But war is different. Once committed to war (and the use of force WAS authorized by Congress - so no BS about the Congress not "declaring" war.....
The US Constitution is not BS.
The US Constitution does not enumerate powers to Congress to delgate its exclusive jurisdiction to the executive branch. Doing so would turn the legislative "branch" into a mere twig - something not ever intended by the founders. We can take joy in the fact that under President Bush, our armed forces have whupped ass all over the globe - but that does not mean we should turn a blind eye to the blatant trampling of the Constitution and the blurring of jurisdictional lines between the branches of government. We lament the fact that the judicial branch is arrogating unto itself legislative powers, with nary an effective protest from any quarter. Now, we see the executive plowing forward in the same manner - the Constitution be damned - but we go along because we happen to agree with the current President's politics. At some point in time, however, there will be hell to pay.
(BTW: Declaring War, per the US Constitution, would have eliminated all this fuss to begin with. So, why didn't we follow the Constitution in the first place?)
Is there some specific required language the Constitution requires the Congress to use in order to "declare War"?
If the Congress authorizes "use of force", is that not making war?
The bottom line is that despite large numbers of very influencial people who are anti-war, none of them have gotten a case through the supreme court to halt actions in places from Korea through Vietnam to Iraq.
Under the Constitution, the SC is the arbiter, and obviously it hasn't stopped those actions, so my opinion is that all those actions were authorized. They just may not have used the exact phrase "Declaration of War".
If you would do your homework, you would know this. I wrote up seven "declarations of war" more than a year ago, in a UPI article that was published nationally. Please stop repeating this factually false statement that Congress never declared war with respect to Iraq.