Dr. Eowyn:
A year ago on May 23, Obama declared in a speech to National Defense University that he intends “to engage Congress” about the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) that resulted from 9-11, “to determine how we can continue to fight terrorism without keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing.”
That’s because, the POS said, “The Afghan war is coming to an end. Core al Qaeda is a shell of its former self. Groups like AQAP must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States.” To avoid being “drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers,” Obama said “I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate.”
A year later, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened a hearing to do just that — to review the AUMF and determine whether it should be repealed. The committee’s member senators took seriously their charge, but not the two lawyers sent to represent the White House. To get a simple “yes” or “no” answer from those two was like pulling teeth.
In this post, you’ll read for yourselves just how pointless the hearing was, how empty Obama’s grand words were in that National Defense University speech, and how meaningless are this man’s promises.
Originally posted on Consortium of Defense Analysts:
On May 22, 2014, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing entitled “Authorization For Use of Military Force (AUMF) After Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Washington’s Blogreports that according to Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU and director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, representatives of the Obama administration repeatedly refused to answer the question of which groups the U.S. is at war with. Jeffer tweets:
Senate: Which groups are we at war with?
Admin: That’s classified.
— Jameel Jaffer (@JameelJaffer) May 21, 2014
There were four individuals testifying before the committee, including two lawyers representing the Obama administration:
- Stephen W. Preston, General Counsel, Dept. of Defense
- Mary McLeod, Deputy Legal Adviser, Department of State
The other two expert testimonies were from:
- Harold Hongju Koh, Sterling Professor International Law, Yale Law School
- Michael B. Mukasey, former Attorney General of the United States
The purpose of the hearing, in the…
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