or even at all. But it does mean the administration may feel it has the legal basis to do so if it wanted to.
On the surface, al-Qaeda and Iran make an odd pairing. Iran is a Shia Muslim state, and al-Qaeda is a radical Sunni terrorist organization, so it stands to reason that they would have no business interacting with each other.
But it turns out they have worked together before.
Here’s a section from the 9/11 Commission report, the most authoritative account of how the attacks happened and the backstory behind al-Qaeda’s rise:
- In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support — even if only training — for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. In the fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for further training in explosives as well as in intelligence and security. Bin Ladin reportedly showed particular interest in learning how to use truck bombs such as the one that killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983. The relationship between al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations.
Iran’s proxy group in Lebanon, Hezbollah, also helped train al-Qaeda operatives ahead of its 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In 2003, al-Qaeda killed more than 30 people in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, and the plotters fled to Iran. Eight years later, the Obama administration said there was a “secret deal” between Iran and al-Qaeda “to funnel funds and operatives through its territory.”
The US government maintains that Iran and al-Qaeda remain linked in that way. Take this, from a 2012 State Department report: Iran “allowed AQ [al-Qaeda] members to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iranian territory, enabling AQ to carry funds and move facilitators and operatives to South Asia and elsewhere.” A nearly identical passage exists in the latest version of the annual report from 2018, although that one specifically mentions “Syria” as a destination for the “facilitators and operatives.”
Those kinds of statements have led some experts to say the AUMF can be invoked to approve a war with Tehran. “If the facts show Iran or any other nation is harboring al Qaeda, that’s a circumstance which would make the argument for the applicability of the 2001 AUMF quite strong,” retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap Jr., now at Duke University, told the Washington Times in February.
As for the state of AUMF:
It did pass the House in a vote, according to all the news I can find. Prospects in the Senate are pretty horrific, however.
Edited by TheWanderer on Jun 20th 2019 at 3:03:33 PM
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
Especially with McConnell stonewalling pretty much all House legislation. And for no good reason, either, as evidenced from March 9th when asked why he was bringing the Green New Deal to a vote, but not election reform
- "Because I decide what we get to vote on."
I wish I was making that up.
They did pass a joint resolution blocking the sale of arms to Saudia Arabia and UAE today, though, so... yay. But to the larger point, according to 538's records
, there have been 15 bills passed by the Senate so far in 2019, two of which only happened today.
Edited by ironballs16 on Jun 20th 2019 at 3:32:20 PM
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"

Just because wartime bumps have happened doesn't mean they always happen. Generally, you need a casus belli that's convincing enough to inspire people. And I don't see any evidence that the Trump administration has that.
Not to mention that who the president is also matters, I don't see how historically unpopular and incompetent Trump is going to be able to sell a war to the American people.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jun 20th 2019 at 8:35:19 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang