James Oberstar: “the most solemn and weighty power conferred by our Constitution upon the Congress is the power to declare war and the…”

“the most solemn and weighty power conferred by our Constitution upon the Congress is the power to declare war and the power of the purse. Last year, Congress abdicated its constitutional responsibility by approving a deeply-flawed resolution that gave the President the power to initiate a preemptive war against Iraq, which, in my judgment, expressed at that time, did not pose a clear and present danger to the United States. I opposed that resolution in the strong belief that Congress should have required the President to seek a formal declaration of war because the President had failed to demonstrate a link between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist attacks of September 11, failure to prove the presence in Iraq of chemical, biological weapons of mass destruction, a nuclear capability, or the capacity to deliver such weapons against the United States. After September 11, our Nation was united in common purpose to combat terrorism, and the United States enjoyed near universal support among the community of nations for our actions to destroy the al Qaeda terrorist bases and their Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. While this Administration has not yet been able to achieve many of the goals for Afghanistan, I support the funding in this legislation for continued support to complete our mission there.”