Vetoes P-tix

1 Mele-Mel Stewart & Colbert in 08

Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

Bush Vetoes Good DA

Now that’s, political power

**Index** Index……………………………………………………………………..1-2 Thesis………………………………………………………………………3 1NC……………………………………………………………………….4-8 ***LINKS** Nat. Service……………………………………………………………….9 Draft……………………………………………………………………….10 DADT……………………………………………………………………….11 Linguists………………………………………………………………….12 PMC’s………………………………………………………………………13 Women in Combat……………………………………………………..14 Space weapons……………………………………………………...15-16 Peacecorps………………………………………………………………..17 Disease prevention……………………………………………………..18 Peacecorps in the military…………………………………………..19 Citizen corps……………………………………………………………..20 Americorps……………………………………………………………21-22 Seniorcorps……………………………………………………………….23

**INTERNALS**

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Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

Vetoes=prez powers…………………………………………………24 (BRINK) GOP leaving Bush………………………………………..25 Dems need repubs. 2 kill veto…………………………………..26 Unpop. Policies kill support……………………………………..27 Congress action will kill prez. Powers………………………..28 **UNIQUENESS** Repub. Support now……………………………………………29-30 Bush vetoing now……………………………………………….31-35 **IMPACTS** Congress Bills=Destablization & war…………………………..37 Pullout Bad F/L………………………………………………….38-39 Pullout Bad (laundry list card)…………………………………..40 Perception imp……………………………………………………41-42 Prez. Powers good (laundry list)…………………………………43 Prez. Powers=Nat. Security……………………………………….44 Prez. Powers key 2 heg…………………………………………….45 Prez. Powers key 2 solv terrorism……………………………..46 Prez. Powers key 2 solv. Domestic terrorist………………..47 Prez. Powers key to milt. Intel………………………………….48 **AT’S** AT: Tyranny turns…………………………………………………..49 AT: Uniqueness o/w link………………………………………….50 AT: Prez. Powers bad…………………………………………..51-52 AT: Imp. Inev./Prez. Powers low……………………………53-54 AT: Prez powers unconstitutional…………………………......55 AT: Only 1 veto………………………………………………………56 2NC/1NR overview………………………………………………….57

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Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

Thesis: Ok, here’s the scoop, Bush his vetoing like crazy now and plans for more. He needs his GOP buddies to do this. The plan is unpopular, the Singer evidence is sweet and says that unpopular policies, draw republicans away from Bush. If you just must use the GOP plan un-pop cards you can simply say that the plan upsets repubs. And draws them away (but that’s an uphill battle). Without his vetoes the president really has no true prez. Powers and this is bad. So blah!, and remember, that this is no P-Cap scenario so when they pullout out their p-cap is finite stuff tell them to stfu.

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Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

Vetoes DA-1NC

1/5

A. Uniqueness: Bush has already vetoed one bill and will veto any others similar to it, seeing as though neither side will back down more vetoes are to come Washington Post`07The Washington Post, nationally syndicated and renown new newpaper, May 2, 2007, Heading for showdown(http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usiraq025194731may02,0,6231803.story?coll=ny-top-headlines)

President George W. Bush yesterday vetoed a $124-billion emergency war-funding bill that contains a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, setting up a confrontation with the Democraticcontrolled Congress over his war policy. Acting on the fourth anniversary of his so-called "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, Bush returned to the White House after giving a speech at the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., and signed the veto using a pen given to him last month by Robert Derga, whose son, Marine Corps Reserve Cpl. Dustin Derga, was killed May 8, 2005, in combat in Anbar province Iraq. "This is a prescription for chaos and confusion, and we must not impose it on our troops," Bush said in a nationally broadcast statement from the White House.

He said the bill would "mandate a rigid and artificial deadline" for troop pullouts and "it makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing." The bill, a supplemental appropriation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, arrived at the White House around 4 p.m. and Bush spoke to the nation at 6:10 to explain his veto - only the second of his presidency, the first coming last year on a bill that would have expanded federally funded medical research using embryonic stem cells. House Speaker Nancy

Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid formally sent the bill with a final appeal to Bush to drop his objections. After his speech, Pelosi said "the president wants a blank check" and "the Congress is not going to give it to him." She said Congress would look for a common ground with Bush, but there was "great distance" between them. Reid said the president has "put our troops in the middle of a civil war" and "a change of course is needed." Bush had warned congressional Democrats that he would reject a bill that included a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops and billions of dollars in spending on items unrelated to the war. But the bill passed the Democratic-controlled House and Senate last week, and Democrats said it reflects the desire of most Americans to end an unpopular war. The White House said Bush will meet with congressional leaders from both parties this afternoon in an effort to resolve differences. So far,

Bush has given no indication he intends to

compromise.

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Vetoes DA 1NC 2/5

And, Aside from the Iraq bill vetoes, Bush has many on the way when it comes to the budget~Cohn`07Peter Cohn, writer for the congress daily, May 11, 2007, Government Executive.com, OMB chief warns of vetoes if spending cap is exceeded,( http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0507/051207cdpm2.htm)

Budget Director Rob Portman is warning Democrats he will recommend a veto of any spending bill that exceeds President Bush's discretionary fiscal 2008 budget request of $933 Office of Management and

billion as lawmakers work to finish a budget resolution next week likely to exceed that target by more than $20 billion. As Democrats are expected to fully fund Bush's base defense budget request, the additions are likely to go to homeland security, foreign aid and domestic programs.

The House Appropriations Committee is to begin marking up its fiscal 2008 bills as early as next week, while budget conferees finalize the overall discretionary spending cap. Both chambers are expected to take up the budget resolution next week. "Because the budget will set the framework for consideration of [fiscal 2008] appropriations bills, it is timely to notify you that I will recommend the president veto any appropriations bill that exceeds his request until Congress demonstrates a sustainable path that keeps discretionary spending within the president's top line of $933 billion and ensures that the Department of Defense has the resources necessary to accomplish its mission," Portman wrote Friday to the bicameral leaders of the Budget and Appropriations committees. Democrats plan to take up the massive fiscal 2008 Defense appropriations bill last in the process, and Portman's letter appears to caution them against the tactic of using that politically sensitive bill to break

By vetoing the domestic spending bills earlier in the process, the burden would be on Democrats to come up with enough GOP support for potential override attempts. But it would be rare for the White House to enforce its own spending proposals for the 12 individual appropriations Bush's $933 billion spending cap.

bills, as generally it is the overall discretionary cap that is considered unassailable.

B. Link: {Insert specific link, saying plan is unpopular}

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Vetoes DA 1NC 3/5

C. Internals: 1. Unpopular policies will draw republicans away from the president~Singer`07 Jonathan Singer, Mon Mar 05, 2007 at 08:04:17 PM EST, staff writer for My direct democracy, Are the Conservative Elites Ready to Abandon Bush?,( http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/3/5/20417/32187) By almost any measure George W. Bush has proved to be the most conservative president in the modern history of this country, using all the

what do conservatives now think of the President? According to the straw poll of those attending CPAC last week, which represent a rather elite group of conservatives, the movement seems about ready to throw their beloved president under the bus. The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire has the story. With President Bush's approval numbers in the toilet and seemingly going further down, it's no wonder that so many conservatives no longer care to call themselves George W. Bush Republicans. Pollster.com has not updated its presidential approval trend estimate in almost a week, but even then they pegged the President at a sub-35 percent approval rating. A simple average of the eight national polls in the field within the last two weeks (here, here and here) places the President's approval rating at below 33 percent. Suffice it to say that he is not a popular President and is, in fact, among the most unpopular Presidents in the history of this republic. Still, for as bad as things are currently for President Bush, they would certainly get worse if conservatives abandoned him, too. True, the poll question above was more of a choice between powers at his disposal and then some to try to move the country to the right. But

Presidents Reagan and Bush than one that gauged support for President Bush (there was not, for instance, a question measuring the President's job approval rating -- or at least not one that was released publicly). But at the same time,

the fact that so few of these elite conservatives wanted the next GOP nominee to carry the mantle of George W. Bush is quite telling. And if these elite sentiments trickle down to the base -- and they quite possibly will -- we could see a further deterioration of support for President Bush, both around the country and potentially up on Capitol Hill, further weakening the White House's hand as it tries to advance its radical agenda.

2. Republican support is the only thing keeping Bush’s vetoes from becoming irrelevant~Babington`07

CHARLES BABINGTON, AP, the examiner, May 2, 2007, Bush Veto Puts New Pressure on Democrats(http://www.examiner.com/a-706150~Bush_Veto_Puts_New_Pressure_on_Democrats.html) The situation frustrates Democrats, who won control of the House and Senate in an election that largely focused on Iraq. Moreover,

Democrats showed impressive solidarity in passing the bill that Bush vetoed Tuesday, losing only 14 House Democrats while holding 216. Top Democrats say they have no hope of replicating that showing once they begin making even modest concessions in response to Bush's veto. That makes them dependent on

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Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

Republican help to some degree - perhaps a lot. As long as most GOP lawmakers stick with the president, "the question is how much policy and change we can push in Iraq,"

Vetoes DA 1NC 4/5

3. Vetoes are essential to Prez. Powers~Mayer`96

David N. Mayer, Professor of Law and History at Capital University, in Columbus, is author of The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson., Clinton Vetoes Undermine the Constitution On Principle, v4n3 June 1996(http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/onprin/v4n3/mayer.html) The budget impasse between President Clinton and Congress raises many troubling questions, not the least of which is the propriety of the president exercising his veto power in order to force his budget priorities on the Congress.

The framers of the Constitution

entrusted the president with a limited veto power in order to guard against unconstitutional legislation. Modern presidents’ use of the veto against legislation that they simply dislike on policy grounds--as in the case of President Clinton’s vetoes of the

The recently passed line-item veto law, which gives the president additional power to disapprove specific items in legislation (not only appropriations but also certain changes in tax laws and changes in so-called "entitlement" programs), will exacerbate the constitutional problem. The veto is generally regarded as a presidential power, but it is not even Republican balanced-budget plans--undermines the Constitution’s delicate balance between the executive and legislative powers.

mentioned in Article II among the powers vested in the president by the Constitution. Instead, the veto is found in the so-called "presentment clause" of Article I, section 7, which outlines the procedures by which bills become laws. This provision specifies that if the president approves of a bill passed by both houses of Congress, "he shall sign it"; but "if not, he shall return it with his objections" to Congress, where the bill may still become law if approved by a two-thirds vote in each house. The veto is a classic example of one of the "checks and balances" of the Constitution, for it gives the chief executive a share in the legislative power, which under the Constitution principally rests with Congress. Why did the framers of the Constitution give this power to the president? As explained by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, the veto was intended to give the president a "shield" against legislation that unconstitutionally interfered with his powers. Without the veto, the president "would be absolutely unable to defend himself against the depredations" of Congress, Hamilton argued. "He might gradually be stripped of his authorities by successive resolutions, or annihilated by a single vote," as the Constitution requires only a simple majority for legislation to pass either house of Congress. Unlike the British monarchs’ absolute veto power, however, the presidential veto is limited: It may be overridden by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. Thus, it was not intended as an absolute check--for unconstitutional legislation could still be passed if sufficient majorities existed in Congress--but as an additional safeguard. As the framers intended, the veto gave a preliminary line of defense against unconstitutional laws before they were put into effect; it made it unnecessary to wait for an actual case or controversy to bring such legislation before the Supreme Court for that body to exercise its power of judicial review to nullify unconstitutional laws. The

veto power explains in part why presidents take an oath "to preserve, protect, and defend" the Constitution……Today, those dangers are far more ominous. President Nixon’s successors in the White House, both Republican and Democrat, have built upon these precedents in their use of presidential powers. The activism of the Clinton administration threatens to establish even more precedents for the use, and abuse, of power. The "imperial presidency" did not end with Richard Nixon; the specter of unbridled executive power today makes the concerns of 1973 pale in comparison.

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Vetoes DA 1NC 5/5

D. Impacts: 1. Strong presidency is key to preserving freedom and security, preventing tyranny and a collapse of government~Ashcroft `04

Copyright 2004 The Federal News Service, Inc. Federal News Service November 12, 2004 Friday SECTION: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HEARING LENGTH: 3336 words HEADLINE: REMARKS BY ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT AT THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY FOR LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY CONVENTION Accessed 08-02 JAP

One of my esteemed predecessors, Bill Barr, is fond of saying that Article II was the true miracle of

Philadelphia. The framers of our Constitution were determined to fix the deficiencies that had produced a weak and ineffective government under the Articles of Confederation. Article II of the new Constitution was the great solution they devised. By establishing a single executive and focusing in the president all the power to administer the laws and lead the nation, the framers achieved two fundamental goals for our national government: unity and energy or capacity in the executive function. These twin goals are essential to preserving freedom and security under our Constitution.The unity of the executive power in the person of one individual, the president, is the great keystone of political accountability in our government. After all, the president and his chosen vice president are the only officers of the United States who are elected by all the people of the United States.

2. A life of tyranny is not worth living, death is preferable~Raz`86 Joseph Raz, philosopher, THE MORALITY OF FREEDOM, 1986, p. 307

One way to test the thesis of the primacy of action reasons is to think of a person who is entirely passive

continuously led, cleaned, and pumped full with hash, so that he is perpetually content, and wants nothing but to stay in the same condition. It’s a familiar imaginary horror. How do we rank the success of such a life? It is not the worst life one can have. It is simply not a life at all. It lacks activity, it lacks goals. To the extent that one is tempted to judge it more harshly than that and to regard it as a ‘negative life’ this is because of the wasted potentiality. It is a life which could have been and was not. We can isolate this feature by imagining that the human being concerned is mentally and physically effected in a way which rules out the possibility of a life with any kind of meaningful pursuit in it. Now it is just not really a life at all. This does not preclude one from saying that it is better than human life. It is simply sufficiently unlike human life in the respects that matter that we regard it as only a degenerate case of human life. But clearly not being alive can be better than that life. and is

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**LINKS** National Service is unpopular with the GOP Marc Magee 3-11-02 Fellow – PPI, Scaling Up National Service, Progressive Policy Institute Backgrounder, Pg. http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?contentid=250267&knlgAreaID=115&subsecid=306 The president's embrace of National Service is both surprising and ironic. Though he never mentioned his predecessor's name, his proposal builds on the foundation laid by Bill Clinton's signature AmeriCorps and Senior Corps programs. Moreover, President Bush's decisive move into the National Service camp represents a sharp break with congressional Republicans' nearly monolithic antipathy to what they have regarded as "Bill Clinton's pet program." In fact, there already has been loud grumbling on the right, with House Majority Leader Dick Armey (RTexas) recently blasting AmeriCorps as "obnoxious" and vowing to resist attempts to expand it.

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The Draft is the third rail of politics- neither party supports it Phillip Carter, 5-3-05, attorney and former Army captain who writes on national security issues for The Washington Monthly, Pg. washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0503.carter.html That leaves one option left for providing the military with sufficient numbers of high-quality deployable ground forces: conscription. America has nearly always chosen this option to staff its military in times of war. Today, no leading politician in either party will come anywhere near the idea—the draft having replaced Social Security as the third rail of American politics. This will have to change if the United States is to remain the world's preeminent power.

Even the “public suggestion” of a draft by Bush would be “politically suicidal.Toronto Star, 2003. (Harper, Tim. Columnist. Toronto Star. “Will U.S. Bring Back the Draft? Defense Web Site Seeks Volunteers, Conscription Abolished in ’73.” Toronto Star. November 5, 2003. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1105-01.htm.) A number of analysts said yesterday that while any

public suggestion of a draft would be politically suicidal for U.S.

President George W. Bush in an election year, he could find himself with few other options if he is returned for a second term and the fighting in Iraq is still raging. (Continued…) "I don't think a presidential candidate would seriously propose a draft," said Charles Pena, a senior analyst with the Washington-based Cato Institute. "But an incumbent, safely in for a second term — that might be a different story. (Continued…) A return to the draft

would take a vote by Congress and a presidential signature and even with a second-term president barred by the constitution from seeking a third term, it is questionable whether a Congress would be willing to take such a politically risky step.

Having a draft is political suicide San Francisco Chronicle 8-14-05 Pg. Lexis Indeed,

the angst is so palpable that the first thing visitors to the Selective Service registration

Web site see is a message instructing them that Congress overwhelmingly opposes a draft. After Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem -- a Korean war vet -- introduced a bill to reinstate a draft or compulsory national service last year, even he said the goal was to dramatize the gap between this war's architects and its combatants. When draft anxiety threatened to influence the 2004 election, Republican House leaders in October forced Rangel's bill to a vote, where it crashed to earth like a kamikaze, 402-2. Even Rangel didn't vote for it. But how can we be assured a draft is not in our national future? Conscription losing favor For one thing, conscription is falling out of favor around the globe. That's certainly reflected in the United States. Americans are no more willing to accept a draft than they are ready to erase the ballooning deficit by doubling income taxes, or resolve a huge energy dependence by giving up cars cold turkey. Support for U.S. involvement in Iraq is sagging to a record low, even considering that the burden of the fight is borne by less than half a percent of American families. Polls now indicate a majority of Americans are unwilling to encourage their own children to enlist in the military. That represents a drop from one-third just five years ago in a Gallup Poll. Resuscitation of a draft likely would eviscerate the half-hearted support remaining for our involvement in Iraq. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll last month found that only

1 in 4 Americans favors reinstating the draft,

while 7 in 10 oppose it. More than half of those polled said they were "strongly opposed." Members of Congress

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have an ingrained aversion to political suicide, and thus will keep refusing to drink the Kool-Aid of conscription. Nor should we expect a push for reinstating the draft from this president, who even when the

Conservatives hate the plan(DADT) Chambers, David I. Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. October 2000. Couples: Marriage, Civil Union, and Domestic Partnership. P. 303

Second, the marriage efforts, like the efforts to end the military ban, have revealed just how vigorously conservative Americans will resist the efforts of gay people to join the institutions that they hold most dear. We have stepped on the sacred turf of the American right—at home, and at war. By the same token, the persistent efforts of gay men and lesbians to enter these essentially conservative institutions demonstrate the depth of our yearning for social acceptance. The marriage efforts are especially touching in this respect. Tens of thousands of gay people have joined together in ceremonies of their own devising, but most still crave to marry with the blessing of the state—less, it seems, for the legal benefits that might flow from it than for the symbolism of formal equality. The tenacity of the conservatives’ resistance is the measure of our need.

Previous attempts to repeal prove DADT is unpopularDallas Morning News 11-23-05 Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., has introduced a bill to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and has 100 co-sponsors, but there is no sign Congress will pass it. Uniformed military leaders are equally uninterested. "The leadership has said, 'We're not touching that with a 10-foot pole," said retired Army Lt. Gen. Dan Christman, a former superintendent of West Point and a key planner of the 1991 Gulf War. "They're comfortable with the law the way it is, and they really don't see anything to be gained," he said. Overturning DADT is unpopular, Clinton’s failure proves Rimmerman, 1996.(Rimmerman, Craig A. Associate Professor. Political Science. Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Gay Rights, Military Wrongs: Political Perspectives on Lesbians and Gays in the Military. 1996.) The central argument is that President Clinton

failed to perform his important leadership role in educating the public regarding why he believed that the military ban should be overturned. I explore several reasons for his failure to do so. Clinton realized that he did not have the required votes in Congress to sustain his promise of issuing an executive order to overturn the ban. In addition, compromise comes naturally and easily to Bill Clinton, as his approach to governance is rooted in building consensus. This is what he attempted to do with his "Don't Ask. Don't Tell, Don't Pursue" compromise proposal. A third explanation is that Clinton fashions himself as a new kind of Democrat, one who believes that it is important for the Democratic party to move in a more moderate direction. It

made sense, then, for Clinton and his advisors to distance themselves from so-called liberal such as lesbian and gay organizations. Finally, Clinton did not want to squander valuable political capital on overturning the ban early in his first term, capital that he would need in his health care and budget fights with Congress. special interest groups

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Supporting linguists is unpopular because current indifference has encouraged Congressional apathy, while public resentment of Islam still rules. NYT, 2004. (Freedman, Samuel G. Columnist. The New York Times. Professor. Journalism. Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Columbia University. “After Sputnik, It was Russian; After 9/11, Should It Be Arabic?” The New York Times. June 16, 2004. http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1191.)

Now, nearly three years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda and amid a turbulent occupation of Iraq, Congress

and the Bush administration have failed to endorse and endow a similar cohort of civilian experts in the languages of the Muslim world. While the administration has given priority to training more linguists within the military and the national-security apparatus, legislation modeled on the National Defense Education Act and offered repeatedly over several years by Congressional Democrats has not even made it out committee. (Continued…) "Compared to the cold war, we're not even at the level of zero," said Dan E. Davidson, the president of the American Councils for International Education in Washington and a professor of Russian at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. "We're at minus one." Such views are widely shared among experts in languages and national security. "In the post-9-11 world, we've continued to not get the profundity of the problem," said Ellen Laipson, a linguist and former intelligence official who is now president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington public policy institute focusing on national security issues. "We're reduced to putting 800 numbers on the TV screen asking for people who speak Arabic." (Continued…) Two

Democratic senators, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Daniel K. Akaka of Hawaii, offered a similar package of incentives both in 2001 and 2003 under the rubric of the Homeland Security Education Act. Without Republican backing, those measures went nowhere. The Bush administration instead has relied heavily on the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, Calif., to meet the nation's linguistic needs. By design, however, the institute serves only military personnel, accommodating up to 3,500 annually with courses in 21 languages. Trent Duffy, a deputy press secretary in the White House, said the Bush administration addressed nonmilitary language needs with $100 million in aid under the Higher Education Act. "Past that," he said, "it's left up to the individual student which fields to pursue." Experts in language study offer several reasons

for the administration's

seeming indifference. President Bush's involvement in education is centered on the No Child Left Behind law, which itself has not been fully financed. Neoconservatives inside and outside government have assailed Middle

East studies departments - the likely recipients of any increased federal money for advanced study of Arabic and related languages - for alleged bias against the United States and Israel. It is expensive and time-consuming to conduct security checks of Arab immigrants interested in serving as linguists. "We can hope, but hope won't do it," said Richard Brecht, a former Air Force cryptographer who is executive director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Language, a joint project of the Defense Department and the University of Maryland based in College Park. "Five billion dollars for an F-22 will not help us in the battle against terrorism. Language that helps us understand why they're trying to harm us will."

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PMC’s are unpopular, because of the deaths attributable to the Armed Forces Schreier and Caparini, 2005. (Schreier, Fred. B.A. Recipient. International Relations. Graduate Institute of International Studies. M.A.L.D. Recipient. Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Consultant. Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces. Caparini, Marina. Ph.D. Candidate. Department of War Studies. King’s College. University of London. Senior Fellow. Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces. “Privatising Security: Law, Practice and Governance of Private Military and Security Companies.” Geneva Convention for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces. Occasional Paper. Number: 6. March, 2005. zttp://www.smallarmssurvey.org/files/portal/issueareas/security/security_pdf/2005_Schreier_Caparini.pdf.)

Contracting out ensures that Western governments do not have to risk incurring the political costs associated with sending their armed forces into situations that are little understood or supported domestically. Moreover, casualties among PMC employees would not cause the same political problems that the deaths of a country’s armed forces do.

Prison Scandals have caused distrust of PMCs Financial Times (London, England) 1-10-07, Pg. Lexis Private military contractors in Iraq face the possibility of court martial following a move by the US Congress to strip them of immunity from military prosecution. Congress recently passed legislation bringing defence contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The little noticed measure, which was included in the 2007 Pentagon spending bill, could have significant ramifications for the estimated 100,000 private defence contractors in Iraq. In recent years, the Pentagon has increasingly relied on outside contractors for a multitude of tasks in an effort to cut costs and increase flexibility. But the role of private defence contractors in Iraq came under scrutiny in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal after it emerged that the Central Intelligence Agency used contractors for interrogations.

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Religious Right and Conservatives would hate the plan(WIC) Austin Cline, 3-24-04 Master of Arts from Princeton University, Pg. http://atheism.about.com/b/a/072927.htm

The Christian Right and conservatives generally don't seem to like having women serve combat functions in the American military. The image of women as warriors contradicts - in a massive way - the traditional image of women as mothers, wives, and nurturing figures. To have women in combat is to overturn basic Christian conceptions of what role women have in society - and they'll do anything they can to stop that from occurring.

GOP hates the plan- they want a more restricted role of women in combat BBC News 5-19-05 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4560847.stm But in Iraq, the US is fighting an insurgency - which means there is no front line. About 9,000 women are serving in Iraq and 35 have been killed. Combat can happen anywhere at any time, and women have frequently been caught up in it. Republican committee members wanted to Dass a measure which would keep women out of units "forward support companies" in the Armv. Closing off jobs which provide maintenance, medical services or supplies of the front line.

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Due to low visibility and that it is perceived to be an outdated tactic (airpower/ space weapons) are unpopular Out of Sight Aviation Week & Space Technology, 4-21-03, Pg. Lexis Clearly, the USAF, Navy, Marine Corps, Army and coalition-partner air campaign did a remarkable job of destroying Iraq's air and ground forces, aided by U.S. space assets. But they did it through combat actions well-removed from public view, and with critical platforms that are getting old. "Our space assets now are more important to warfighters, more important to the intelligence community and more important to our ability to win in conflict than they ever have been before," said James G. Roche, Air Force Secretary. "Space is an integral part of the [joint] combat system, providing navigation, battlespace characterization and surveillance for early warning and battle damage assessment. . . . Command ships and shooters, aircraft and special forces, as well as conventional ground units use space products -- and use them transparently." That transparency was highlighted through an anecdote recounted by several speakers here. A special operations soldier was asked how "space" enhanced his abilities in combat. He answered, "Sir, I really don't need 'space.' As long as I have my M-16 and this GPS box, I can do everything I need to." Such perceptions of space and airpower could have an adverse impact on USAF's ability to convince Congress that the U.S. military space infrastructure is on life support and needs an immediate transfusion of money.

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Space weaponization is unpopular because of Congressional fear of miscalculations, nuclear history, and potential arms races. The link is inescapable as Bush would be held solely responsible for this “political hot potato.”Shull, 2005.(Shull, Todd C. B.A. Recipient. Colorado State University. M.S. Recipient. University of North Dakota. Chief. Policy and Strategy Section. Headquarters Air Force Space Command. Graduate. Naval Postgraduate School. Major. Air Force. United States. “Conventional Prompt Global Strike: Valuable Military Option or Threat to Global Stability?” September, 2005. http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/research/theses/shull05.pdf.)

weapon systems concepts where cost and technical issues commonly form the predominant basis for debate, conventional PGS capabilities face a series of political, regulatory, and treaty constraints that supersede concerns over cost and technology. This chapter examines the often intertwined political, regulatory, and treaty implications of the proposed Unlike many other modern

conventional PGS concepts discussed in the previous chapter. Each of these areas forms barriers that serve to inhibit progress towards

Politically, conventional PGS systems suffer from lingering perceptions linked to their nuclear past. Regulations in the form of launch and

development of conventional PGS capabilities that may be overcome with varying degrees of difficulty.

range safety rules may inhibit the timeliness of conventional PGS employment. Finally, bilateral treaties between the United States and Russia may significantly limit the deployment locations and numbers of conventional PGS systems. B. Political Constraints

Political

constraints on the development and deployment conventional PGS capabilities primarily involve concerns related to “nuclear baggage” or the weaponization of space. Both of these political concerns have some bearing on the various near and midterm terrestrial and space-based conventional PGS concepts discussed earlier. This section examines the way existing political mindsets constrain conventional PGS development and seeks to identify which concepts have the best chance of successfully passing through the political barriers. 1. Nuclear Baggage For terrestrially-based concepts, the single most significant political issue involves the perception among senior leaders that the employment of conventional PGS weapons could be mistaken for a nuclear strike and result in inadvertent nuclear war. This concern, rather than reflective of the inherent characteristics of conventional PGS capabilities, is actually an unfortunate byproduct of the continuing Cold War nuclear postures maintained by the United States and Russia where both remain ready to “launch-on-warning.” For the inadvertent nuclear war scenario to play out, two things are required: 1) an early-warning capability and forces postured to respond in the time provided by the warning system and 2) a continuing paradigm that associates intercontinental missiles exclusively with nuclear weapons which provides the incentive to retaliate. There are two ways out of this trap. The first escape route requires the elimination of the launch-on-warning postures maintained by the United States and Russia. This topic is handled in detail in chapter six. The second way out requires breaking the “intercontinental missiles are always nuclear-armed” paradigm. This section examines ways conventional PGS capabilities may be made

capabilities that are controversial enough based on the previously discussed concerns over the potential for launch misidentification. The possibility of basing these weapons in orbit represents a “political hot potato” that few politicians are willing to get involved with at the current time. The perceived or actual weaponization of space has significant political ramifications both domestically and internationally. Unlike with the nuclear baggage issue discussed above, there are no mitigation measures that will allow one to maneuver successfully around the political obstacles to space weaponization in the near politically palatable, even in the presence of enduring launch-on-warning postures. Continued…) Conventional PGS

simply transit space

future. Benjamin Lambeth of RAND characterizes the issue of placing strike weapons into orbit as follows: The overarching problem connected with this mission area [space force application], however, is that – at least today – far greater political

sensitivities attach to it control, a typical lightening rod for controversy, as less controversial than space force application says quite a bit about the status of the debate over crossing the Rubicon of space weaponization. (Continued…) It’s politically sensitive, but it’s going to than those associated with the less provocative notion of space control.216 The fact that he identifies space

happen. Some people don’t want to hear this, and it sure isn’t in vogue…but - absolutely – we’re going to fight in space. We’re going to fight from space, and we’re going to fight into space when [U.S. and allied assets on orbit] become so precious that it is in our national interest.221 Advocates for both groups enthusiastically champion their cause and discussions on this subject often become

emotionally charged, but…the fact remains that there is no more fundamental or more unresolved a military space issue in the United States today than the long-festering question of whether space should be kept free of weapons at every reasonable cost or actively exploited to the fullest extent of its ability to underwrite the nation’s security.222 Given the unresolved nature of the debate, Benjamin Lambeth concludes that “[f]or the time being…there is no indication that the nation is anywhere near the threshold of deciding to weaponize space” and that such a decision would “involve a momentous political decision that the nation’s leadership has not yet shown itself ready to make.”223 For the foreseeable future, barring a move by another power to weaponize space, space-based conventional PGS capabilities represent a political bridge too far and do not offer significant advantages over terrestrially-based alternatives to warrant expending the necessary political capital to deploy them.

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Even though the Peace Corp is popular, expanding it isn’tCurt Tarnoff, 10-19-05 Specialist in Foreign Affairs at the Congressional Research Service, “The Peace Corps: Current Issues”, Pg. http://www.cnie.org/NLE/CRSreports/05oct/RS21168.pdf Despite the apparent popularity of the Peace Corps, constraints on spending combined with the pull of other priorities has undermined the rapid expansion plan. At this point, with an FY2006 request $98 million below its own original expansion budget plan and a newly stated goal in its budget justification document of 8,000 volunteers by the end of FY2008, the Administration appears to have abandoned the initiative. Moreover, in its FY2006 appropriations, the House has provided $20 million less than the Administration request and the Senate $25 million less. From the beginning, the expansion initiative ran into resistance. In providing only $285 million for the Peace Corps in its FY2003 appropriations legislation, Senate appropriators noted in report language (S.Rept. 107-219) that the expansion plan was “overlyambitious,” suggesting it may have to be drawn out over more than five years.

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New funding for (AIDS/disease prevention) programs unpopular- recent budget cuts prove Washington Post, 1-15-07, Pg. Lexis The new Congress, led in the House by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is about to make its first decision regarding how America's money should be spent - a decision that leaves millions of lives hanging in the balance. Congress's choice to bypass 2007 appropriations legislation and extend fiscal 2006 funding levels into the new year will mean, in effect, cuts of almost $1billion in funding for programs to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. If not reversed, the lack of funds will force hundreds of thousands of people to forgo prevention, treatment, care and support for the three most deadly infectious diseases in the world. Many of the people most affected by Congress's decision will be my fellow Africans. Around the world, the most poor and marginalized men, women and children will suffer the consequences of flat-lined funding. AIDS, TB and malaria are diseases of poverty; to truly address them, sufficient aid must be reliably and properly channeled in solidarity with the people who will receive it. In bipartisan action last year, Congress approved as much as $4.37 billion for programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in 2007. This increase would have given much-needed hope and opportunity to those at risk of and suffering from these diseases. However, the joint funding resolution (or "continuing resolution") the new Congress is expected to pass would keep spending at 2006 levels, which would mean only $3.43 billion for AIDS, TB and malaria efforts $940 million less. My heart aches to think of the lives that could be saved with nearly $1 billion but there is still time for Speaker Pelosi, a longtime leader in the fight against HIV-AIDS, to do something about it.

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Allowing the military to work in the Peace Corps is unpopular The Hill 3-8-06, Pg. Lexis Perhaps the greatest test for the Peace Corps will be maintaining its identity as a bastion of American goodwill during the turbulent Iraq war. A Bush administration bid to allow military recruits the option of joining the Peace Corps for part of their mandatory service sparked congressional concern and was ultimately blocked by a group of like-minded lawmakers.

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The budget proves- GOP is against the Citizen Corps Marion Berry, House of Representatives, States News Service, 6-1-06 DHS issued the $1.7 billion in awards yesterday to help states, urban areas, and territories prepare for and respond to terrorist attacks or natural disasters. The HSGP includes funding for five separate grant programs including the State Homeland Security Grant Program, the Urban Areas Security Initiative, the Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program, the Metropolitan Medical Response System, and the Citizen Corps Program. The Administration and Republican leaders in Congress cut millions from the program for this fiscal year, which resulted in decreased funding for nearly every state.

Expansion of Citizen Corps is upopular Lindorff, 2003. (Lindorff, Dave. B.A. Recipient. Chinese. Wesleyan University. Graduate. Graduate School of Journalism. Columbia University. Founder. National Writer’s Union. Columnist. Salon Magazine. “All Talk, No Compassion.” Salon Magazine. March 3, 2003. http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/03/03/americorps/.)

That leaves countless organizations across the country that run programs in housing, education, healthcare, conservation and even homeland security -- Bush's Citizen Corps program is part of AmeriCorps -- unsure of getting the volunteers they're relying on to provide crucial services this year. And it has forced some AmeriCorps troops to choose between working for free or quitting. The idealism of the AmeriCorps program has had broad bipartisan appeal, especially in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. And the surprising news of its

current trouble has frustrated elected officials in both parties. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., who in the wake of 9/11 joined Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain to cosponsor a 2001 bill that would have expanded the AmeriCorps program fivefold to 250,000 volunteers, fumed at the cutbacks -- and at Bush's failure to back up his promises. "Lip

service is no substitute for expanding service," Bayh told Salon in an interview. "The president needs to expend political capital to get this done." (Continued…) Despite Bush's promises to expand the program dramatically over last year's $265 million, it encountered strong opposition among congressional conservatives who are usually allied with Bush. The House whip, Republican Dick Armey of Texas, who has called AmeriCorps "obnoxious," and Sen. Kit Bond, Ropportunities for national

Mo., added a measure to the budget bill last fall to cap the program at 50,000 volunteers -- a direct slap at the president's "compassionate" agenda. (Continued…) "With his tax-cut program coming up, the

president has been unwilling to expend the political capital it would take to get the funding for this program," said one congressional source, speaking on condition of anonymity. (Continued…) Marc Magee, author of the institute study, says of AmeriCorps' financial difficulties: "In the end, we don't know if the crisis is more about the strange and abiding enmity toward national service exhibited by conservative Republicans -- an enmity so deep that normally subservient members of Congress are willing to defy their own president -- or about the president's refusal to expend an ounce of political capital to redeem his own rhetoric."

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AmeriCorps funding is extremely unpopular Lindorff, 2003.(Lindorff, Dave. B.A. Recipient. Chinese. Wesleyan University. Graduate. Graduate School of Journalism. Columbia University. Founder. National Writer’s Union. Columnist. Salon Magazine. “All Talk, No Compassion.” Salon Magazine. March 3, 2003. http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/03/03/americorps/.) "With his tax-cut program coming up, the

president has been unwilling to expend the political capital it would take to get the funding for this program," said one congressional source, speaking on condition of anonymity. (Continued…) Marc Magee, author of the institute study, says of AmeriCorps' financial difficulties: "In the end, we don't know if the crisis is more about the strange and abiding enmity toward national service exhibited by conservative Republicans -- an enmity so deep that normally subservient members of Congress are willing to defy their own president -- or about the president's refusal to expend an ounce of political capital to redeem his own rhetoric."

GOP ideologically opposes AmeriCorps Marc Magee 3-11-02 Fellow – PPI, Scaling Up National Service, Progressive Policy Institute Backgrounder, Pg. http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?contentid=250267&knlgAreaID=115&subsecid=306 The coming contraction of AmeriCorps is the result of two main factors: a lack of presidential leadership and Congressional Republicans' abiding ideological disdain for what many of them view as Bill Clinton's pet program. Over the past year, facing resistance from GOP conservatives, Bush has adopted a "hands off" legislative approach.2 With the bill supporting the president's proposed 50 percent expansion of AmeriCorps stalled in the House, the administration sought to move forward with expansion using the existing AmeriCorps budget. As a result, AmeriCorps members were signed up at a record pace through the spring and summer of 2002, but this drive came to a screeching halt in November when the Corporation for National and Community Service realized it had depleted the Trust Fund used to provide education awards to service members.3 The president stayed mum through early 2003 as the GOP leadership compounded the problem by shifting money from the AmeriCorps grants program to the Trust Fund. As a result, the program's operating budget fell by 30 percent. Then, in a final blow, the White House's Office of Management and Budget issued a ruling just days before the completion of the 2003 appropriations bill that resulted in an additional $64 million being removed from the Trust.4

Bipartisan support of AmeriCorps is a guise of “lip service.” It is truly upopular.Lindorff, 2003.(Lindorff, Dave. B.A. Recipient. Chinese. Wesleyan University. Graduate. Graduate School of Journalism. Columbia University. Ft. Licadale High, Home Of Flying L debate; You debate, we win.

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Founder. National Writer’s Union. Columnist. Salon Magazine. “All Talk, No Compassion.” Salon Magazine. March 3, 2003. http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/03/03/americorps/.) The idealism

of the AmeriCorps program has had broad bipartisan appeal, especially in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. And the surprising news of its current trouble has frustrated elected officials in both parties. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., who in the wake of 9/11 joined Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain to cosponsor a 2001 bill that would have expanded the AmeriCorps program fivefold to 250,000 volunteers, fumed at the cutbacks -- and at Bush's failure to back up his promises. "Lip service is no substitute for expanding opportunities for national service," Bayh told Salon in an interview. "The president needs to expend political capital to get this done." (Continued…) Despite Bush's promises to expand the program dramatically over last year's $265 million, it encountered strong opposition among congressional conservatives who are usually allied with Bush. The House whip, Republican Dick Armey of Texas, who has called AmeriCorps "obnoxious," and Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., added a measure to the budget bill last fall to cap the program at 50,000 volunteers -- a direct slap at the president's "compassionate" agenda.

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Expansion of Senior Corps is seen as Clinton’s pet project, one that Congressional Republicans despise. Broder, 2002.(Broder, David. Columnist. Washington Post. “Service Bill May Fall Victim to Election Day Maneuvring.” September 4, 2002. The Daily Herald. http://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/02/9/4/15804334.cfm.) Washington -- You would think it's a natural: a bill repeatedly praised by President Bush and admired by Democrats, a patriotic measure ready for passage as the nation prepares for the solemn ceremonies marking the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That is why it is so stunning that the Citizen Service Act, which would reform and expand the main volunteer community programs, is being blocked by the House Republican leadership, apparently to spare a minority of hard-core conservatives from having to vote on the measure before Election Day. The bill reauthorizes the Corporation for National and Community Service and makes improvements in AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and other volunteer programs it runs. It came out of committee, with strong bipartisan support, in early June. Sponsors say it would pass with minimal debate and no major amendments -- probably by a majority of more than 3-1-- in a single day. But somehow, Majority Leader Dick Armey, who controls the floor schedule, cannot find time to send the bill on to certain passage in the Senate. (Continued…) Armey himself was not available when I called his office, but his aides were frank in confirming and explaining his opposition to the measure. "He has never been a fan of AmeriCorps," the program that sends volunteers to work with local agencies such as Habitat for Humanity, a senior associate said. "It

is regarded as Bill Clinton's pet project. It would be a difficult vote for many of our members and it would alienate our base, less than 100 days before the election." That blunt political calculation so far has trumped efforts by Bush, as recently as last Saturday's radio address, to promote volunteer service as part of his agenda. John Bridgeland, the White House aide in charge of that initiative, said the public response to Bush's State of the Union challenge to Americans to involve themselves in community projects has been extraordinary. More than 3,000 people a week are downloading AmeriCorps applications, more than 76,000 have requested Peace Corps applications, and more than 48,000 have signed up for Citizen Corps programs. (Continued…) Hoekstra himself was a severe critic of AmeriCorps when it began under Clinton, but, like a number of other conservatives, has become an advocate. Most of the stricter guidelines and accountability measures in the bill came from conservative critics, Hoekstra points out. But some Republicans -- an uncertain number -are implacably hostile to any government sponsorship of volunteer programs and do not want these Clinton-era initiatives continued under Bush. It is those diehards Armey is protecting. (Continued…) Armey's aides say that the White House has not put the bill on its "must-pass list." Clearly, if the president really wants it, he is going to have to fight for it.

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******INTERNAL LINKS******

Vetoes are an exercise in, and an expansion of Prez. Powers~Mayer`96

David N. Mayer, Professor of Law and History at Capital University, in Columbus, is author of The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson., Clinton Vetoes Undermine the Constitution On Principle, v4n3 June 1996(http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/onprin/v4n3/mayer.html) The budget impasse between President Clinton and Congress raises many troubling questions, not the least of which is the propriety of the

The framers of the Constitution entrusted the president with a limited veto power in order to guard against unconstitutional legislation. Modern

president exercising his veto power in order to force his budget priorities on the Congress.

presidents’ use of the veto against legislation that they simply dislike on policy grounds--as in the case of President Clinton’s vetoes of the

The recently line-item veto law, which gives the president additional power to disapprove specific items in legislation (not only appropriations but also certain changes in tax laws and changes in so-called "entitlement" programs), will exacerbate the constitutional problem. The veto is generally regarded as a presidential power, but it is not even mentioned in Article II among the powers vested in the president by the Constitution. Instead, the veto is found in the so-called "presentment clause" of Article I, section 7, which outlines the procedures by which bills become laws. This provision specifies that if the president approves of a bill passed by both houses of Congress, "he shall sign it"; but "if not, he shall return it with his objections" to Congress, where the bill may still become law if approved by a two-thirds vote in each house. The veto is a classic example of one of the "checks and balances" of the Constitution, for it gives the chief executive a share in the legislative power, which under the Constitution principally rests with Congress. Why did the framers of the Constitution give this power to the president? As explained by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, the veto was intended to give the president a "shield" against legislation that unconstitutionally interfered with his powers. Without the veto, the president "would be absolutely unable to defend himself against the depredations" of Congress, Hamilton argued. "He might gradually be stripped of his authorities by successive resolutions, or annihilated by a single vote," as the Constitution requires only a simple majority for legislation to pass either house of Congress. Unlike the British monarchs’ absolute veto power, however, the presidential veto is limited: It may be overridden by a two-thirds Republican balanced-budget plans--undermines the Constitution’s delicate balance between the executive and legislative powers. passed

vote of both houses of Congress. Thus, it was not intended as an absolute check--for unconstitutional legislation could still be passed if sufficient majorities existed in Congress--but as an additional safeguard. As the framers intended, the veto gave a preliminary line of defense against unconstitutional laws before they were put into effect; it made it unnecessary to wait for an actual case or controversy to bring such legislation before the Supreme Court for that body to exercise its power of judicial review to nullify unconstitutional laws. The veto power explains in part why presidents take an oath "to preserve, protect, and defend" the Constitution……Today, those dangers are far more ominous. President Nixon’s successors in the White House, both Republican and Democrat, have built upon these precedents in their use of presidential powers. The activism of the Clinton administration threatens to establish even more precedents for the use, and abuse, of power. The "imperial presidency" did not end with Richard Nixon; the specter of unbridled executive power today makes the concerns of 1973 pale in comparison.

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Bush needs his GOP buddies to continue his vetoes, they are on the brink of leaving now, because of un-popular policies~Dumke`07David Dumke, Arab News, War-Funding Bill: Bush’s Pyrrhic Victory, May 11, 2007

The vetoed war-funding bill was only narrowly passed by Democrats, who failed to garner significant Republican support. However, while congressional Republicans stuck with the president during round one, they did so with reservations. Unless the president is willing to compromise — something he has been unwilling to do — many are now expected to break with him. Fearing the wrath of the voters and leery of the effectiveness of Bush’s prosecution of the war, Republicans have expressed a willingness to support legislation which includes benchmarks. These benchmarks would require the Iraqi government to implement policies such as oil distribution and reducing sectarian Meanwhile, the critical debate over war funding continues.

violence. In case of the Iraqi government failing to do so, Congress on a bipartisan basis would then push to withdraw US forces. Democrats, meanwhile, are devising benchmark-based strategies that will not only split the Republicans, but absolve itself of responsibility for Iraq. Despite objections from anti-war activists who dominate the party, the Democratic leadership does not want to be blamed for hastily exiting Iraq. The party is haunted by Vietnam, when the Democratic Congress restricted funding requested by the Ford administration in the chaotic, waning days of the war. Republicans and many other Americans believe Democratic weakness contributed to the final collapse in Saigon — including the

Democrats need Republican assistance to produce a war-funding bill, which has a veto-proof majority — twosearing image of Americans evacuating by helicopter as Communist forces overran the South Vietnamese capital.

thirds of both the House and Senate. Benchmarks offer the most promising option. Should they not be met, failure would be pinned on Bush and the Iraqi government. Polls show that the American public, which wants to end the war but to do so with some semblance of honor, supports the idea of benchmarks because they, alas, measure failure or success. The idea of maintaining the status quo without any exit strategy, as proffered by Bush, is unacceptable.

Republican support for the president is hanging by a thread, republicans fear backlash of unpopular policies, and actions~Elving`07Ron Elving, NPR, May 8, 2007, Watching Washington-Bush Needs a Political Exit Strategy, (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10084746)

Topping the list is the impasse with Congress over funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he announced his veto of the $124 billion spending bill that featured these funds, the president radiated impatience. Now that Congress has had its little fun, he seemed to say, we can get down to the business of funding the troops. Congress, in approving the war money, attached a minimum-wage hike and a variety of domestic projects — some of dubious value. But the real reason the president spiked the whole package was the inclusion of a timetable for bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq (starting in October). So now let's talk, the president said, designating two top staffers to speak for him. A week later, however, we see little progress toward a deal. Instead, the Democrats are hearkening to their anti-war activists, who urge them to hang tough on the timetable. Scarcely two months ago, it seemed impossible the Democrats would jeopardize the seats of their more vulnerable members by flirting with a real funding cutoff. Now they are edging ever nearer that cliff, and doing it with a growing sense that they might get away with it. Reinforcing that notion is the unease of Republicans, who continue to back the president but wonder how long they can do so without penalty. The war cost them their House and Senate majorities in 2006, and the war is the main reason Democrats look forward to 2008. So, how much longer will the GOP be willing to let The Decider determine their electoral fate? Mr. Bush has not helped his case on Capitol Hill by defying congressional opinion on other fronts. His blithe disregard for Senate Republicans

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who lack faith in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is more than a slight. It is a provocation that will carry a price. The embattled Gonzales returns this week for more grilling in the House, where it is assumed his memory will be just as unsatisfactory regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

Dems don’t have enough of a majority in congress, they need republicans to kill Bush’s vetoes~Babington`07CHARLES BABINGTON, AP, the examiner, May 2, 2007, Bush Veto Puts New Pressure on Democrats(http://www.examiner.com/a-706150~Bush_Veto_Puts_New_Pressure_on_Democrats.html) The situation frustrates Democrats, who won control of the House and Senate in an election that largely focused on Iraq. Moreover,

Democrats showed impressive solidarity in passing the bill that Bush vetoed Tuesday, losing only 14 House Democrats while holding 216. Top Democrats say they have no hope of replicating that showing once they begin making even modest concessions in response to Bush's veto. That makes them dependent on Republican help to some degree - perhaps a lot. As long as most GOP lawmakers stick with the president, "the question is how much policy and change we can push in Iraq," Emanuel said. In his veto statement Tuesday, Bush again rejected the notion of an "artificial deadline" for troop withdrawals. But he added, "I'm confident that with good will on both sides we can agree on a bill that gets our troops the money and flexibility they need, as soon as possible." Pelosi, who was to join Republican and Democratic leaders from both houses in a meeting with Bush on Wednesday, told reporters after Bush's remarks: "The president wants a blank check. The Congress is not going to give it to him."

Dems realize that they need republicas to override Bush’s vetoes, they are meticulously chasing republican lawmakers, but at the moment they stand resolute.~AP`07AP, associated press, international news network, Obama renews pressure on Grassley for override vote, Quad cities online, May 11, 2007(http://qconline.com/archives/qco/display.php?id=337996) Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama stepped up his pressure on Republican Sen. Charles Grassley on Thursday, arguing that voters should urge the Iowa lawmaker to support efforts to override President Bush's veto of a bill that would set a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Obama addressed the issue as he opened his eighth campaign swing through Iowa since he declared his candidacy for president. "It isn't personal," Obama told about 300 people at a town hall meeting at Simpson College. "I respect him greatly. But I said then and I say now that he needs to hear from you and people across Iowa who understand that it's time to change course." Obama has made his opposition to the war in Iraq a central theme of his campaign.

Congress passed a measure that would provide additional funds for the war, but Bush vetoed it because it also contained a timeline for bringing the troops home. Thursday was the second time Obama has urged Iowans to pressure Grassley on the issue, saying the senator would be key to overriding the veto. "We need 16 Republican votes in the Senate to overturn the veto," said Obama. "I said on Sunday that one of the senators we need to persuade is from right here in Iowa." Grassley has rejected the suggestion that he can be pressured on the issue, saying Obama, an Illinois senator, is violating traditions of the institution by traveling to another state and publicly applying pressure to a colleague. He has labeled that step "not senatorial" and said he had no intention of voting to override the veto. Obama said he has not overstepped his grounds, saying those senatorial traditions pale before the magnitude of the war. "This isn't about Washington etiquette, it's about bringing our troops home," said Obama. "This is how real change happens in America. This isn't symbolic, this is real." Obama cited recent reports that Republican members of Congress have conceded they're losing faith in the Iraq strategy. Democrats

control Congress, but only narrowly, and Obama said Americans should pressure GOP lawmakers to oppose the war. It's already working," said Obama, who has also traveled to Louisiana and Virginia to urge voters to pressure their

elected leaders. "That's why 11 Republican Congressmen went to the White House yesterday and demanded honesty and accountability from the

"I'm making the same point wherever I go," Obama said in a statement issued Thursday. "This is how we're going to bring our troops home -- by building a bipartisan coalition the president can't ignore."

president on Iraq." Obama said he first spoke out against war in 2002, and he vowed to continue pressing on the issue.

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Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

Unpopular policies draw republicans away from the president~Singer`07 Jonathan Singer, Mon Mar 05, 2007 at 08:04:17 PM EST, staff writer for My direct democracy, Are the Conservative Elites Ready to Abandon Bush?,( http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/3/5/20417/32187) By almost any measure George W. Bush has proved to be the most conservative president in the modern history of this country, using all the

what do conservatives now think of the President? According to the straw poll of those attending CPAC last week, which represent a rather elite group of conservatives, the movement seems about ready to throw their beloved president under the bus. The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire has the story. With President Bush's approval numbers in the toilet and seemingly going further down, it's no wonder that so many conservatives no longer care to call themselves George W. Bush Republicans. Pollster.com has not updated its presidential approval trend estimate in almost a week, but even then they pegged the President at a sub-35 percent approval rating. A simple average of the eight national polls in the field within the last two weeks (here, here and here) places the President's approval rating at below 33 percent. Suffice it to say that he is not a popular President and is, in fact, among the most unpopular Presidents in the history of this republic. Still, for as bad as things are currently for President Bush, they would certainly get worse if conservatives abandoned him, too. True, the poll question above was more of a choice between powers at his disposal and then some to try to move the country to the right. But

Presidents Reagan and Bush than one that gauged support for President Bush (there was not, for instance, a question measuring the President's job approval rating -- or at least not one that was released publicly). But at the same time,

the fact that so few of these elite conservatives wanted the next GOP nominee to carry the mantle of George W. Bush is quite telling. And if these elite sentiments trickle down to the base -- and they quite possibly will -- we could see a further deterioration of support for President Bush, both around the country and potentially up on Capitol Hill, further weakening the White House's hand as it tries to advance its radical agenda.

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Congressional action threatens presidential powers and the war effort The Frontrunner 3-28-07 David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, who served at the Department of Justice under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, write in USA Today (3/28, 13A, 2.27M), "

The Founding Fathers made the president commander in chief of the armed forces for a reason. Wars cannot be run, at least not successfully, by committee, and one decision-maker is more accountable than hundreds of members of Congress. That fact didn't deter the House last week from narrowly approving a measure containing objectionable features, including language constraining the way in which US troops are prepared and scheduled for deployment in Iraq, as well as how and for how long they may participate in combat. These decisions, however, are up to the president." Congress "can, of course, cut off funding for the prosecution of the Iraq war. Indeed, Congress followed this approach in Southeast Asia in the 1970s, eliminating monies for the Vietnam War -- and ultimately setting off the chain of events that led to Hanoi's victory."

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{Uniqueness} Republicans support Bush now, and will continue to but they fear, his unpopular policies~AP`07AP, Associated press, through MSNBC, GOP lawmakers fear loyalty to Bush may hurt As war develops in next months, political solidarity may weaken, (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18493915/)

Republicans in Congress are increasingly worried that their stalwart support of President Bush's Iraq war policy may cost them dearly in next year's elections. Should their solidarity crack, it could boost Democrats' efforts to start troop withdrawals. GOP lawmakers have marched in virtual lockstep with Bush so far, supporting his troop increase, an open-ended war commitment and other policies that have grown increasingly unpopular. Privately, some express fears that their loyalty might lead them over a political cliff in 2008, when they hope to reclaim the House and Senate majorities they lost last year. For now, there's little overt evidence of such wavering, and many Republicans say it's too late to uncouple their party's near-term fate from the war's outcome. When the House voted May 2 to sustain Bush's veto of a bill that would have imposed redeployment deadlines, only two of the chamber's 201 Republicans abandoned the president……

For many months, polls have found overwhelming opposition to the president's war policies among Democratic voters. But in a worrisome sign for Republicans, a large proportion of selfidentified independents now share that view. In an April poll by AP-Ipsos, 61 percent of independents said going to war in Iraq was a mistake, and 56 percent felt it was a hopeless cause. By contrast, three-quarters of Republicans called the war a worthy cause. Because many GOP-held House districts are overwhelmingly conservative - just as many Democratic-held districts are heavily liberal - there is less concern about Iraq's political ramifications among Republican House members than senators, who represent entire states. But among those watching the situation most anxiously are GOP senators facing re-election next year in competitive states, such as Smith of Oregon, John Warner of Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, John Sununu of New Hampshire and Norm Coleman of Minnesota. Some Republicans, especially those from strongly conservative House districts, say pollsters and commentators are overstating the party's political peril. "We're not in despair. We're not in isolation," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas. While many Americans clearly want to withdraw from Iraq promptly, "the far vaster group of people think Congress had better not stand up our guys" in uniform, Sessions said.

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Bush has enough republican support now for his continued vetoes~Babington`07CHARLES BABINGTON, AP, the examiner, May 2, 2007, Bush Veto Puts New Pressure on Democrats(http://www.examiner.com/a-706150~Bush_Veto_Puts_New_Pressure_on_Democrats.html)

President Bush's veto of an Iraq war spending bill that set timelines for U.S. troop withdrawals puts new pressure on Democrats in Congress to craft a compromise even as their caucus grows more fractious on the topic. The party's most liberal members, especially in the House, say they will vote against money for continuing the war if there's no binding language on troop drawdowns. Bush and almost all congressional Republicans continue to insist on a spending bill with no strings attached on troop movements. Bush on Tuesday rejected legislation pushed by Democratic leaders that would require the first U.S. combat troops to be withdrawn by Oct. 1 with a goal of a complete pullout six months later. "This is a prescription for chaos and confusion and we must not impose it on our troops," Bush said in a nationally broadcast statement from the White House. "It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing."

The standoff gives Republicans leverage, because even with the liberals' votes, Democrats don't have enough support to override Bush's veto. It will force Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to seek more Republican help in drafting a new bill that Bush might accept, her allies and opponents say. "I think the Democrats are in a box," Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., said in an interview Tuesday. "We're pretty resolute on our side. We are not going to tie this funding to any type of withdrawal deadline or any type of redeployment deadline.

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Aside from the Iraq bill vetoes, Bush has many on the way when it comes to the budget~Cohn`07Peter Cohn, writer for the congress daily, May 11, 2007, Government Executive.com, OMB chief warns of vetoes if spending cap is exceeded,( http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0507/051207cdpm2.htm)

Budget Director Rob Portman is warning Democrats he will recommend a veto of any spending bill that exceeds President Bush's discretionary fiscal 2008 budget request of $933 billion as lawmakers work to finish a budget resolution next week likely to exceed that target by more than $20 billion. As Office of Management and

Democrats are expected to fully fund Bush's base defense budget request, the additions are likely to go to homeland security, foreign aid and

The House Appropriations Committee is to begin marking up its fiscal 2008 bills as early as next week, while budget conferees finalize the overall discretionary spending cap. Both chambers are expected to take up the budget resolution next week. "Because the budget will set the framework for consideration of [fiscal 2008] appropriations bills, it is timely to notify you that I will recommend the president veto any appropriations bill that exceeds his request until Congress demonstrates a sustainable path that keeps discretionary spending within the president's top line of $933 billion and ensures that the Department of Defense has the resources necessary to accomplish its mission," Portman wrote Friday to the bicameral leaders of the Budget and Appropriations committees. Democrats plan to take up the massive fiscal 2008 Defense appropriations bill last in the process, and Portman's letter appears to caution them against the tactic of using that politically sensitive bill to break Bush's $933 billion spending cap. By vetoing the domestic spending bills earlier in the process, the burden would be on Democrats to come up with enough GOP support for potential override attempts. But it would be rare for the White House to enforce its own

domestic programs.

spending proposals for the 12 individual appropriations bills, as generally it is the overall discretionary cap that is considered unassailable.

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Bush has already vetoed one bill and will veto any others similar to it, seeing as though neither side will back down more vetoes are to come~Washington Post`07The Washington Post, nationally syndicated and renown new newpaper, May 2, 2007, Heading for showdown(http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usiraq025194731may02,0,6231803.story?coll=ny-top-headlines)

President George W. Bush yesterday vetoed a $124-billion emergency war-funding bill that contains a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, setting up a confrontation with the Democraticcontrolled Congress over his war policy. Acting on the fourth anniversary of his so-called "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, Bush returned to the White House after giving a speech at the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., and signed the veto using a pen given to him last month by Robert Derga, whose son, Marine Corps Reserve Cpl. Dustin Derga, was killed May 8, 2005, in combat in Anbar province Iraq. "This is a prescription for chaos and confusion, and we must not impose it on our troops," Bush said in a nationally broadcast statement from the White House. He said the bill would "mandate a rigid and artificial deadline" for troop pullouts and "it makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing." The bill, a supplemental appropriation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, arrived at the White House around 4 p.m. and Bush spoke to the nation at 6:10 to explain his veto - only the second of his presidency, the first coming last year on a bill that would have expanded federally funded medical research using embryonic stem cells. House

Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid formally sent the bill with a final appeal to Bush to drop his objections. After his speech, Pelosi said "the president wants a blank check" and "the Congress is not going to give it to him." She said Congress would look for a common ground with Bush, but there was "great distance" between them. Reid said the president has "put our troops in the middle of a civil war" and "a change of course is needed." Bush had warned congressional Democrats that he would reject a bill that included a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops and billions of dollars in spending on items unrelated to the war. But the bill passed Speaker Nancy

the Democratic-controlled House and Senate last week, and Democrats said it reflects the desire of most Americans to end an unpopular war. The White House said Bush will meet with congressional leaders from both parties this afternoon in an effort to resolve differences. So far,

Bush has given no indication he intends to compromise.

Bush is using his veto power pre-plan~AP`07Associated Press, international news network, May 1, 2007, Boston Now, Bush vetoes troop withdrawal measureDems say he's ignoring America's desire to stop the war Associated Press(http://www.bostonnow.com/news/nation/2007/05/01/bush_vetoes_troop_withdrawal/)

President Bush vetoed legislation to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq Tuesday night in a historic showdown with Congress over whether the unpopular and costly war should end or escalate. It was a day of high political drama, falling on the fourth anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech declaring that major combat operations had ended in Iraq. In only the second veto of his presidency,

Bush rejected legislation pushed by Democratic leaders that

would require the first U.S. combat troops to be withdrawn by Oct. 1 with a goal of a complete pullout six months later.

"This is a prescription for chaos and confusion and we must not impose it on our troops,"

Bush said in a nationally broadcast statement from the White House.

He said the bill would "mandate a rigid and

artificial deadline" for troop pullouts, and "it makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing."

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Bush is planning to veto Congress’ budget blueprint plans~Taylor`07 ANDREW TAYLOR Associated Press Writer, May 16, 2007, 4:52PM, Chron.com, (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/4810469.html) Democrats controlling

Congress presented a $2.9 trillion budget blueprint Wednesday, ensuring a confrontation with

President Bush over spending boosts for education and other domestic programs. The Democratic plan promises a budget surplus in five years but would achieve it only by allowing some of Bush's tax cuts to expire.

The nonbinding plan for next year faced House and Senate votes Thursday. Democrats agreed to it after weeks of private negotiations between the chairmen of the House and Senate Budget committees. The House and Senate passed competing budgets in March. The most immediate result would clear the way for action this summer on annual spending bills totaling $1.1 trillion for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. That figure includes $145 billion in sure-to-becontested money for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A $23 billion increase for domestic agency budgets awards sizable increases

The White House opposes the increase and has promised vetoes of annual spending bills that break Bush's budget for such programs. His spending plan essentially would freeze them. After a $214 billion deficit for the current budget year, the deficit would rise to $252 billion for education, veterans and health care programs.

for 2008 but fall to $235 billion the next year, according to the Democrats' plan. But by 2012, the Democratic budget promises a $41 billion surplus. It does so by assuming taxes on income, dividends and stock sales go up in 2011 instead of being extended, as Republicans and Bush call for. Republicans credit the tax cuts, passed in 2001 and 2003, with reviving the economy. Most Democrats say the cuts favor wealthier people.

The president is defying congress and vetoing legislation~Alberts`07

Sheldon Alberts, CanWest News Service Published: Tuesday, May 01, 2007, writer for the national post, online news network, Bush vetoes bill by Congress to withdraw troops from Iraq, (http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=98aeb098-4741-4b65-a58c-e581ed5a741d&k=16412)

President George W. Bush on Tuesday defied Congress and vetoed legislation ordering him to begin withdrawing American troops from the war-torn nation. In a White House ceremony timed for live broadcast on U.S. evening newscasts, Bush demanded the Democratic-controlled Congress send him a rewritten bill stripped of any timetables to end the war. The move further delays US$124-billion in desperately needed emergency Four years after he stood aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier draped with a banner touting Mission Accomplished' in Iraq,

money to continue funding the U.S. war effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan, setting the stage for a new round of high-stakes negotiations that carries enormous political risks for Bush and congressional Democrats alike. "Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure, and that would be irresponsible," Bush said. "This is a prescription for chaos and confusion and we must not impose it on our troops." Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said Bush's veto meant "denying our troops the resources and the strategy that they need." It was only the second time during more than six years in office Bush has used his presidential veto to quash legislation passed in Congress. The president's first veto came last year when he struck down a bill expanding federal stem-cell research. Democrats

sent Bush the Iraq war funding bill four years to the day after the U.S. president's appearance on the USS Abraham Lincoln when he declared "in the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." Prominently displayed behind Bush was the Mission Accomplished' banner, produced and hung by the White House at request of the ship's crew. In a sign of the deepening political acrimony over the war, the White House accused Democrats of delaying completion of the war funding bill so they could sent it to Bush on Tuesday's inauspicious anniversary. "Even though the Democrats won't say so on the record, it is a trumped-up political stunt that is the height of cynicism," said Dana Perino, Bush's deputy press secretary. "It's very disturbing to think that they possibly held up this money for the troops, and the troops' families and the resources they need, to try some PR stunt on this day."

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After his vetoing the first Iraq bill another is on the way~Peninsula`07

The peninsula, nationally syndicated newspaper, May 10, 2007, Bush vows second veto over Iraq, source: Reuters http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World%5FNews&subsection=Americas&month=May2007&file=World_ News2007051011129.xml

A defiant President George W Bush will wield another veto to strike down a bid by Congressional Democrats to bankroll the Iraq war for only a few months, the White House said yesterday. Bush's new jab in a tussle over ending the unpopular conflict, came as Democratic leaders mustered a fresh challenge to his strategy, which would also see a vote on whether to choke off war funding for good in July. The House of Representatives bill, a response to Bush's veto last week of a $124bn war budget which included Democratic timelines for withdrawal from Iraq, could come to a vote as early as today. Asked on Air Force One as Bush headed to Kansas to view tornado damage whether the president would veto the new bill if it reached his desk, White House spokesman Tony Snow replied "Yes." Defence Secretary Robert Gates meanwhile told a Senate committee a vote to cut funds for the war in July would cripple the Pentagon. "A 'no' vote in July would have dramatic consequences," Gates said. "We will have forward spent so much money to keep the troops in the field by that time that the truth is ... I would have to shut down significant elements of the Department of Defence in August and September because I wouldn't have the money to pay

Republicans in Congress meanwhile issued a fierce counter-attack against the Democratic plan unveiled on it was to an open invitation for insurgents to kill as many Americans in as short a time as possible. Republican House whip Roy Blunt branded the measure "dumb and dangerous" and accused his rivals of engaging in Act Two of a melodrama over the fate of the US involvement in Iraq.

salaries."

Tuesday, saying

Bush is bound to veto congress’ budget plan~Taylor last week Thursday ANDREW TAYLOR Associated Press Writer,, May 17, 2007, Miami Herald, http://www.miamiherald.com/509/story/109378.html Democrats say they can create a budget surplus The Democrats revealed a $2.9 trillion budget plan that President Bush will oppose.

Democrats controlling Congress presented a $2.9 trillion budget blueprint Wednesday, ensuring a confrontation with President Bush over spending boosts for education and other domestic programs. The Democratic plan promises a budget surplus in five years, but would achieve it only by allowing some of Bush's tax cuts to expire. The nonbinding plan for next year faces House and Senate votes today. Democrats agreed to it after weeks of private negotiations between the chairmen of the House and Senate Budget committees. The House and Senate passed competing budgets in March. The most immediate result would clear the way for action this summer on annual spending bills totaling $1.1 trillion for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. That figure includes $145 billion in sure-to-be-contested money for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A $23 billion increase for domestic-agency budgets awards sizable increases for education, veterans and healthcare programs.

The White House opposes the increase and has promised vetoes of annual spending bills that break Bush's budget for such programs. His spending plan essentially would freeze them. After a $214 billion deficit for the current budget year, the deficit would rise to $252 billion for 2008 but fall to $235 billion the next year, according to the Democrats' plan. But by 2012, the Democratic budget promises a $41 billion surplus. It does so by assuming tax cuts on income, dividends and stock sales end in 2011 instead of being extended, as Republicans and Bush call for. Republicans credit the tax cuts, passed in 2001 and 2003, with reviving the economy. Most Democrats say the cuts favor wealthier people.

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Congress is trying to micro manage Bush and the military with bills, that Bush is and will continue to veto, this is good because the bill would immobilize the department of defense~ Weinberger`07 Caspar Weinberger Jr., 05/14/2007, Human events.com, More Obstruction from Congress on Iraq Funding,( http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=20663)

Here come the managers of Congress once again trying to control our military and reign in George Bush on the war in Iraq. Instead of simply approving or even disapproving a funding bill for the military’s activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress attempts to put restraints and controls on the funding along with loading these bills with a lot of excess spending on totally unrelated projects. They have already failed with one bill being vetoed by the President just over a week ago concerning a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq. Now they threaten to bring another bill; this time tying length of war restrictions to the budgetary item. Essentially it is the same type of bill as the one on which they were just defeated. Instead of a timetable for troop withdrawal, this bill says they’ll agree to fund the war until July and then decide if they’ll release more funds at that time. This would have the effect of halving the requested budget and leaving the second half funding very much in doubt. “In essence the bill asks me to run the Department of Defense like a skiff and I'm trying to drive the biggest supertanker in the world," Gates told

Gates said that proposals for a short-term funding bill would be very disruptive and "have a huge impact" on many contracts to repair and replace equipment. Going further he said if Congress votes in July to shut-off war funding, "I would have to shut down significant elements of the Department of Defense in August and September because I wouldn't have the money to pay salaries." The White House has already indicated that they will veto any new bill of this punitive type. “There are restrictions on funding and there are also some of the spending items that were mentioned in the first veto

senators Wednesday. "We just don't have the agility to be able to manage a two-month appropriation very well."

message that are still in the bill," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. What is happening here is simply that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) are determined to play politics with crucial military funding for our troops in Iraq.

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**SOME GOOD OLE IMPX.** The bills congress are trying to pass threatens the Surge effort- forced rapid withdrawal would destabilize the region and encourage terrorism. And congressional opposition eviscerates presidential powers and war making by micro managing the Surge James Phillips is Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. 3-16-07 http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/wm1399.cfm Yesterday the Senate narrowly rejected a resolution proposed by Majority Leader Harry Reid that would have restricted President Bush's ability to wage war in Iraq and imposed a deadline of March 31, 2008, for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The chamber subsequently passed, in an 82 to 16 vote, a resolution sponsored by Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) that affirmed Congress's strong support for troops deployed in the field and rejected a reduction or cut off of funding for them. Taken together, these votes were a significant victory for the Bush Administration in its intensifying struggle with the

the House of Representatives, which has a stronger Democratic consider a supplemental appropriation bill that would attach dangerous conditions to war funding and restrict the President's constitutional powers as commander in chief. While the Senate rejected the siren song of withdrawal from Iraq and supported funding the mission, House

Democrat-controlled Congress over U.S. Iraq policy. But majority than the Senate, next week will

Democrats remain determined to use the emergency bill to sabotage the Bush Administration's surge strategy and force a rapid withdrawal. Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee approved a $124 billion emergency spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that would end the involvement of U.S. troops in Iraq next year. The bill passed in a party line vote of 36 to 28, with Representative Barbara Lee (DCA) the only Democrat voting against it. The bill provides $95.5 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, adding $4 billion to President Bush's request for items such as military healthcare and readiness. It also adds funding for a wide variety of other programs unrelated to the wars, such as assistance for victims of Hurricane Katrina, levee repairs, agricultural assistance, wildfire fighting, and aviation, border, and port security. The bill would restrict the President's ability to conduct the war in Iraq by imposing strict benchmarks for progress that the Iraqi government would have to meet, including disarming sectarian militias, reducing sectarian violence, passing a law that mandates the equitable sharing of Iraq's oil revenues, and holding local elections. If President Bush cannot certify progress in these areas by July 1, the troops would be required to withdraw by the end of 2007. Even if the President can certify progress, troops would be required to withdraw by September 1, 2008. The

bill also puts conditions on war financing, including a requirement that troops deployed to Iraq must first receive certain levels of training, equipment, and a period of rest between deployments. This is a cynical attempt--designed to appear to be an effort to improve military readiness--

This kind of congressional micromanagement undermines the war effort by taking battlefield decisions away from the generals who are best qualified to make them. Moreover, by restricting the flow of reinforcements, Congress could inadvertently put the troops already deployed in Iraq at greater risk.[1] The restrictions attached to the supplemental war-funding bill also infringe on the President's constitutional authority as commander in chief.[2] Its passage could lead to a clash over constitutional powers that could end up in court, further undermining the clarity of U.S. policy regarding Iraq. Finally, the House bill would harm the U.S. war effort in Iraq by imposing an artificial timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops. This would fatally undermine the Iraqi government, allow Iraq to slide into a much more bloody sectarian civil war, and hand Iran, Syria, and al- Qaeda a major victory.[3] A rapid American withdrawal would allow al-Qaeda and other Islamic radical groups to turn Iraq into a base for exporting terrorism that would greatly increase the threat to Americans and American allies. A rush-to-exit strategy also would abandon Iraqis to a humanitarian catastrophe that would push tens of thousands of refugees into neighboring countries, further destabilizing

to block the Bush Administration's surge strategy.

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the region. The end result would be a strategic setback for American foreign policy, the global war against terrorism, and efforts to contain Iran.

1. US pullout will send the whole region into chaos and spur proliferation and terrorism Reuel Marc Gerecht, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute The Weekly Standard 1-15-07 A strong, aggressive American military presence in Iraq can probably halt the radicalization of the Shiite community. Imagine an Iraq modeled on the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The worst elements in the Iranian regime are heavily concentrated in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence, the two organizations most active inside Iraq. The Lebanese Hezbollah is also present giving tutorials. These forces need increasing strife to prosper. Imagine Iraqi Shiites, battle-hardened in a vicious war with Iraq's Arab Sunnis, spiritually and operationally linking up with a revitalized and aggressive clerical dictatorship in Iran.

Imagine the Iraqi Sunni Islamic militants, driven from Iraq, joining up with groups like al Qaeda, living to die killing Americans. Imagine the Hashemite

monarchy of Jordan overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Sunni Arab refugees. The Hashemites have been lucky and clever since World War II. They've escaped extinction several times. Does anyone want to take bets that the monarchy can survive the implantation of an army of militant, angry Iraqi Sunni Arabs? For those who believe that the Israeli-

Palestinian peace process is the epicenter of the Middle East, the mass migration of Iraq's Sunni Arabs into Jordan will bury what small chances remain that the Israelis and Palestinians will find an accommodation. With Jordan in trouble, overflowing with viciously anti-American and anti-Israeli Iraqis, peaceful Palestinian evolution on the West Bank of the Jordan river is about as likely as the discovery of the Holy Grail. The repercussions throughout the Middle East of the Sunni-Shiite clash in Iraq are potentially so large it's difficult to digest. Sunni Arabs in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia will certainly view a hard-won and

bloody Shiite triumph in Iraq as an enormous Iranian victory. The Egyptians or the Saudis or both will go for their own nukes. What little chance remains for the Americans and the Europeans to corral peacefully the clerical regime's nuclear-weapons aspirations will end with a Shiite-Sunni death struggle in Mesopotamia, which the Shia will inevitably win. The Israelis, who are increasingly likely to strike preemptively the major Iranian nuclear sites before the end of George Bush's presidency, will feel even more threatened, especially when the Iranian regime underscores its struggle against the Zionist enemy as a means of compensating for its support to the bloody Shiite conquest in Iraq. With America in full retreat from Iraq, the clerical regime, which has often viewed terrorism as a tool of statecraft, could well revert to the mentality and tactics that produced the bombing of Khobar Towers in 1996. If the Americans are retreating, hit them. That would not be just a radical Shiite view; it was the learned estimation of Osama bin Laden and his kind before 9/11. It's questionable to argue that the war in Iraq has advanced the radical Sunni holy war against the United States. There should be no question, however, that

an American defeat in Mesopotamia would be the greatest psychological triumph ever for anti-American jihadists. Al Qaeda and its militant Iraqi allies could dominate western Iraq for years--it could take awhile for the Shiites to drive them out. How in the world could the United

States destroy these devils when it no longer had forces on the ground in Anbar? Air power? Would we helicopter Special Forces from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf into a distant war zone when our intelligence information on this desert region was--as it would surely be--somewhere between poor and nonexistent? Images of Desert One in 1980 come to mind. Neither Jordan nor Kuwait may be eager to lend its airfields for American operations that intend to kill Sunnis who are killing Shiites. What successes we've had in both Iraq and Afghanistan have come from our having boots on the ground. There is simply no way in hell the CIA or military intelligence will have reliable collection programs once the United States significantly draws down. Are we going to reinvade Western Iraq? Senators John Kerry and Barack Obama say they would've been tougher on al Qaeda than the Bush administration. One wonders how they would prove that in Iraq after the Americans leave. Give weaponry to a radicalized Shiite army slaughtering Sunnis on its western march toward the Jordanian border?

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2. Iraq stability is key to regional peace

The Weekly Standard 3-26-07 The former Nightline host is interviewed by Tim Russert on Meet the Press, March 11: KOPPEL: "I made a little note here of something that [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay] Khalilzad

said to you a moment ago. He said the region will not be stable until Iraq is stabilized. It's the one thing nobody talks about. Everyone is concerned about the United States being in the middle of a civil war inside Iraq, but they forget about the fact that, if U.S. troops were to pull out of Iraq, that civil war could become a regional war between the Sunnis and Shia. And the region, just in case anyone has forgotten, is the Persian Gulf, where we get most of our oil and, you and I have talked about this before, natural gas. So the idea of pulling

out of there and letting the region--I mean, letting the national civil war expand into a regional

civil war, is something the United States cannot allow to happen. . . . "If you look back at the elements of the war against terrorism, that war was going on and has been going on for the past 24 years. We just didn't connect the dots. Twenty-four years ago, the precursors of Hezbollah blew up the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. That was 1983, 241 Americans killed. In the interim, between then and now, you had two attacks on the World Trade Center, you had the blowing up of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, you had the attempt to blow up the U.S.S. Cole, you had the bombing of the two U.S. embassies in East Africa. This war's already been going on for 24 years. We were just a little bit slow to recognize it."

3. Also, that conflict would cause global nuclear war – Steinbach 02 John Steinbach, Center for Research on Globalization, 2002 (“Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Threat to Peace” – CRG) http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STE203A.html

the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious implications for future arms control and disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, "Should war break out in the Middle East again,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President Meanwhile,

said "The nuclear issue is gaining momentum(and the) next war will not be conventional."(42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been a major(if not the major) target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in 1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate disarmament and arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney, "... if the familar pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon- for whatever reason- the deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration." (44)

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Iraq has the potential for regional destabilization- only robust military intervention can stop a spiral of conflict resulting in six impacts isolated in cardMAX BOOT, Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Times Union 2-26-07 The Iraq debate is starting to resemble the Yugoslavia debate of the early 1990s. Once foreigners are in the grip of ancient ethnic hatreds and

again, we are hearing that crazed that the United States has no cause to get involved in their

internecine strife. Ironically, some of those now making this "realist" argument resisted its spurious logic 15 years ago. They were right to do so then, and they would be tragically mistaken were they to succumb to the siren song of nonintervention today. In the former Yugoslavia, as in Iraq, ethnic groups have clashed over the years, but they also have had long periods of peaceful coexistence – and not only under the heavy hand of a Tito or Saddam Hussein. Croats, Bosnians, Slovenians, Kosovars, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Serbs lived together for centuries under the relatively benign Ottoman and Habsburg empires and later under their own monarchy. So did Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in Mesopotamia. In both cases, intermarriage rates were high, and there was no popular clamor for civil war. In more recent times, domestic strife was fomented by megalomaniacs such as Slobodan Milosevic and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who sought to profit from the violence. They were able to gain the upper hand because central authority had collapsed. In a lawless land, ordinary people were forced to seek protection from sectarian militias. As

Viewing the violence from a comfy couch, it is easy to conclude "these people are animals. We can't help them." But imagine what would have happened in Los Angeles if the 1992 riots had gone on for weeks, with no police or military intervention. L.A. could have come to resemble Baghdad or Sarajevo, with Anglo, black, Hispanic and Asian gangs rampaging out of control. To extend the analogy,

these groups committed atrocities, they fed demands for vengeance, leading to a death spiral.

violence could have spread throughout Southern California. That's what happened in the Balkans when fighting spread from Slovenia, the first province to secede, to Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. A wider spillover was averted thanks to American-led intervention. Today, only the U.S. troop presence is preventing Iraq, already in the throes of

a

low-level civil war, from degenerating into an all-out conflict a la Yugoslavia. The likely effect of such a bloodletting is spelled out in a recent report, "Things Fall Apart," by Brookings Institution fellows Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack. They examined recent civil wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Congo, Lebanon, Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Somalia and Tajikistan. "We found," they wrote, "that 'spillover'

is common in massive civil wars" and "that while its intensity can vary it can have truly catastrophic effects." They cite six such effects, beyond the obvious humanitarian nightmare. First, a massive exodus of refugees, "large groupings of embittered people who serve as a ready recruiting pool for armed groups still waging the civil war." For example, Palestinian refugees sparked conflicts in Jordan in 1970-71 and in Lebanon from 1975 to 1990. Second, states in civil war can provide a haven for existing terrorist groups (al-Qaida in Afghanistan) or create new ones (Hezbollah in Lebanon). Third, civil wars often radicalize neighboring populations. For instance, the Rwanda genocide in the mid-1990s sparked a civil war in Congo, which has led to an estimated 4 million deaths. Fourth, "secession breeds secessionism," as in Yugoslavia. Fifth, there are huge economic losses. Finally, Byman and Pollack write, "the problems created by these other forms of spillover often provoke neighboring states to intervene - to considerably, at its worst

stop terrorism as Israel tried repeatedly in Lebanon, to halt the flow of refugees as the Europeans tried in Yugoslavia, or to end (or respond to) the radicalization of their own population as Syria did in Lebanon. ... The

result is that many civil wars become regional wars. " As Byman and Pollack note, " Iraq has all the earmarks of creating quite severe spillover problems." This is, after all, a state with something worth fighting for (oil), and one where all the major combatants (various

Sunni, Shiite and Kurd groups) are amply represented in neighboring countries. Iraq's potential as a breeding ground for terrorism is even greater than Lebanon's or Afghanistan's. Maybe it's too late to avoid the catastrophe that Byman and Pollack warn of. But Yugoslavia showed how much good a decisive intervention could do. The case for action - for sending more troops rather than withdrawing the ones already there - is even stronger in Iraq because

have caused its current turmoil and cannot escape its consequences.

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we

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1. Perceived failure of US occupation of Iraq is the central motivating factor in global terrorism that will result in the use and acquiring of weapons of mass destruction – Barrett 2003 Barrett, external affairs adviser at the World Bank from 1995 to 2003, 9/5/2003 (The Age) p. lexis As the anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington nears, the sad and frightening fact is that it

is only a matter of time before a

worse atrocity on Western soil shocks us out of whatever protective coating we have managed to develop since September 11, 2001. The subsequent bombs in Bali and Jakarta, Baghdad and Najaf, Tel Aviv and Riyadh, Mombasa and beyond are reminders that this is not just about killing infidels. Today, no one is safe, neither Muslim nor non-Muslim, in the rapidly proliferating world of Islamist extremism. This scourge is already coming to define the 21st century in the way Leninism and Nazism defined its predecessor, and just when we were glibly thinking humanity had reached a point where it could start congratulating itself on rendering evil ideologies obsolete. Instead, we have plunged into a primitivism where we discover that growing groups of fanatics with lots of money, access to weapons and a desire to die for their cause are on the prowl for fresh targets. They are blooded now in a way that is exposing many of them for what they are – not the religious idealists of their propaganda, although that is how most begin, but international criminals who become hooked on terrorism for its own sake. It is a drug to which many Islamist extremists - women now included - are addicted. In a sense it is the ultimate extreme sport, with the ride ending in paradise. Imagine the motivation. You are a young Saudi or Palestinian or Pakistani with no education other than recitations of the Koran, and no prospect of making your life a success, until along comes a recruiting agent for an extremist group. Leaders of such outfits are often middle class, with a wider education and an ability to persuade hopeless young people that there is a meaning to life, after all, even if it is death through martyrdom. Along with this meaning comes a sense of identity, self-worth and belonging, onto which is grafted a grievance against the supposed grand conspiracy against Islam by "Crusaders and Jews". Such a contrivance explains to impressionable young Muslims why they feel humiliated, why

similar or

It is an intoxicating , rendered all the more potent by American incompetence in the wake of its invasion of Iraq, which has done more to establish this line of thinking among prospective Islamists around the world than any other influence. Ridding the world of Saddam Hussein was a good cause which, if it had been accomplished a decade earlier under United the Middle East is a mess and why Arabs are poor and backward while Americans and Israelis are prosperous.

cocktail

Nations auspices, would have saved us the anguish that everyone involved must now endure. The problem is that the United States has demonstrated it is brilliant at winning wars with its high-tech advantage, but incompetent at winning the peace with its myopic political leadership and its naive and inadequately trained troops. Iraq is the new Afghanistan, with young Americans and Britons replacing young Russians in the firing line. The Soviet Union, having suffered terrible casualties, eventually fled Kabul. The Americans are nowhere near the point of leaving Baghdad, although they, too, will quit as soon as they can.

The trouble is that Islamist fanatics are being drawn to the blood in their hundreds or thousands, dramatically raising the risks for the Americans, the UN and humanitarian organisations, and ensuring that hopes of reconstructing Iraq are diminished and delayed. Those who are suffering the most from this jihad are the Iraqis, once again deprived of a chance to build a life. Their country is the perfect location for a showdown between Islamist gangsters and the West. It is also opening the way for a much broader and closer network of co-operation among extremist groups, now adapting and evolving in ways that are making them harder to identify and track. Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group have never been more influential, as their franchise spreads to many parts of the world. At the same time, it matters less whether bin Laden is caught or killed. The example he has set is enough to ensure that his brand of terrorism is now self-generating among extremist units that are increasingly independent in their selection and prosecution of targets, while possessing the ability to draw on specialist expertise from other groups when necessary. The worst aspect of this growing professionalism is that Western societies need to anticipate the day when acts of terror move into the biological, chemical and nuclear age, with a potential for human tragedy that would make the Twin Towers horror seem tame. All the ingredients for such an escalation exist and are being sought. It takes a big dose of optimism to believe, then, that the war on global terrorism can be defeated any time soon. Indeed, two years on from September 11, 2001, it seems bound to worsen. But such forces do not endure indefinitely. In time they will pass, but not before the causes of terrorism are treated through such means as broader education, stronger economic development, and greater democracy and freedom of information. George Bush's efforts in the Middle East are widely mocked in the West, but we must be devout in our hopes that his campaign to initiate a renaissance in the region is an eventual success. Its failure would be the West's failure, with consequences that are already uncomfortably evident.

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2. The impact is full-scale global nuclear war – Beres 87 Louis Rene Beres, Terrorism Expert and Professor @ Purdue, 1987 (Terrorism and Global Security) p. 50-51

Nuclear terrorism could even spark full-scale nuclear war between states. Such war could involve the entire spectrum of nuclear conflict possibilities, ranging from a nuclear attack upon a nonnuclear state to systemwide nuclear war. How might such far-reaching consequences of nuclear terrorism come about? Perhaps the most likely way would involve a terrorist nuclear assault against a state by terrorists “hosted” in another state. For example, consider the following scenario: Early in the 1980s, Israel and her Arab stateneighbors finally stand ready to conclude a comprehensive, multilateral peace settlement. With a bilateral treaty between Israel and Egypt already several years old, only the interests of the Palestinians-as defined by the PLO-seem to have been left out. On the eye of the proposed signing of the peace agreement, half of a dozen crude

nuclear explosives in the one-kiloton range detonate in as many as Israeli cities. Public grief in Israel over the many thousand dead and maimed is matched only by the outcry for revenge. In response to the public mode, the government of Israel initiates selected strikes against terrorist strongholds in Lebanon, whereupon the Lebanese government and its allies retaliate against Israel. Before long, the entire region is ablaze, conflict has escalated to nuclear forms, and all countries in the area have suffered unprecedented destruction. Of course, such as scenario is fraught with the makings of even wider destruction. How would the United States react to the situation in the Middle East? What would be the Soviet response? It is certainly conceivable that a chain reaction of interstate nuclear conflict could ensue, one that would ultimately involve the superpowers or even every nuclear weapon state on the planet. What, exactly, would this mean? Whether the terms of assessment be statistical or human, the

consequences of nuclear war require an entirely new paradigm of death. Only such a paradigm would allow us a proper framework for absorbing the vision of near-total obliteration and the outer limits of human destructiveness. Any nuclear war would have effectively permanent and irreversible consequences. Whatever the actual extent of injuries and fatalities, it would entomb the spirit of the entire species in a planetary casket strewn with shorn bodies and imbecile imaginations.

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Presidential powers are key to human rights promotion, poverty, war, AIDS, and leadership`Deans 2k Copyright 2000 The Atlanta Constitution The Atlanta Journal and Constitution January 23, 2000, Sunday, Home Edition SECTION: Perspective; Pg. 2B LENGTH: 984 words HEADLINE: THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY: White House power growing BYLINE: Bob Deans, Cox Washington Bureau SOURCE: AJC Accessed 08-05 JAP Bob Deans covers the White House for Cox Newspapers. Yet the

U.S. presidency, long regarded as the most powerful institution in the world, arguably has assumed more authority and reach than at any time in its history. While no one can doubt the growing impact of the Internet, Silicon Valley and Wall Street on the daily lives of all Americans, only the president can rally truly global resources around American ideals to further the quest for equality and to combat the timeless ills of poverty and war. It is that unique ability to build and harness a worldwide consensus that is widening the circle of presidential power. ''The presidency will remain as important as it is or will become more important,'' predicted presidential scholar Michael Nelson, professor of political science at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. The voice of all Americans The taproot of presidential power is the Constitution, which designates the chief executive, the only official elected in a national vote, as the sole representative of all the American people. That conferred authority reflects the state of the nation, and it would be hard to argue that any country in history has possessed the military, economic and political pre-eminence that this country now holds. And yet, the nation's greatest strength as a global power lies in its ability to build an international consensus around values and interests important to most Americans. On Clinton's watch, that ability has been almost constantly on display as he has patched together multinational responses to war in the Balkans, despotism in Haiti, economic crises in Mexico, Russia, Indonesia and South Korea, and natural disasters in Turkey and Venezuela. The

institutions for putting together coalition-type action --- the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization among them --- are hardly tools of American policy. But the United States commands a dominant, in some cases decisive, position in each of those institutions. And it is the president, far more than Congress, who determines how the United States wants those institutions to be structured and to perform. ''Congress is a clunky institution of 535 people that can't negotiate as a unit with global corporations or entities,'' said Alan Ehrenhalt, editor of Governing magazine. ''It's the president who is capable of making deals with global institutions.''

It is the president, indeed, who appoints envoys to those institutions, negotiates the treaties that bind them and delivers the public and private counsel that helps guide them, leaving the indelible imprint of American priorities on every major initiative they undertake. ''That means, for example, that we can advance our interests in resolving ethnic conflicts, in helping address the problems of AIDS in Africa, of contributing to the world's economic development, of promoting human rights, '' said Emory University's Robert Pastor, editor of a new book, ''A Century's Journey,'' that elaborates on the theme.

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Presidential powers are key to national security strategy Kassop 2k3 The War Power and Its Limits by NANCY KASSOP Presidential Studies Quarterly, September 2003, volume 33, issue 3, pages 509-529 http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS21/articles/kassop.htm Nancy Kassop is professor of political science and international relations at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Her recent articles include "The Power to Make War" in Katy Harriger, ed., Separation of Powers: Documents and Commentary (2003) and "The White House Counsel's Office," co-authored with Mary Anne Borrelli and Karen Hult, in Martha J. Kumar and Terry Sullivan, eds., The White House World: Transitions, Organization and Office Operations (2003). accessed 08-09 JAP

The flip side of this centralization of policy-making power is the drainage of authority from the other two branches. Congress's participation in the formulation of the Patriot Act and the two resolutions authorizing the president to use military force was far more limited than usual, and its routine legislative procedures were jettisoned in the interests of expediency and administration pressure, at least in the passage of the Patriot Act and the September 2001 resolution. The Patriot Act transfers power from the courts to the Justice Department, while it also infuses national security and intelligence-gathering considerations into domestic law enforcement processes. The president's military order on detention and tribunals shifts authority from the courts to the Defense Department and the president to make unreviewable decisions of a judicial nature. All of the final versions of these policies were moderated slightly, either by Congress, in the case of the three laws, or in response to criticism from legal professionals, as in the military order, but that revision process did not substitute for a careful and deliberative legislative undertaking, especially in matters of such consequence and of indefinite duration. The National Security Strategy was "hatched" inside the executive branch, without any similar moderating influence.

Strong presidency is key to preserving freedom and security, preventing tyranny and a collapse of government~Ashcroft 2k4 Copyright 2004 The Federal News Service, Inc. Federal News Service November 12, 2004 Friday SECTION: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HEARING LENGTH: 3336 words HEADLINE: REMARKS BY ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT AT THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY FOR LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY CONVENTION Accessed 08-02 JAP

One of my esteemed predecessors, Bill Barr, is fond of saying that Article II was the true miracle of Philadelphia. The framers of our Constitution were determined to fix the deficiencies that had produced a weak and ineffective government under the Articles of Confederation. Article II of the new Constitution was the great solution they devised. By establishing a single executive and focusing in the president all the power to administer the laws and lead the nation, the framers achieved two fundamental goals for our national government: unity and energy or capacity in the executive function. These twin goals are essential to preserving freedom and security under our Constitution.The unity of the executive power in the person of one individual, the president, is the great keystone of political accountability in our government. After all, the president and his chosen vice president are the only officers of the United States who are elected by all the people of the United States.

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Presidential powers key to leadership, solving nuclear confrontation, and the extinction of the human race Crotty 2k3 Presidential Policy-Making in Crisis Situations: 9/11 and its Aftermath William Crotty Prepared for Policy Studies Journal Symposium in Honor of Stuart S. Nagel 2003 http://www.csd.neu.edu/CrottyPresidentialPolicy.htm Accessed 08-02 JAP

William H. Riker (1986), among others, examines presidential decision-making in specific areas to help develop rational-actor theories of political coalitions. While the approach taken here is somewhat different, it does share certain similarities. One is the case study focus on a specific event. A second relates to the concerns being addressed. As emphasized by presidential scholar Erwin C. Hargrove: "Riker’s case studies of …leadership show how leaders manipulate support by setting and controlling agendas, making calculations about the strategic voting of others, and manipulating values that are important to others" (Hargrove, 1986, 62). Each of these in one way or another relates to the case study of presidential decision-making in the wake of 9/11 that follows. Another point is worth noting. As developed by Fred I. Greenstein, presidential power over global events, with the variety of potential outcomes from peaceful resolution to nuclear confrontations, may well have expanded in the post-Cold War world. The power of modern American presidents manifests itself in its purest form in the global arena, where their actions as commander in chief can determine the fate of the human race. This was most strikingly evident in the extended nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union the followed World War II. However, the president’s latitude for independent action is even greater in the unstructured post-cold war world than it was during the cold war, when the treat of mutual destruction concentrated minds and constrained actions (Greenstein, 2000, 3-4).

The Impact is War Khalilzad 95 Zalmay, Iraqi Ambassador, Washington Quarterly, Spring Under the third option, the United

States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.

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Strong executive, key to prevent terrorism Crotty 2k3 Presidential Policy-Making in Crisis Situations: 9/11 and its Aftermath William Crotty Prepared for Policy Studies Journal Symposium in Honor of Stuart S. Nagel 2003 http://www.csd.neu.edu/CrottyPresidentialPolicy.htm Accessed 08-02 JAP

The policy-making in the Bush Administration’s reaction to international terrorism rests most immediately and most decisively with the President himself. The processes of decision-making bear little resemblance to the collective effort employed by John Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bush’s war cabinet was not intended to make fundamental decisions; these had already been made. It was to strategize, develop in broad terms the plans to be used, set the timing, and decide the approach to potential coalition partners. Given this, it is essential to understand what the President himself was thinking and what he was as his ultimate objectives.

Strong executive, key to prevent terrorism Crotty 2k3 Presidential Policy-Making in Crisis Situations: 9/11 and its Aftermath William Crotty Prepared for Policy Studies Journal Symposium in Honor of Stuart S. Nagel 2003 http://www.csd.neu.edu/CrottyPresidentialPolicy.htm Accessed 08-02 JAP

The policy-making in the Bush Administration’s reaction to international terrorism rests most immediately and most decisively with the President himself. The processes of decision-making bear little resemblance to the collective effort employed by John Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bush’s war cabinet was not intended to make fundamental decisions; these had already been made. It was to strategize, develop in broad terms the plans to be used, set the timing, and decide the approach to potential coalition partners. Given this, it is essential to understand what the President himself was thinking and what he was as his ultimate objectives.

Presidential powers key to prevent terrorist attacks; we will win this argument history is on our side O'beirne 2k2 September 4, 2002 9:00 a.m. It’s a War, Stupid Understanding and misunderstanding the detainees. From the September 16, 2002, issue of National Review. Kate O'beirne NR Washington Editor(National Review Online)http://www.nationalreview.com/kob/kob090402.asp Accessed 08-09 JAP

Even as the terrorist attacks were taking place last September 11, President Bush made use of the extraordinary authority he has to protect Americans from enemy action. Had the heroes of United Flight 93 not prevented their hijacked plane from reaching Washington, F-16s — deployed by President Bush — would have shot down the plane full of American citizens. There is no question that this first defensive action taken by the president in the war on terrorism was a lawful exercise of his executive powers. Yet editorial writers and legal analysts who were untroubled by the president's awesome authority to sacrifice some American lives to safeguard others now argue that his equally well-

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established authority to detain enemy combatants in military custody poses a monumental threat to our liberties.

Strong executive is key to prevent war and domestic attacks Yoo 2k4 Copyright (c) 2004 Notre Dame Law Review University of Notre Dame July, 2004 79 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1183 LENGTH: 25024 words SYMPOSIUM: THE CHANGING LAWS OF WAR: DO WE NEED A NEW LEGAL REGIME AFTER SEPTEMBER 11?: TRANSFERRING TERRORISTS NAME: John Yoo* BIO: * Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall); Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute. I thank Greg Jacobs for his invaluable help with this Article. Accessed 08-03 JAP

The Constitution's textual commitment to the President of control over the minutiae and the grand strategy of military operations alike is reinforced by analysis of the Constitution's structure. First, it is clear that the Constitution secures all federal executive power in the President to ensure a unity in purpose and energy in action. "Decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man, in a much more eminent degree, than the proceedings of any greater number ... ." n59 The centralization of authority in the President alone is particularly crucial in matters of national defense, war, and foreign policy, where a unitary executive can evaluate threats, consider policy choices, and make command decisions affecting operations in the field with a speed and energy that is far superior to any other branch. As Hamilton noted, "Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands [*1200] those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand." n60

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Strong President is key to military intel Yoo 2k4 Copyright (c) 2004 Notre Dame Law Review University of Notre Dame July, 2004 79 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1183 LENGTH: 25024 words SYMPOSIUM: THE CHANGING LAWS OF WAR: DO WE NEED A NEW LEGAL REGIME AFTER SEPTEMBER 11?: TRANSFERRING TERRORISTS NAME: John Yoo* BIO: * Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall); Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute. I thank Greg Jacobs for his invaluable help with this Article. Accessed 08-03 JAP

The handling and disposition of individuals captured during military operations requires command-type decisions and the swift exercise of judgment that can only be made by "a single hand." n61 The strength of enemy forces, the morale of our troops, the gathering of intelligence about the dispositions of the enemy, the construction of infrastructure that is crucial to military operations, and the treatment of captured United States servicemen may all be affected by the policies pursued in this arena. Quick, decisive determinations must often be made in the face of the shifting contingencies of military fortunes. n62 This is the essence of executive action.

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AT: Any Tyranny turns 1. The framers were smart enough to put constitutional limits on prez. Powers that prevent abuse Ashcroft 2k4 Copyright 2004 The Federal News Service, Inc. Federal News Service November 12, 2004 Friday SECTION: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HEARING LENGTH: 3336 words HEADLINE: REMARKS BY ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT AT THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY FOR LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY CONVENTION Accessed 08-02 JAP

some argued at the time of the framing that concentrating the executive power in one person would invite abuses. But the genius of our founders lay in understanding that in a republic, the opposite is true. As Hamilton explained in The Federalist No. 70, and I quote, "that the executive power is more easily confined when it is one; that it is far more safe there should be a single object for the jealousy and watchfulness of the people; and, in a word" -- and I continue to quote -"that all multiplication of the executive is rather dangerous than friendly to liberty," close Now,

quote. Madison made the same point in the first Congress. During debates over the president's power to remove executive officers, Madison spoke of the – and I quote again -- "great

principle of unity and responsibility in the executive department which was intended for the security of liberty and the public good." 2. Their arguments are empirically denied because pre- plan as a result of vetoes and the patriot act the prez. Has a lot of power.~Kassop`03The War Power and Its Limits by NANCY KASSOP Presidential Studies Quarterly, September 2003, volume 33, issue 3, pages 509-529 http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS21/articles/kassop.htm Nancy Kassop is professor of political science and international relations at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Her recent articles include "The Power to Make War" in Katy Harriger, ed., Separation of Powers: Documents and Commentary (2003) and "The White House Counsel's Office," co-authored with Mary Anne Borrelli and Karen Hult, in Martha J. Kumar and Terry Sullivan, eds., The White House World: Transitions, Organization and Office Operations (2003). accessed 08-09 JAP

presidents have taken actions during wartime that were later deemed either unconstitutional or excessive, such as Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. (1) Typically, such excesses are scrutinized by other branches only after hostilities have ended. Again, the singular nature of the current threat of international terrorism leaves open ended here any determination of the point at which hostilities have ended. Thus, the potential for a creeping accumulation of power into the presidency at the expense of Congress and the courts is not idle speculation. Evidence of this prediction has already surfaced, most recently, when Justice Department officials proposed removing the 2005 sunset provision of the Patriot Act a full two years before it is due to expire and after only eighteen months of operation, and in the face of an unwillingness from the department to provide congressional committees with information to evaluate its operation to date (Lichtblau 2003, B1). Additionally, public discovery of a department draft of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (dubbed "Patriot II") provoked concern that, similarly, the department was requesting additional law enforcement powers without effective oversight of the very substantial authority it gained in Patriot I (Lane 2003, A01). Throughout history,

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52 Mele-Mel Stewart & Colbert in 08

Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

3.Our entire DA proves how prez. Powers are cheched by showing that Bush needs support in Congress to keep his vetoes legit and not overridden, so congress checks tyranny.

AT: Uniqueness o/w the link

1. This is where our brink saves the day, even though republicans are with Bush now they are on the verge of leaving because of his unpopular policies. This means that the ones in the SQ make them want to leave but they’re still standing on the edge. The plan is what pushes them off of the cliff.

Heres the brink card:

Republican support for the president is hanging by a thread, because of Bush’s unpopular policies~Elving`07Ron Elving, NPR, May 8, 2007, Watching Washington-Bush Needs a Political Exit Strategy, (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10084746) Topping the list is the impasse with Congress over funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he announced his veto of the $124 billion spending bill that featured these funds, the president radiated impatience. Now that Congress has had its little fun, he seemed to say, we can get down to the business of funding the troops. Congress, in approving the war money, attached a minimum-wage hike and a variety of domestic projects — some of dubious value. But the real reason the president spiked the whole package was the inclusion of a timetable for bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq (starting in October). So now let's talk, the president said, designating two top staffers to speak for him. A week later, however, we see little progress toward a deal. Instead, the Democrats are hearkening to their anti-war activists, who urge them to hang tough on the timetable. Scarcely two months ago, it seemed impossible the Democrats would jeopardize the seats of their more vulnerable members by flirting with a real funding cutoff. Now they are edging ever nearer that cliff, and doing it with a growing sense that they might get away with it. Reinforcing that notion is the unease of Republicans, who continue to back the president but wonder how long they can do so without penalty. The war cost them their House and Senate majorities in 2006, and the war is the main reason Democrats look forward to 2008. So, how much longer will the GOP be willing to let The Decider determine their electoral fate? Mr. Bush has not helped his case on Capitol Hill by defying congressional opinion on other fronts. His blithe disregard for Senate Republicans who lack faith in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is more than a slight. It is a provocation that will carry a price. The embattled Gonzales returns this week for more grilling in the House, where it is assumed his memory will be just as unsatisfactory regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

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53 Mele-Mel Stewart & Colbert in 08

Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

AT:The generic Prez. Powers bad F/L

1. Read their card’s warrants they all talk about prez. Powers being expanded beyond the constitution which our Mayer evidence implies checks abuse. Vetoe simply create a stronger presidency which is what our Ashcroft impact evidence is talking about. Their evidence does not imply the same world as the DA

2. Turn: Constitutional expansion of prez. Powers solves all of their impacts

Presidential powers are key to human rights promotion, poverty, war, AIDS, and leadership`Deans 2k Copyright 2000 The Atlanta Constitution The Atlanta Journal and Constitution January 23, 2000, Sunday, Home Edition SECTION: Perspective; Pg. 2B LENGTH: 984 words HEADLINE: THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY: White House power growing BYLINE: Bob Deans, Cox Washington Bureau SOURCE: AJC Accessed 08-05 JAP Bob Deans covers the White House for Cox Newspapers.

Yet the

U.S. presidency, long regarded as the most powerful institution in the world, arguably has assumed more authority and reach than at any time in its history. While no one can doubt the growing impact of the Internet, Silicon Valley and Wall Street on the daily lives of all Americans, only the president can rally truly global resources around American ideals to further the quest for equality and to combat the timeless ills of poverty and war. It is that unique ability to build and harness a worldwide consensus that is widening the circle of presidential power. ''The presidency will remain as important as it is or will become more important,'' predicted presidential scholar Michael Nelson, professor of political science at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. The voice of all Americans The taproot of presidential power is the Constitution, which designates the chief executive, the only official elected in a national vote, as the sole representative of all the American

That conferred authority reflects the state of the nation, and it would be hard to argue that any country in history has possessed the military, economic and political pre-eminence that this country now holds. And yet, the nation's greatest strength as a global power lies in its ability to build an international consensus around values and interests important to most Americans. On Clinton's watch, that ability has been almost constantly on display as he has patched together multinational responses to people.

war in the Balkans, despotism in Haiti, economic crises in Mexico, Russia, Indonesia and South Korea, and natural disasters in Turkey and Venezuela. The

institutions for putting together coalition-type action --- the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization among them --- are hardly tools of American policy. But the United States commands a dominant, in some cases decisive, position in each of those institutions. And it is the president, far more than Congress, who Ft. Licadale High, Home Of Flying L debate; You debate, we win.

54 Mele-Mel Stewart & Colbert in 08

Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

determines how the United States wants those institutions to be structured and to perform. ''Congress is a clunky institution of 535 people that can't negotiate as a unit with global corporations or entities,'' said Alan Ehrenhalt, editor of Governing magazine. ''It's the president who is capable of making deals with global institutions.''

It is the president, indeed, who appoints envoys to those institutions, negotiates the treaties that bind them and delivers the public and private counsel that helps guide them, leaving the indelible imprint of American priorities on every major initiative they undertake. ''That means, for example, that we can advance our interests in resolving ethnic conflicts, in helping address the problems of AIDS in Africa, of contributing to the world's economic development, of promoting human rights, '' said Emory University's Robert Pastor, editor of a new book, ''A Century's Journey,'' that elaborates on the theme.

3. The constitution checks all of their preemption turns, because with a strong prez. Under the constitution, like the DA describes, the president still needs permission from congress to authorize any war like actions.

Ft. Licadale High, Home Of Flying L debate; You debate, we win.

55 Mele-Mel Stewart & Colbert in 08

Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

AT: Imp. Inev./Prez. Powers low now 1. No prez

powers are high seven reasons

Iraq Kassop 2k3 The War Power and Its Limits by NANCY KASSOP Presidential Studies Quarterly, September 2003, volume 33, issue 3, pages 509-529 http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS21/articles/kassop.htm Nancy Kassop is professor of political science and international relations at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Her recent articles include "The Power to Make War" in Katy Harriger, ed., Separation of Powers: Documents and Commentary (2003) and "The White House Counsel's Office," co-authored with Mary Anne Borrelli and Karen Hult, in Martha J. Kumar and Terry Sullivan, eds., The White House World: Transitions, Organization and Office Operations (2003). accessed 08-09 JAP

Finally, one provision in the White House proposal was especially noteworthy for its unabashed usurpation of Congress's appropriations power: this was a request for appropriations from Congress in the amount that the president deemed necessary and a demand that these funds be freely available to him until they were expended (Abramowitz 2002, 81, n.9). In essence, the president demanded exclusive control over the amount and total discretion over how to spend these funds. On this issue, Congress rebelled. No funding was provided in the final version of the authorizing legislation, although appropriations were passed separately, designating $20 billion for immediate use for recovery from the attacks and for retaliation, while $20 million more would be available later and under Congress's control (P.L. 107-38). This same desire for complete autonomy over funding emerged again in April 2003 when the president requested supplemental appropriations to pay for the March 2003 war against Iraq. Congress actually agreed to provide him with more money than he requested, but refused to agree to the total discretion asked for by the administration, and also attached onto the bill additional provisions that President Bush had opposed. House Appropriations Chairman Bill Young stated clearly that "We did what the president asked . . . at the same time, we preserved some of the constitutional responsibility of the Congress to be involved in the appropriation, and to have some knowledge of how the appropriation was going to be used" (Firestone 2003, B1).

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56 Mele-Mel Stewart & Colbert in 08

Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

Prez Powers High; 5 reasons Kassop 2k3

The War Power and Its Limits by NANCY KASSOP Presidential Studies Quarterly, September 2003, volume 33, issue 3, pages 509-529 http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS21/articles/kassop.htm Nancy Kassop is professor of political science and international relations at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Her recent articles include "The Power to Make War" in Katy Harriger, ed., Separation of Powers: Documents and Commentary (2003) and "The White House Counsel's Office," co-authored with Mary Anne Borrelli and Karen Hult, in Martha J. Kumar and Terry Sullivan, eds., The White House World: Transitions, Organization and Office Operations (2003). accessed 08-09 JAP Presidents use their tools--declarations

of emergency, commander-in-chief designation, executive orders, the bully pulpit, and broad delegations of power from Congress--to facilitate this enlargement. President Bush has relied on all of these sources of authority in his antiterrorist efforts. What follows here is an examination of a few of the major antiterrorism measures from the last two years that have added to the president's powers. These include the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the Patriot Act, the president's military order authorizing military tribunals for non-citizens (66 Fed. Reg. 57833), the administration's National Security Strategy, and the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq. When viewed as a comprehensive package, rather than as separate items, it may be possible to identify the outlines of a strategy of unilateralism, marked by the observations noted above: increased presidential power combined with decreased legislative and judicial oversight, and a blurring of distinctions between the military and law enforcement systems.

The constitution and the courts vest high powers in the president Yoo 2k4 Copyright (c) 2004 Notre Dame Law Review University of Notre Dame July, 2004 79 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1183 LENGTH: 25024 words SYMPOSIUM: THE CHANGING LAWS OF WAR: DO WE NEED A NEW LEGAL REGIME AFTER SEPTEMBER 11?: TRANSFERRING TERRORISTS NAME: John Yoo* BIO: * Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall); Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute. I thank Greg Jacobs for his invaluable help with this Article. Accessed 08-03 JAP In light of the conclusion that the September 11 attacks initiated an armed conflict between the United States and the Qaeda terrorist organization,

the war power available to the President. The text, structure, and history of the Constitution establish that the Founders entrusted the President with the primary responsibility, and therefore the power, to control and conduct military operations engaged in by the United States. Article II, Section 2 states that "the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." n53 The Commander in Chief Clause is a substantive grant of authority to the President conferring all those powers not expressly delegated by the Constitution to Congress [*1199] that have traditionally been exercised by commanders in chief of armed forces. n54 The President is also vested broadly with all of "the executive Power" and the duty to execute the laws. By their terms, as I have argued elsewhere, these provisions vest full control of the military operations of the United States in the President. n56 Moreover, as the courts have consistently recognized, the President's discretion in exercising the Commander in Chief power is complete, and his military decisions are not subject to challenge in the courts. In the Prize Cases, for example, the Court faced the question whether the President "in fulfilling his duties, we now turn to

as Commander in Chief" could treat the rebellious States as belligerents by instituting a blockade. n57 The Court concluded that this was a question "to be decided by him" and which the Court could not question, but must leave to "the political department of the Government to which this power was entrusted." n58

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57 Mele-Mel Stewart & Colbert in 08

Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

WE DO MUCH MORE CARD WORK ON THIS ARGUMENT ALONG WITH COMPARITIVE ANALYSIS, WE WIN THIS ARGUMENT.

AT: Prez. Powers are unconstitutional 1. This argument does not apply to the DA because we increase prez. Powers through the constitution, by having a veto-proof supportive majority in congress. The DA adheres to the constitution because we show that with plan the Dems will use the powers vested in them by the constitution to override Bush’s vetoes.

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58 Mele-Mel Stewart & Colbert in 08

Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

AT: Only one veto 1. C/A our Washington Post, and our Cohn`07 uniqueness cards, they completely ignore the warrants in them. The Washington Post card specifically says that more vetoes are on the way as a result, disagreements in congress. Aside from the Iraq vetoes the Cohn card is fabulous and says that vetoes are to come when the budget bill comes up soon, because of disagreements.

2. Extend our Mayer 86 card this is another fabulous card, it indicates that vetoes, period are and exercise in and an expansion of prez. Powers, which creates a strong presidency. This is correlates wonderfully with the Ashcroft card which is what gives us the impact, from the strong presidency.

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59 Mele-Mel Stewart & Colbert in 08

Vetoes P-tix Bush and his vetoes will show those dems whose boss.

2NC/1NR Overveiw Heres the deal, Bush is using his veto now and plans to use it more that’s our Washington Post evidence. As Babington says he needs his GOP buddies in congress to back him up and keep his veto legit by keeping the dems from being able to override it. The plan is unpopular and our Singer evidence indicates that this will draw away republican support. Vetoes are linked directly with prez. Powers, which is what Mayer says. With a loss of vetoes comes a loss of a strong presidency which is key to preventing tyranny. Tyranny= dehum and a loss of meaning of life, because when you have someone telling you when to pee, eat, and sleep, death is desirable. This is what our Raz evidence tells us. This is where we will do impact work. 1. Magnitude: Their death impacts don’t matter at the point where death is desirable, Raz, indicates that tyranny equals loss of willingness to live so extinction is impertinent.

2. Timeframe: Once the president is conceived as weak and the government collapses into tyranny dehum immediately takes place, this could all happen 2 months after the plan is passed.

3. Probability: Our impacts are empirically proven with Germany and Stalin and their reigns of tyranny. Before the constitution, and the vestment of power in the president the U.S. was on the road to tyranny, Mayer says this in the beginning of the card.

To win this DA the main thing we must win is that they draw away republican support because at that point whether Bush wants to veto or not is irrelevant because he can’t with no support. On the impacts the only thing we need to win is magnitude, because our impact makes all of theirs desirable.

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