"Peter" wrote in message
...
On 12/15/2011 4:02 PM, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In ,
wrote:


I hope that is an over-simplification. What you are saying pertains to
the "customary laws of war" but since when can the President declare
war
and since when are we at war with our own citizens? As far as I know,
the last time we were at war (per the Constitution) was in 1945 prior
to
the Japanese surrender.

Nope we are at war currently, per the Constitution. The C also says that
Congress gets to enact laws as they see fit to carry out their
responsibilities under the C. The War Powers Act certainly fits that
bill. There is nothing in the C (unfortunately in many cases) that say
they have to call a spade, a spade.


No. The War Powers Resolution (known colloquially as the War Powers
Act) restricts the war powers of the President. It does not serve to
amend the Constitutionally stipulated way by which this country formally
declares itself to be at war. We are at war only if the Congress pass a
bill that formally declares war and the President signs it. That has
not happened since 1941 after Pearl Harbor. I am not denying that the
country has engaged in military combat on foreign territory since that
time, I'm merely saying that per the C, we are not at war at this time,
except against irrational thinking (and I fear we are losing).

Interestingly enough, for years the DoD has always had a fairly precise
definition of what constitutes a war. Working from my faulty memory it's
something like multiple incidents of attack where casualties of over 1,000
soldiers or civilians are killed and there's an imminent threat of further,
high casualty attacks. Though I just came across it the other day, I can't
find it now. )-: I wonder if they've been as busy trying to redefine "war"
to fit the current situation as they have been trying to define what
constitutes an act of cyberwar where an attack can seem to come from Country
X when it actually is coming from Country Y using spoofing techniques.

http://www.stripes.com/news/congress...guity-1.149790

WASHINGTON - Amid a rising din of reports of online incursions and
Internet-based attacks, Congress wants to know why the Pentagon still hasn't
revealed its basic cyberdefense ground rules. By law, the Department of
Defense was required to report on its cyberwar policies to Congress by March
1, a deadline it missed. And the much-heralded Pentagon cyberstrategy
released last week didn't clarify the matter, according to a letter sent to
the defense secretary Wednesday by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Carl
Levin, D-Mich. "The continued failure to address and define the policies and
legal authorities necessary for the Pentagon to operate in the cyberspace
domain remains a significant gap in our national security that must be
addressed," they wrote.

The bottom line is that neither war we're fighting classifies as war under
the Pentagon's own definitions. The Feds have redefined the meaning of war
on terror so many times no one quite knows where the lines are drawn.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1106c.asp says:

Federal agencies have an array of definitions for "terrorism":

The Defense Department defined terrorism as "the unlawful use or threatened
use of force or violence by a revolutionary organization against individuals
or property, with the intention of coercing or intimidating governments or
societies, often for political or ideological purposes."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation defined terrorism as "the unlawful use
of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a
government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance
of political or social objectives."

The State Department defined terrorism as "the use or threat of the use of
force for political purposes in violation of domestic or international law."


Oddly, we treated Timothy McVeigh's attack as a criminal matter in the US
Federal court system rather than declaring war on him or the state he was
from. He got exactly what he deserved - death. That tends to make the
whole whiny chorus of people who say that the courts can't successfully
prosecute terrorists into liars. We can and we did prosecute a terrorist
(actually several) successfully in our criminal court system.

--
Bobby G.