Pundits responded to news of the retirement of Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA) at the end of his current term with platitudes and praise. They have focused primarily on his heroic role as a Holocaust survivor and member of the anti-Nazi resistance in his native Hungary as well as his leadership on human rights issues in Congress, serving as the founder and longtime co-chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.
When the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was released noting that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003, the council moved into action. Unanimously, it passed a resolution ensuring that no preemptive military attack by the United States against Iran would take place.
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the congressional vote granting President George W. Bush unprecedented war-making authority to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own choosing. Had a majority of either the Republican-controlled House or the Democratic-controlled Senate voted against the resolution or had they passed an alternative resolution conditioning such authority on an authorization from the United Nations Security Council, all the tragic events that have unfolded as a consequence of the March 2003 invasion would have never occurred.
Last week’s briefings for the press by U.S. civilian and military officials in Baghdad were uniformly upbeat, cautious, and predictable.
July 4th 2007 may turn out to be an Independence Day second only to the original one of 1776 in its importance to the nation’s history. If the first week back from its holiday recess is any indicator, Congress may now be firmly on the path of reclaiming its constitutional responsibilities – and thus asserting its independence from the imperial pretensions of the current “King George” – to shape policy and programs on defense and foreign affairs.
In a flagrant attack on the longstanding international legal principle that it is illegitimate for any country to expand its territory by military means, the U.S. House of Representatives, by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, passed House Concurrent Resolution 152 congratulating Israel for its forcible “reunification of Jerusalem” and its victory in the June 1967 war.
In the face of furious opposition from the White House, the U.S. Congress recently voted to end the U.S. war in Iraq. The bill required U.S. troops to begin leaving Iraq before October 1 and an end to combat operations by March 2008. The White House dubbed it “defeatist legislation” that set a “date for surrender.” President Bush vetoed the bill, and Democrats do not have the two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate to overturn the veto.
The showdown over Iraq that’s been brewing since the November elections will finally come to a head this week as Congress sends a war-spending bill to President Bush. Though the bill authorizes $100 billion for the war, Bush has rejected its October deadline for beginning the withdrawal of combat troops, with the goal of bringing combat troops home by April 2008, and has promised to use his veto—his second-ever use of this power—to kill it.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) has been in Congress since 1986. In April 2006, he wrote a letter to President Bush to remind him that he must seek authorization from Congress before launching any preemptive attacks against Iran. He also introduced Resolution 391 to the same effect as well as a similar amendment to this year’s Defense Authorization Act (which was voted down). One year later, rumors of an upcoming U.S. military assault on Iran still abound, the latest from Russian intelligence that predicts a Good Friday attack. Here Rep. DeFazio talks of the congressional strategy to prevent a war with Iran.