President and Commander-in-Chief

[Mike]

My co-member, Dewey, said the following in another thread as we talked about the U.S. invasion of Iraq under President Bush Jr. Dewey and I disagree about the Iraq topic, but I thought we could still examine some side issues raised by his remarks below.

When the fog and spin of revisionist claims that have accumulated over the last part of the decade fades and the facts are revisited, then I think it becomes plain once again that, after 9/11, had any president allowed a regime like that to remain in power — one with a history of acting suicidally and a history of concealing WMDs stockpiles from inspectors and the ability to reconstitute an arsenal of biological and chemical weapons or sell the technological and expertise and the assist with the means to make them, and, after failing to come clean and cooperate completely: by making every conceivable effort to demonstrate that the regime had no more stockpiles and no aspirations attain them and had cancelled the programs and dismantled the infrastructure to manufacture them — would have been plainly unfit for office. Given what was known about the history of the regime and, especially, its reluctance to provide any convincing evidence that the missing stockpiles were disposed of and no longer in its possession — it would have been an impeachable act of negligence for any president to have chosen to allow the status quo of ‘containment’ rather than regime change: that would have been the most irresponsible and reckless option that ignored the first and most important duty of any commander-in-chief.

Instead of debating about Iraq per se, maybe we could talk about some of the following. What are the (implicit as well as explicitly delineated) most important duties of the Commander-in-Chief? How accurate is Dewey’s assertion of impeachable act(s) with regard to utilization of the military? What criteria should we expect a President to examine when determining which enemies to attack and which peoples to liberate?

[dave fagan]

His first responsibility is to make sure all USA Corporations are informed that the war will begin so that they can profit handsomely. He must make sure USA Corporations will process the natural resources gained by the action and profit handsomely. He must also rally the media to assure the complete dissemination of his storyboard. He must give Congress a raise for supporting him and you better not be thinking "bribe" here, as that would definitely be unpatriotic. Next, explain to the voters how you are spreading liberty, democracy and freedoms and get Aristide and Zelaya and Rash Limpdick to exemplarize your actions.