To spread democracy abroad, respect the law at home -CS Moniter

[Catchawave]

By Pat M. Holt is (former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)

When President Lyndon Johnson left the White House in 1969, he was so discredited that people said it would take the rest of the century to get the powers of the president back to where they were when he took office. What ruined Johnson was the Vietnam War, but more specifically the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. This was the response to what he said were North Vietnamese attacks on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964. At Johnson's request, a compliant Congress passed a resolution providing in part:

"The Congress approves and supports the determination of the president, as commander in chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."

Later, it developed that one of the alleged attacks in the Tonkin Gulf did not happen and the other was dubious. Congress repealed the resolution.

George W. Bush entered the White House in 2001 with an expansive view of the presidential power that Johnson had lost. The most important manifestation of this has now come with his assertion of the power to order warrantless intercepts of the communications of people in the United States suspected of connections with terrorist groups.

As sources for this authority, President Bush relies on: (1) a nebulous concept of inherent power, and (2) a resolution passed by Congress in October 2001. This resolution recognizes the president's "authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States." It also authorizes the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks."

Sounds like the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, doesn't it? Johnson used that resolution to justify the escalation of the war in Vietnam and Mr. Bush used the 2001 resolution to authorize the invasion of Iraq. There were dubious attacks in the Tonkin Gulf and there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There is another problem with the 2001 resolution. If it authorizes what the president says it does, it violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution:

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