The Trump administration is tying itself in knots, clinging to a ceasefire with Iran that now remains in name only.
On Monday, President Donald Trump said Iran would be “blown off the face of the earth” if it attacked U.S. ships guiding vessels through the Strait of Hormuz as part of Trump’s ill-defined “Project Freedom.”
The following day, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said Iran had launched numerous attacks. “Since the ceasefire was announced, Iran has fired at commercial vessels nine times and seized two container ships. They’ve attacked U.S. forces more than 10 times,” he told reporters on Tuesday. He explained that despite attacking U.S. troops, the strikes were “below the threshold of restarting major combat operations at this point.”
Trump suggested to reporters on Tuesday that Iran knew what actions constituted red lines that would violate the ceasefire, but refused to go on record on what they were. “Well, you’ll find out, because I’ll let you know,” he said, without letting anyone know.
Obama’s military operations were essentially all covered by the bush era “authorization to use force” that launched the “global war on terror.”
The War Powers act itself is a flagrant violation of the constitutional design, and if SCOTUS hadn’t devolved into a creative writing forum with a focus on inventing justifications for Republican-desired outcomes we’d see the damn think struck down as a violation of that bullshit “non-delegstion doctrine” they used to say the clean water act doesn’t actually protect water