By Request: What if Bush Bombs Iran?

ClaudeB asks: "If Dubya decides to go in Iran before Jan. 20, 2009, is there anyone in Washington who can stop him, since even the Joint Chiefs have trouble restraining him?"

I get asked this question now and again, and as best I can tell it's not a very difficult question -- if Bush orders air strikes against Iranian targets, nobody can stop him. A plain reading of the text of the US Constitution would seem to suggest that it would be unconstitutional for the military to follow any such order absent a declaration of war or some other form of congressional authorization. But the settled precedent, ratified by key Democratic Party leaders as recently as the bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo crisis, is that no such authorization is necessary. I'm not happy with this situation and think it's crazy that we as a country have moved away from the constitutional procedure, but the cat's been out of the bag for a while now and if Bush wants to bomb Iran Bush will bomb Iran.

Comments

I know little of Constitutional law. Is there anything, anywhere that allows for any government official or group to intervene upon pronouncement of a military decision by the President? Are there any procedures (legal, not extra-judicial) permitting someone to prevent a President from say, waking up one morning and calling up the Air Force and instructing them to exhaust the entire nuclear arsenal on Great Britain, no questions asked, "Just do it, I'm the goddamned President and I said so!"? A strict reading of Matt's analysis says the President can commit exactly such an act and the military must obey. Is that true?

Posted by steve duncan | July 1, 2008 9:24 AM

During the Nixon administration when the impeachment hearings were underway, the then Secretary of Defense sent a cable to all high ranking military commanders reminding them that any orders they receive must go through the chain of command, namely himself. This was obviously to prevent President Nixon, who a number of officials considered to be mentally unstable at the time, from ordering a nuclear strike on the former Soviet Union to forestall his impending impeachment.

Posted by SLC | July 1, 2008 9:32 AM

If Senator Osama is elected, Iran will be bombed back into the stone age.

"Experts: Israel must stop Iran nukes within a year, sooner if Obama elected
By Israel Insider staff June 29, 2008

Israel must destroy Iran's nuclear program within the next 12 months or risk being attacked with an atomic bomb, the former head of the Mossad told the British Sunday Telegraph.

"As an intelligence officer working with the worst-case scenario, I can tell you we should be prepared," said Shabtai Shavit, Mossad chief from 1989 to 1996. "We should do whatever necessary on the defensive side, on the offensive side, on the public opinion side for the West, in case sanctions don't work. What's left is a military action."

"The time that is left to be ready is getting shorter all the time," Shavit told the Telegraph.

"I think if they are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President."
Ex-US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton comment on the most likely time for an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Shavit added that a victory by Democratic nominee Barack Obama in the November presidential election would significantly lower the chances that the U.S. would approve of military action against Iran. "If [Republican candidate John] McCain gets elected, he could really easily make a decision to go for it," Shavit told the paper. "If it's Obama: no. My prediction is that he won't go for it, at least not in his first term in the White House."

The assessment echoed the assessment of former UN Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, who said that an Israeli strike could occur as early as November, since Israel was unlikely to take such a dramatic action before the US election. "I don't think they will do anything before our election because they don't want to affect it. And they'd have to make a judgment whether to go during the remainder of President Bush's term in office or wait for his successor."

Bolton said he has given up on the Bush administration's efforts to stop Iran from developing an atomic bomb. "I don't think it's serious any more," he said. "If you had asked me a year ago I would have said I thought it was a real possibility. I just don't think it's in the cards."

Bolton said that if Senator Obama is elected in November, Israel could not afford to wait until he takes office on January 20, before taking action. "An Obama victory would rule out military action by the Israelis because they would fear the consequences given the approach Obama has taken to foreign policy," according to Bolton, who served as ambassador to the U.N. for less than two years until 2006.

"I think if they are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President," Bolton said in an interview last week with FOX News.

In an interview with the British 'Daily Telegraph,' Bolton said he believed the Arab world would actually be "pleased" by an Israeli strike. Their reaction, he told the paper, "will be positive privately. I think there'll be public denunciations but no action."

Bolton believes that Israel may consider postponing the attack if Senator John McCain emerges as the victor in the race, and said apprehension of Obama's foreign policy in Jerusalem would likely be the motivating factor behind an early strike.

Shavit also told the Telegraph that Israel would go it alone if necessary. "When it comes to decisions that have to do with our national security and our own survival, at best we may update the Americans that we are intending or planning or going to do something," Shavit told the paper. "It's not a precondition, [getting] an American agreement," he said.

Meanwhile, Iran's foreign minister said on Sunday he did not believe Israel was in a position to attack the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.

"They know full well what the consequences of such an act would be," Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki told reporters. "[W]e do not see the Zionist regime in a situation in which they would want to engage in such an adventurism," he said when asked about the possibility of an Israeli attack.

The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards was more specific. He warned that if his country is attacked, Tehran would strike back by barraging Israel with missiles and taking over a key oil passageway in the Persian Gulf, according to Jam-e-Jam, not a hiphop artist but an Iranian state newspaper report published Saturday.

Teheran is reported jittery after disclosure of last month's massive Israeli military exercise over the Mediterranean Sea, a drill seen as "sending a message" to Iran. Jafari warned that if attacked, Iran would strike back, and not just at Israel but at US and western interests, including choking off the Straits of Hormuz, passage for much of the oil from the region.

"Should a confrontation erupt between us and the enemy, the scope will definitely reach the oil issue. ... Oil prices will dramatically increase. This is one of the factors deterring the enemy from taking military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran," Jafari was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, it is being reported that U.S. congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush's funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership.

The article by reporter Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker magazine, published online Sunday, reveals a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush "focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change," the article cited a person familiar with its contents as saying, and involved "working with opposition groups and passing money."

Funding for the covert escalation of up to $400 million was approved by congressional leaders, according to the article, citing current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources. "

Posted by SLC | July 1, 2008 9:45 AM

SLC, interesting but not responsive to my question. Are you saying the chain of command insisted upon by Nixon's SecDef is in effect today? Or was your post more of a historical, interesting aside?

Posted by steve duncan | July 1, 2008 9:49 AM

Actually, we have Harry Truman to thank for that. he decided to go into the Korean War without a declaration or congressional authorization. No one else since has gone quite that far.

Posted by James Robertson | July 1, 2008 9:51 AM

Is there anything, anywhere that allows for any government official or group to intervene upon pronouncement of a military decision by the President?

Tanks lined up outside the White House with the turrets facing inwards.

Posted by Israel Insider Staff Think SLC Smells Of Shit | July 1, 2008 10:06 AM

I don't know if it's fair to call that "crazy" in the abstract sense. If emergency military action is necessary (as it sometimes is), it's totally appropriate for the President to be able to act immediately without having to sit through the long process of Congressional authorization. But military action is not necessarily the same thing as war.

IMHO the real tragedy is the erosion of the War Powers Act. Congress has the right (and responsibility, though good luck getting them to ever exercise it) to provide a forum for debating entry into a war. The problem today is that we also have a political landscape in which it's very hard for individual members to demand that Congress really exercise that right in any serious way. It's really easy to inflame public sentiment for short periods in a way that makes serious consideration and debate of the Resolution possible.

And, sadly, after the war has been authorized, it's even harder for members to use Congress' other inherent powers -- say, delaying other legislation, cutting off war funding, impeachment hearings (not of Bush, but of individual subordinates), or even just launching an assault of subpoena-powered investigations -- to stop the thing. This is a problem that's been building for decades but, like a lot of America's problems, Bush has cast it into sharp relief.

As far as Iran goes, Bush could probably launch the air strikes you mentioned without Congressional authorization. But the President would likely need that authorization eventually. If enough members of Congress were serious about nipping any putative Iranian war in the bud, they could certainly stop it then. As the last few years have shown, a disciplined minority can derail legislation. Unfortunately, this is definitely "Constitutional Crisis" land because it deals with separation of powers issues, and the Dems don't seem particularly interested in spending capital to pull power back to Congress.

Posted by NS | July 1, 2008 10:16 AM

A plain reading of the text of the US Constitution would seem to suggest that it would be unconstitutional for the military to follow any such order absent a declaration of war or some other form of congressional authorization.

Maybe the Constitution that Matthew is "plain[ly] reading" doesn't include Article II, Section 2?

Posted by Al | July 1, 2008 10:32 AM

"But military action is not necessarily the same thing as war."

There's the catch, isn't it? If an enemy is obliterated within an hour (and I'm talking about the use of nuclear weapons here), it's certainly a military action but I wouldn't call it a war. But it has an even more profound effect than a declared war would have.

Posted by Tel | July 1, 2008 10:36 AM

I believe a nuclear attack require authorization for from more people than just the president. They are probably all still in the executive branch, but I believe the same command structure is still in place. If the president ordered a strike on England, I think it would be the defense secretaries duty to refuse to confirm a clearly unconstitutional order.

Posted by mpowell | July 1, 2008 10:42 AM

Re steve duncan

I don't know the answer to that question. It must be recalled that the situation at the time of the Nixon impeachment hearings was extraordinary and unprecedented. So yes, it was a historical comment. As far as we know, the current Secretary of Defense Bob Gates has not sent such a cable.

Posted by SLC | July 1, 2008 10:55 AM

Bush can order an attack, as long as it goes through the chain of command, and "The Gang of 8" in Congress are notified and have an opportunity to counsel, and while the Prez isn't obligated to take their advice, it would be very hard on him if he started a War against strong objections of a majority of Congressional leadership. And I don't mean lukewarm CYA objections like "Oh, it could be a bad idea" so some politician could fencestraddle and say how great they were if the war went well, or it went bad.

What is interesting is there is little discussion of Iran blundering and attacking us, and the fact we may be working hard to NOT to have to attack certain Iranian military elements.

Iran's armed forces are actually split. You have the regular Iranian Army, and what is left of their Navy and AF which report to Parliament and through them to the Supreme Leader, Khameini. And you have the Quds Force of radical Muslims that have a separate ground force, irregular combatants like trained suicide bombers, a militarized Religious Police for internal control, export of terror and weapons abroad to groups like Hez and Hamas, and Naval and Missile elements - who report through a chain of command of radical Muslims in the Executive of Iran and various clerical groups, then eventually to the Supreme Leader.

The problem with the Quds force is THEY, not America could start the War. They have already been caught inside Iraq involved in killing Americans, they did the pansy Brit sailor kidnapping, and have played "chicken" on NATO vessels guarding the Gulf. I don't see us holding our fire on taking the killers of GIs out if Quds Force blunders and does a missile attack on a ship, launches missiles on Israel, or tries a major attack in Iraq.

The hope is we don't have to kill regular Iranian Navy and AF elements if war breaks out. They will resume being a necessity for regional stability in the long term and better we do not kill the mostly secular, professional Iranian soldiers or wreck their assets.
Just Quds, the land to sea missiles, air defenses, nuke weapons facilities (the Bashar reactors will be left untouched), and killing selected Revolutionary Guard and clerical leadership concentrations.

Posted by chris ford | July 1, 2008 11:03 AM

mpowell, I'll amend my question. No nukes involved this time. Prez orders bombers to lay waste to several targets (no civilians or governmental personnel on affected sites) in a non-NATO nation. They're not on a list of hostile countries, there are presently no known disagreements with them, they have no military means to attack the U.S. or any U.S. interest outside the 50 states or territories, or any of our allies or their interests. They don't even have a military. They are overtly a declared neutral party, such as Switzerland. They neither manufacture or store munitions of any kind, nuclear or otherwise, nor toxic agents of any sort be it chem/bio. There has been no intelligence shared by the executive branch with Congress or the military at any point that any threat of any sort exists within this nation. They are a Democracy and treat their own citizens with respect and in accordance with accepted norms of international law. Can anyone stop the President from suddenly and arbitrarily bombing the hell of this country? Yes, yes, before anyone goes on about how such a scenario is ridiculous and no such thing would occur just answer the question. Can he be legally refused such orders, considering insufficient time may exist for Congressional intervention to counter the orders?

Posted by steve duncan | July 1, 2008 11:09 AM

I think the only way to stop a presidential ordered airstrike would be for military leaders to resign rather than carry out the orders. If a bunch of generals resign, that delays the strike and immediately takes the issue public, allowing for some debate and possibility of a public or Congressional voice making itself heard.

From a Constitutional perspective, I think the question would be whether or not COngress could pass a law specifically restricting the executive's ability, in advance, to engage in military action. The problem there is that the Bush administration would almost certainly regard any such law as an unconstitutional abridgment of their powers and so would ignore it. It's not clear to me what the Supreme Court would think about something like that.

If the executive decides to just ignore COngress, it's not clear to me what options Congress has, short of impeachment, to enforce the law.

Posted by Doug T | July 1, 2008 11:17 AM

Re steve duncan

The more interesting question is that, if the president went through the chain of command and his Secretary of Defense refused to carry out the order what would happen? Apparently, Nixons' Secretary of Defense was perfectly prepared to countermand any such order from Nixon. There have even been some reports that Nixons' secretary of defense and secretary of state had made arrangements to have Nixon declared incompetent in the event of such an order and committed to a mental hospital.

It should be recalled that when Nixon ordered his attorney general to fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor and the latter refused, Nixon fired his attorney general and the latters' deputy. Thus suppose that Bush ordered a bombing campaign to be launched against, say, Iran, Secretary Gates refused to carry out the order, and Bush then summarily fired Gates. I suspect that all hell would break loose. Let's just hope that this doesn't happen.

Posted by SLC | July 1, 2008 11:24 AM

Just wanted to point out that this problem is exactly why I am a libertarian, and suspicious of the perpetual game of "government could solve more problems and be more effective if we just surrendered more of our personal decision-making authority to the Congress and the President"

Truman and Clinton both weakened the restraints on the President. And now we have Bush, who is perfectly justifiable in doing exactly what they did, but somewhere else.

You guys have got to stop assuming that the personal liberty you give up to the Government is going to be used by angels. Evil, Bad people will be in charge of the government again someday, probably sooner than you expect or would like. But, whenever a Democrat is President, you all blithely smile as the government grows and grows, because the "good guys" are in charge.

Someday the good guys won't be in charge, and the Leviathan that results will be of your own doing.

Posted by jb | July 1, 2008 11:32 AM

This is one of those questions where it's difficult to "look to the wisdom of the founding fathers" as it is unlikely that they could have envisioned a world where a significant amount of damage could be inflicted upon another state in a matter of hours from half-way around the world.

Since American Presidents have exercised military force without congressional approval from the very moment we were able to project military power, the only way this power would be "revoked" is if a sitting president did something not only incredibly stupid, but reprehensible. Bombing Iranian nuclear facilities would be incredibly stupid. Nuking Iran would be reprehensible.

Posted by DanF | July 1, 2008 11:39 AM

Officers are allowed to refuse illegal orders (required, I believe), even if they come from the president. The tricky part is their ability or willingness to recognize illegality if it is there. There are some things the president can make legal by executive order, but those are limited. Executive orders can not abrogate existing laws, and treaties are considered to be existing laws. While that would prevent whimsical attacks on many nations, it wouldn't work with Iran.

A general might be able to construe our status as a signatory to some UN charters as laws that prevent certain specific actions, but there is almost certainly some way that the president could legally order some kind of attack.

Posted by Njorl | July 1, 2008 11:40 AM

Anyone (including MY) willing to lay down some money on this bad boy? I've got $10 that says that no such airstrikes will happen before January 20, 2009. I'll even give odds...

Posted by Klug | July 1, 2008 11:46 AM

During the Cold War it seemed the most likely illegal-war-scenario was a renegade military commander launching an unauthorized strike. Recall that was the scheme behind Dr Strangelove. So consolidating authority in the Presidency made sense at the time.

Nixon could have done a bunch of different things that would have had the military keep him in office. My most-likely was ordering the Army to arrest the whole congress. Looking back, maybe I'd had a couple of hits too many of blotter acid, but it didn't seem so far fetched back then.

As I'm sure Mr Duncan has figured out, the answer to his question is that if GeoWBush orders a secret, conventional strike on Iran it would require some fantastically brave officer saying NO to stop it. Because there would be a pre-existing plan; the plan would have detailed logistics and planning all done ahead of time; it would have been practiced and studied by the air crews and commanders involved. It would have momentum. It would become it's own justification.

Here's a little dooms-day nightmare. What if Cheney had Bush poisoned? And then ordered the strike?

I've already admitted to paranoia but I hope Addington didn't think of this already.

Posted by JohnMcC | July 1, 2008 11:46 AM

I, too, think it has been a real error that this nation has moved away from forthright declarations of war being passed by Congress prior to wars being fought. I find such sentiment interesting, coming from someone who has, in other contexts, plainly stated that he reads the Constitution in a manner which results in essentially no legal costraints on what laws Congress may pass.

Posted by Will Allen | July 1, 2008 11:53 AM

Actually, the laws in question here, if I'm reading correctly from teh comments, has to do with the War Powers Act (1973). This legislation put limits on teh President's ability to wage undecleared war, which, until that time, had been completely at the discretion of the President. To wit: the Korean and Vietnam "conflicts" to which, of course, we more generally refer as "wars", albeit undeclared. Under the WPA, the President must basically convince Congress to continue an engagement after 90 days.

Posted by SpacerX | July 1, 2008 12:01 PM

Actually, the laws in question here, if I'm reading correctly from teh comments, has to do with the War Powers Act (1973). This legislation put limits on the President's ability to wage undecleared war, which, until that time (1973), had been completely at the discretion of the President. To wit: the Korean and Vietnam "conflicts" to which, of course, we more generally refer as "wars", albeit undeclared. Under the WPA, the President must basically convince Congress to continue an engagement after 90 days.

Posted by SpacerX | July 1, 2008 12:02 PM

Sorry, my error. The law requires POTUS to inform Congress within 48 hours of action, and, after 60 days (vice 90) requires POTUS to convince Congress of further engagement.

Posted by SpacerX | July 1, 2008 12:10 PM

If they have to go through another war, another 4 years of a hawkish President, another period of abuse and overextension, the armed forces may not care what the Constitution allows them to do.

But the optimist in me (there's a bit left) thinks this is an inherently unfair question. You'll note that the Bush administration's rhetoric on Iran is not nearly as strong as it was against Saddam. I'm with Klug on this one - $10 says nothing happens, regardless of what Iran builds.

Posted by Angry Sam | July 1, 2008 12:14 PM

I think military leaders would probably have to comply with the order. I think the secretary of defense would be within his rights to refuse to confirm the order. If the chain of command is defined so as to flow through the secretary, the generals would be within their rights to respect the secretary's refusal to confirm and not order the attack.

At the end of the day, a true separation of powers between the executive branch and the other branches of government is impossibly. The head of the executive can give whatever orders he wants. There is no way for the law to be precise in specifying exactly what orders are lawful or not (not to mention cases which explicitly recommend ambiguity, such as a response to a surprise attack). At the end of the day, the proper mechanism for handling these cases is for their to be a chain of command (which is by definition going to exist in some sense) that has people beneath the president empowered to determine if they feel that the president's orders are lawful or not. But these are all cases of discretion. I think it would be most reasonable, if, for example, the secretary of defense was empowered to make these judgments, based on concerns related to congressional and judicial authorization. Then the generals judgment would be much more circumscribed. Perhaps limited to refusing unjustified nuclear attacks and refusing orders not following the chain of command (with the exception like, the secretary of defense has been killed by a surprise attack and immediate action is called for). But as you consider examples like these, it is clear that discretion will be required, particularly at the highest levels of command.

Posted by mpowell | July 1, 2008 12:35 PM

I think the only way to stop a presidential ordered airstrike would be for military leaders to resign rather than carry out the orders. If a bunch of generals resign, that delays the strike and immediately takes the issue public, allowing for some debate and possibility of a public or Congressional voice making itself heard.

This analysis is definitely wrong. The military can definitely refuse lawful orders. If the president were to issue the order to the military to arrest all the members of congress, this would clearly be illegal. No democratic redress would be possible if those were orders the military was legally obligated to follow. Otherwise, our republic rests solely on the goodwill of the president, since even impeachment is no longer an option.

You can talk about where the appropriate boundaries are, but when you consider the different possibilities, it becomes apparent that no clear dividing line between lawful and unlawful presidential orders exists. Thus the various actors must exercise their own discretion and hope that history absolves them.

Posted by mpowell | July 1, 2008 12:46 PM

Of course the President chooses his SecDef, nominates the Joint Chiefs and has a hell of a lot of sway as to various generals and commanders on down the chain. That accepted I think depending on these people to rein in or stop a President, via refusal or resignation, from commencing an insane attack might occur some of the time, and some of the time they just might step up and carry out the orders. Then Costa Rica gets bombed back to the stone age. Legally. For no given or needed reasons at the time of the orders other than "Because I said to do it". Nice little country you got there. Too bad something's gonna happen to it. And no one's stopping me.

Posted by steve duncan | July 1, 2008 1:11 PM

So Matt - my request is: What do you think are the chances that Bush will bomb Iran before leaving office?

Posted by otto | July 1, 2008 1:31 PM

...then Secretary of Defense sent a cable to all high ranking military commanders reminding them that any orders they receive must go through the chain of command, namely himself. This was obviously to prevent President Nixon, who a number of officials considered to be mentally unstable at the time, from ordering a nuclear strike on the former Soviet Union to forestall his impending impeachment.
Posted by SLC

Horseshit.

In their memoirs, NIxon, Haig, Kissinger all agree Nixon was depressed and out of sorts but by no account was Nixon belligerant and planning either a coup or a nuclear strike. The idea of using a nuclear strike on Russia as a convenient diversion so Nixon could stay in the White House longer is especially preposterous. If the Architect of Detente started a nuclear war, he, the White House, and most of America wouldn't be around any longer.

Secretary of Defense Schlesinger exceeded his authority, so did Alexander Haig in working long before Nixon was ready to smooth the way for resignation and an orderly transition of power.

The common fear Kissinger, Nixon, Schlesinger, Haig had was that America's enemies might be tempted to strike in a period of weakness in command and control - and aside from Nixon - concern that Nixon was so emotionally devestated that his strategic decision-making was possibly impaired. There was also what turned out to be crazy "what if??" speculation in days when wild-eyed Lefties were demanding Nixon resign and be dragged in handcuffs to the DC jail - that Nixon would use his friendship with the DC Marine Corps Commander to stage a coup and that Schlesinger said if THAT highly unlikely conspiracy theory was true, he could counter with Army units.

Nixon wrote later that there was never any time when he considered violating posse commitatus, Haig confirmed that, and Nixon said he had no aggression or anger in the final days, just great sadness he had blown it and was committed to departing in a way that did the least harm to the country...starting with his decision to comply with the SCOTUS on his tapes, and not provoke a separation of powers Constitutional crisis. Then his decision to not fight impeachment and drag matters out another half year but to resign in the national interest.

So by being wrong, instead of right in most his decisions like Haig was, Schlesinger showed bad judgment...which another incident of similar behavior cost him his job...

Less than a year later , Schlesinger later really stepped in it as Defense Secretary and was booted out over actions in the Mayaguez piracy incident for willful insubordination. After 14 Marines were killed in the rescue, President Ford ordered retaliatory airstrikes on Kymer Rouge coastal Navy bases. Schlesinger thought the idea stupid so he cancelled the orders but told Ford they were carried out. Ford found out a few weeks later that Schlesinger pulled that stunt and he was gone. This was reported by Bob Woodward in his 1999 book "The Shadow".

Posted by chris ford | July 1, 2008 1:44 PM

Thank you chris ford, but what does your post instruct us about what would happen if Nixon had attempted a coup? You are very nearly the definition of a troll.

Posted by mpowell | July 1, 2008 2:01 PM

Re Chris Ford

The comment about the cable that Nixons' secretary of defense sent out instructing military commanders not to obey any orders not going through the chain of command was detailed one of the Woodward/Bernstein books. Given the fact that Nixon was drinking heavily, according to Senator Barry Goldwater who visited with him, which for him was more then 1 drink as he notoriously couldn't hold his liquor, this was a perfectly reasonable cable as an impaired president was hardly in a position to make competent decisions.

Posted by SLC | July 1, 2008 2:18 PM

A troll, mpowell, is someone like you who self-righteously criticizes someone who sets the record straight on a ludicrous claim like SLC's that Nixon was contemplating ordering a nuclear strike on the Soviets so he could stay safe in the White House.

In my 11:03 AM post, I mentioned what is legal now for starting a war with Iran.

In other circumstances, the Gang of 8 doesn't have to be consulted at all if action is so urgent that there is no time to talk to even them, let alone afford a leisurely debate over weeks or months in Congress.

An example is Cheney's direct order to the NORAD Commander on 9/11 after 3 Jihadi hijacked planes had hit their combat targets - to have fighter jets shoot down any plane from any country he believed was hijacked and not responding to orders. It was a lawful order, and the President nor the Secretary of Defense - who had run to where the enemy combatants had crashed into the Pentagon and was helping the wounded - was involved in ordering.

As I also mentioned in my 11:03 AM post, an entirely different situation would arise if Quds Force attacked 1st and triggered the detailed SIOP ready to go on Iran. Then Congressional Leadership would merely be informed, though they have already been prebriefed on how the US would react to Iranian aggression in a range of scenarios possible and had some policy input themselves...

Finally, in the Cold War, under very specific circumstances where it was confirmed the entire chain of command above strategic nuclear units was taken out, the military was empowered to launch a full nuclear attack on their own to fulfill their designated war missions. Not on word of any President, Congress, or Pentagon civilian leader.

Posted by chris ford | July 1, 2008 2:40 PM

Ford,

I recognize that you may not be clear on the meaning of the term. But derailing a thread with a long-winded, but largely irrelevant argument is most certainly trollish behavior. Of course, your posting history here has not gone unnoticed so it comes as no surprise.

Posted by mpowell | July 1, 2008 4:49 PM

The assumption that the bombing would start after McCain loses is unwarranted. If it looks fairly certain that McCain will lose, then it's to the Republicans political advantage to roll the electoral dice by starting bombing before the election. The big question is whether Obama is preparing to cave or to fight back. If he wants to fight back, he'll need to prepare the ground ahead of time, warning against reckless military moves in Iran.

Posted by MikeW | July 1, 2008 5:09 PM

Under current law, the chain of command is subject to Presidential direction. See 10 USC Section 162(b). Accordingly, if the Secretary of Defense refuses an order of the President, the President can simply take the Secretary of Defense out of the chain of command and make a different chain of command - potentially directly from the President to an operating unit.

Posted by Al | July 1, 2008 5:25 PM

Under current law, the chain of command is subject to Presidential direction. See 10 USC Section 162(b). Accordingly, if the Secretary of Defense refuses an order of the President, the President can simply take the Secretary of Defense out of the chain of command and make a different chain of command - potentially directly from the President to an operating unit.

But if the president does this, it falls to the army commander, or whomever, to refuse the order to arrest the members of Congress. As I said before, if the people taking orders from the president refuse to consider whether the content of those orders are unlawful, there is simply no check on executive authority. It makes sense to allow the president to bypass the chain of command, but any person receiving extremely dubious orders under such a circumstance would be under a duty to consider whether those orders are really lawful and refuse them if so.

Posted by mpowell | July 1, 2008 6:19 PM

A plain reading of the text of the US Constitution would seem to suggest that it would be unconstitutional for the military to follow any such order absent a declaration of war or some other form of congressional authorization.
Maybe the Constitution that Matthew is "plain[ly] reading" doesn't include Article II, Section 2?

Maybe the Constitution that Al is reading does not have an Article I section 8? Or perhaps it has the words "military dictator" replacing the words "commander in chief?"

The Congress was given the power to declare war for a reason. If the president has unfettered discretion to use the military as he likes without a declaration of war, what is the point of giving Congress the power to declare war?

As I recall, in the Federalist papers some of the writers clearly stated that the reason that Congress had the power to declare war was to reduce the possibility of a single man (i.e. the President) getting us into a war. If you believe, like Andrew C. McCarthy, the the power to declare war is a meaningless formality and that the President has complete authority to wage undeclared wars, you are spiiting on the Constitution.

Posted by Glaivester | July 1, 2008 6:29 PM

By the way, the Andrew McCarthy article I intended to link to is here.

Posted by Glaivester | July 1, 2008 6:33 PM

Chris Ford as usual is full of shit: "They have already been caught inside Iraq involved in killing Americans,"

Nope. None, nada, zip, zero. Absolutely no Iranians have been caught in Iraq killing anybody. If they had, it would have been front page news.

The ONLY Iranians arrested by the US in Iraq were invited to be in Iraq by either the Kurds or the Iraqi government and in all cases they were released after their hosts demanded they be so - albeit it took the US some time to do it in a couple cases.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 1, 2008 6:37 PM

MikeW is correct. Although Daniel Pipes and Bill Kristol think Bush will attack if Obama wins, but will leave it to McCain if McCain wins, I believe Bush and Cheney (and Israel, which is pushing VERY hard for this right now) will attack Iran before the election.

There is no downside to them doing that. They can tie the hands of the incoming administration, no matter who it is, AND they can conceivably give McCain a poll bounce if McCain uses the attack to differentiate himself from Obama as a "war hero" - which is all he's running on. Obama would need to do the opposite - differentiate himself from McCain, given that Obama has already agreed that "Iran is a threat". This puts Obama in exactly the position Kerry was in with regard to Bush - unable to differentiate himself on Iraq.

So I continue to believe that Bush will attack Iran before the election. But it is possible that he will attack after the election.

ALL the indications are that Bush WILL attack Iran before leaving office. And if he doesn't, the Israelis will.

Any stories about how the Israelis can't knock out all the Iran nuclear facilities are true, but irrelevant. The Israelis and the Iranians know that Israel cannot attack Iran without permission of the US (at least by air - they could do by sea, conceivably, but with even less effect, with their subs.) So the Iranians will retaliate against the US if attacked by Israel. The Israelis simply don't want to be blamed by the US for starting the war once it goes badly. This is why they haven't attacked already, as Cheney has been pressuring them to.

However, Israel can't trust Obama to attack Iran. So if push comes to shove, the Israelis will attack Iran. In the end, not much will come of it for them. They'll end up accusing everybody who blames them of being "anti-Semites" anyway, as usual.

Either way, the US will end up in a war with Iran within the next six months or so.

And if McCain wins, he will attack Iran in the first six months of his administration.

There really is absolutely no way to stop this.

And despite Ford's bullshit about how the Qods Force might be interested in starting a war, the Sy Hersh article in the New Yorker clearly shows the major danger is in the expanded covert activities Bush has ordered in Iran. The US is now supporting Salafist terrorist groups in Iran who kill civilians and Iranian authorities, but who have no hope in hell of actually displacing the Iranian leadership. This makes the US the equivalent of Osama bin Laden - a franchiser of terrorism.

And if the US Special Ops teams in Iran get caught, that will be a casus belli for Bush to start his war. This is far more dangerous than anything the Qods Force is doing in Iraq.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 1, 2008 6:53 PM

Either way, the US will end up in a war with Iran within the next six months or so.

And if McCain wins, he will attack Iran in the first six months of his administration.

Wanna earn some money? Scroll upthread...

Posted by Klug | July 2, 2008 12:46 AM

I never gamble unless it's blackjack and I'm up on my card counting - which hasn't been true since 1971.

I already have a standing deal with Arnold Evans that one of us acknowledges the other if Bush does or does not attack Iran before he leaves office.

You want in on that, fine. I'll probably be here to accept your acknowledgment that I was right and you were wrong in January, barring heart failure or getting hit by a bus.

But if McCain wins, he'll still attack Iran if Bush doesn't.

The amusing thing about you clowns is that you seriously think all this "sturm und drang" over Iran is just some sort of Kabuki theater and that in the end nothing will come of it.

Iran is nothing like North Korea.

As I've said, there are only two possible outcomes: either the US blinks, or Iran does. And Iran can't.

That really doesn't leave much room for any other outcome except war - or, as you seem to think, nothing at all happens and Iran keeps enriching.

One hopes you're right and the latter outcome is the one that occurs.

But I think Iraq demonstrates that's not going to be the case.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 2, 2008 5:04 AM

A set of falsifiable predictions:

1. During the remaining time the Bush administration is in office (until 1/20/09), there will be no airstrikes into Iran by US forces.
2. In the unlikely event that John McCain is elected, there will be no airstrikes into Iran during the first six months of his administration (7/20/09).

I've been offering money on US attacks into Iran for years, it seems. If people really believe it's going to happen, why not take the free money? No takers. Sigh.

Posted by Klug | July 2, 2008 12:41 PM