Sometime after noon today, the House will take an important vote that is likely to determine whether the U.S. launches airstrikes in Iraq. If the House passes the McGovern-Jones-Lee H. Con. Res. 105, which it well might, direct U.S. military intervention in Iraq will be much less likely. The bill requires the President to seek…
Without Congressional authorization, President Obama has sent hundreds of U.S. soldiers to Iraq who could be used to call in airstrikes – airstrikes that would be certain to kill Iraqi children against whom we have no grievance. Congress has never voted on this. When Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973, it included a…
This post is so that I can refer to my spreadsheet in blogging. For now, the attached spreadsheet is not intended to be pretty, only to be accurate. My hope is especially to educate journalists to the fact that nearly half the House is on record opposing the invocation of the 2002 Iraq AUMF to…
Some people claim that there’s nothing we can do to stop the President from launching a new war in Iraq, if that’s what he decides to do. But last August, when the President had decided to bomb Syria, we proved that wasn’t true. When 192 Members of the House said he had to come to…
Virginia Republican Scott Rigell and California Democrat Barbara Lee are leading a bipartisan letter to President Obama, urging the President to respect the Constitutional requirement to seek Congressional authorization before using military force in Iraq. To urge your Representative to sign the bipartisan Rigell-Lee letter, sign our petition at MoveOn. Here is the letter: ===…
June 20, 201410:30 AMCONTACT: Just Foreign PolicyRobert Naiman: (202) 448-2898 x1, Naiman@justforeignpolicy.org Statement of Robert Naiman, Policy Director of Just Foreign Policy, on House passage of Conyers-Yoho amendment to prohibit transfer of MANPADS to Syria WASHINGTON – June 20 – “The House took an important step last night by prohibiting the transfer of MANPADS to actors in Syria. House…
President Obama is under heavy pressure to order direct U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Syria. But as Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times, avoiding direct U.S. military involvement in these two countries’ civil wars is the “least bad option.” Thanks to Reps. Barbara Lee and John Conyers, we have a crucial opportunity…
On August 21, U.S. citizen Bradley Manning – now known as Chelsea Manning -was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified information to the public about the killing of civilians in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; drone strikes in Yemen; torture in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Egypt; the coup in Honduras; corruption in Tunisia, the…
On Wednesday night, the Senate adopted by voice vote an amendment introduced by Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley calling on President Obama to speed up U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. This was a watershed event towards ending the war. The previous high water mark of Senators calling for expedited withdrawal was 27; the previous high water…
Earlier today, President Obama announced that all US troops except for about 150 attached to the US embassy will leave Iraq by the previously agreed upon deadline of December 31. This is welcome news. Until this month, the US was in negotiations with the Iraqi government to leave thousands of US troops in the country…