Senior Seminar, Part 8 of 12

Introduction

            This is the unedited paper I wrote for my senior seminar back in 2007.  I am posting it as a sort of trip down memory lane during our current apocalypse.

            I have become a better writer since creating this.

            I have become much better informed since writing this.

            I am a very different person than when I wrote this.

Full Introduction Here

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Current Congressional Relations

The current President Bush has utilized all of the previous powers assumed by the office of the Presidency.  In the wake of the September eleventh attacks by the terrorist organization Al Qaeda.  As there was no definitive state controlled by the organization, and the United States wanted to be clear that its position was the elimination of the Organizations members and not the people and culture which the organization had grown within, war was not declared.  Instead a massive bombing campaign against the chief residence of Al Qaeda, the nation of Afghanistan.  After failing to eliminate the organization and establishing a regime in the nation that was friendly to the US, the United States left a significant population of military and Federal Investigators in the nation and left.  All of this was done without declaring war on anything but the concept of Terrorism.

President Bush did convince Congress in both that military conflict and the following conflict in Iraq to back military action, but there is a question of ethical behavior in this convincing.  The Congress does not have the same military intelligence that the President does, and they rely on the President to act in their stead as leader of the military, all of which I have previously mentioned.  However, when the invasion of Iraq was formulated and the justification explained, the idea that there would be weapons of mass destruction in a hostile, terrorist friendly, and tyrant ruled Middle East nation that we had previously engaged in armed conflict, there is some question as to the validity of the reports of whether the intelligence was credible.

When it turned out several months later that the levels of weapons found in Iraq was vastly below the number that were theorized to be present, and the actual relationship between Iraq and the attacks on September Eleventh were contrived from piece mail evidence, the question of how much trust can be placed in the President was raised.  The question as to the current President’s validity remains, but the question that no one bothered to ask, whether or not the office of the Presidency is the issue, was never raised.

Most currently the relationship between the two branches of government has shifted significantly, where as before the Vice President was seen as lording over the Congress.[1]  VP Richard Cheney made full use of the access granted to him by the Constitution.[2]  This access was never before so thoroughly explored by a Vice President, however the Vice President currently has reined back in the face of a less welcoming overall body.

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[1] General mood felt by Congress within the Article by Robert Kuttner

[2] Constitution Article I, Section 3