Dennis Kucinich Complete Statement on Libyan Civil War, 31 March 2011

As promised, OS posts the entire presentation for his hordes of readers to view.

Kucinich, a Lion of the Left, and one of the more colorful characters in Congress, presented a well-written, documented, sober, well-thought-out case.

This is trouble for Obama, no doubt about it.

Now, as a conservative, and as a citizen, OS has one question: Where are the Republicans? Why are they not lining up behind him? Will they leave him hung out to dry? At least Speaker Boehner cleared the way for him to have his hour on the floor.
Can you imagine a Speaker Pelosi allowing this? Elections have consequences.

He details the secret order signed by Obama weeks before the bombing began, authorizing the CIA to support the Libyan opposition.

He takes the whole enterprise apart, piece by piece by piece by piece...

Ya'll--if you are an American citizen, left/right/center/neutral, this is something that cannot be ignored. If Obama is allowed to get away with this, we drift toward a world where any future President of the United States can start wars in our name, with our resources, and our children, and never even glance at the Constitution. Unless it is honored and enforced, that document becomes just another historical document, supplanted by something else much more sinister.

Obama and Hilary cannot be allowed to simply ignore this--and they will attempt to pretend today never happened, that Kucinich is just some nutter (wait for it, the stories about him will be floated far-and-wide), that opposition is unpatriotic (an old chestnut tactic), that the Founders could never have anticipated such a situation (thus the Constitution doesn't apply, except that bit about the President as Commander-in-Chief...).

Listen in, pay attention. So many lives are on the line. This sort of thing can set tragic sequences of events into motion.

Sense of Events: "Hope is not a method, and wishes are not plans."

Plan? What Plan? There is no Plan A, or B, or C.

Donald Sensing says it best.

This was the president's speech in a nutshell: There is no Plan C, no Plan B, and for that matter, there is no Plan A, either. He knows what he wants to happen, but shrinks definitively and certainly away from making it happen. He hopes Qaddafi will play nice and beat feet outta there, and wishes Libya the best in the meantime. Or as Josh Trevino tweeted after the speech,

This is the first time in American history that a President has simultaneously set a war aim and disavowed means to obtain it.

Think the Balkans from 1912-1914, all of Europe in the 1930's, Lyndon Johnson and his Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, our successful efforts to arm the Taliban in the 1980's.

Hope is not a method, and wishes are not plans.

The Claims Don't Fit The Facts: What The Brits Know That Obama Assumes Americans Don't Know

It is breathaking to listen to Barack Obama, as OS did yesterday, in the parking lot of the grocery in his old pick-em-up truck. He didn't mean to, but as he was doing his Honey-Do errand after golf, here came the speech. OS just could not garner the moral courage to just dismiss it, and go buy milk and juice.

He kept listening for one word or phrase, which Himself (as President of The United States) never bothered to utter: The Constitution, or Constitutional Authority, or Congressional Approval Under The Law, or...well, you get the drift.

That's becuz, as the person who placed his hand upon the Bible and swore to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of The United States', he has no-zero-nil-nada-nichts authority under the Constitution (that he swore on the Bible to 'preserve, protect and defend, against all enemies, foreign and domestic'). It is of no consequence to him. He himself is a domestic enemy of the Constitution, as he has demonstrated again and again and again--from the illegal bailouts of car companies, to the unconstitutional health care 'reform' (so ruled by a Federal court, whose ruling he ignores and refuses to appeal), to the shutdown of the oil industry along the Gulf Coast (again, ignoring a Federal court order). On and on it goes, the slow creep of rule by diktat.

Only this time, ya'll, he has led the United States into war, against someone who is not an imminent threat to our shores or interests, without a shred of legal authority.

Tom McClintock's letter to the President states the problem clearly, and remains unanswered.

From the other side of the pond, and much more within reach of any mayhem Gadhafi may wish to create, the Brits know better. Little wonder they are so cynical about their American cousins.

Just a sample:

OBAMA: "Our most effective alliance, Nato, has taken command of the enforcement of the arms embargo and no-fly zone. ... In that effort, the United States will play a supporting role."

THE FACTS: The US is, and always has been, the pre-eminent player in Nato. The United States supplies 22 per cent of NATO'S budget, almost as much as the next largest contributors – Britain and France – combined. A Canadian three-star general was selected to be in charge of all Nato operations in Libya. His boss, the commander of NATO'S Allied Joint Force Command Naples, is an American admiral, and the admiral's boss is the supreme allied Commander Europe, a post always held by an American.

They know, and they know that he knows he is deliberately obscuring the truth of the situation, confident that he can fool enough of his own electorate, focused as they are on survival in The New Normal, and otherwise preoccupied with American Idol, The Final Four and the NFL labor lockout.

If he gets away with it, this will be the first of many more. How long does the laundry list of places to invade run? On what pretext? By what legal right? It is a slippery slope, a bloody and ghastly slippery slope.

Yes, Gadhafi's a blood-soaked tyrant, and needs to be killed, ASAP. Let's do that, without killing off our rule of law in the process, and killing millions more as an unintended consequence.