Joe Lieberman: “I say to my colleagues respectfully, this amendment is unprecedented and unwise. It is unprecedented in the sense that…”

“I say to my colleagues respectfully, this amendment is unprecedented and unwise. It is unprecedented in the sense that in brief research overnight, I have not been able to find an occasion in which Congress has exercised authority with regard to military action under article I of the Constitution when Congress has attached a time limit to it. There was one occasion when time limits were discussed with regard to the deployment of American forces in Bosnia, the Balkans, during the nineties, but I think we saw there why congressional imposition of time limits on authorization of military action is unwise. Why is it unwise? It is unwise because it gives notice to our enemies that there is a limit to the authority we are giving the President as Commander in Chief of our military forces. It allows them to calculate their actions based on that limited duration. In Bosnia, when that deadline was articulated by the administration, it created expectations which were quite naturally frustrated and therein created a credibility gap.”