War Votes (Iraq>WWII)

[uppityperson]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003576410_warhistory17.html

IRAQ-TERRORISM

October 2002: Congress authorized President Bush to use the military to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq." The Senate vote was 77-23; the House vote was 296-133.

Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: Three days after the attacks, Congress passed a resolution allowing Bush to use military force to deal with the nations and groups responsible. The Senate approved the bill 98-0; the House passed it 420-1.

January 1991: Congress passed a bill supporting a U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein and Iraq. The House voted 250-183; the Senate, 52-47.

(clip NICARAGUA)

VIETNAM

November 1973: Congress enacted the War Powers Resolution over President Nixon's veto. Designed to restore Congress' control over the use of U.S. military force, it requires the president to report military action to Congress within 48 hours and to withdraw forces after 60 to 90 days if Congress doesn't explicitly pass an extension. After Nixon's veto, it passed the House 284-135 and the Senate 75-18.... (more@ link)

[Peace Patriot]

1. Check out this progress on anti-war consciousness...

I'm re-posting my comment from the Senate vote thread:

An encouraging word:

In 1964, 4% of Congress (two members) voted against the "Gulf of Tonkin" resolution (big escalation of the Vietnam War).

In 2002, 25% of Congress (156 members) voted against the Iraq War Resolution (another unjust war based on lies).

In 2007, yesterday, 57% of the House took the first step toward ending the unjust and heinous Iraq War, and today about 50% of the Senate wanted to at least talk about it.

Big jumps in the percentages of our representatives who question unjust war and take courageous stands against it.

We're dealing with a huge and lethal war machine, with many corporate war profiteers, that was never demobilized after WW II, and which has grown into an enormous cancer on American democracy. It is not easy to oppose it, let alone to dismantle it. It is a standing invitation to fascists to conduct wars of choice. But because of past struggles against this war machine, 56% of the American people opposed Bush's war on Iraq from the beginning (Feb. '03)--already a majority, even then*--and 74% oppose it today. And more than 50% of Congress (all told) oppose it--compared to a completely asleep public in 1964, and a nearly entirely pro-war Congress.

The evil has escalated, but so has the resistance to it. And if these stats are any guide, consciousness about unjust war, and what its causes are, is reaching critical mass levels.

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*(This early majority opposition to the war was anticipated by the Bushites, who knew that they would have to 'disappear' some of those votes in 2004, and manufacture an endorsement for the war--and they acted to do so, with the "Help America Vote for Bush Act" of 2002--fast-tracking the conversion of our election system to extremely insecure and insider hackable electronic voting machines, run on TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations--with virtually no audit/recount controls.)

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