They've (the Democrats) even created controversy over the words we use to describe the challenges now facing America. According to news accounts, one committee in the House has decided to stop using the phrase, "Global War on Terrorism." I'm left to wonder -- which part of that phrase is the problem? Do they deny the struggle is global, after the enemy has declared the ambition of building a totalitarian empire that stretches from Europe around to Indonesia? Do they deny this is a war, in which one side will win and the other will lose? Do they deny that it's terror that we're fighting, with unlawful combatants who wear no uniform, who reject the rules of warfare, and who target the innocent for indiscriminate slaughter? VP Cheney April 13, 2007
Fighting for Syntax in The Global War on Terror:
US DEMOCRATS have banned the phrase "global war on terror" from the draft Pentagon budget, arguing that it is a propagandist term designed to boost President Bush's contention that the Iraq conflict is a war of necessity.
The term, coined by the Bush Administration shortly after the September 11 attacks, soon entered the US political lexicon. In Pentagon documents, it has its own acronym — GWOT. But Democrats on the House of Representatives' armed services committee have said that GWOT should be avoided.
Those reality based Democrats are insisting instead that the war in Iraq be called the war in Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan be called the war in Afghanistan.
Not only that, but the Armed Services Committee has insisted that the wording be specific as far as which war(s) they are funding... after four years of fighting and paying for a war that has no definable battleground, no timeframe, no definable enemy...
Global War Tag is Bush's PROPAGANDA Say Democrats
Democrats Object To Republicans Continuing To Falsely Link Iraq To Global War On Terror
April 5, 2007 1:36 p.m. EST
Washington, DC (AHN) - Democrats and Republicans are in a war of words fighting over the meaning of the words "global war on terror." The battle erupted after Republicans became alarmed that Democrats would ban use of the phrase in the 2008 defense budget. Most of the money in that budget is going for the war in Iraq.
U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., called the debate a "tempest in a teapot," according to The Hill reports. He also said, "GOP objections to our efforts to clarify legislative language represent the typical Republican leadership attempt to tie together the misadventure in Iraq and the overall war against terrorists."
Let's go back to that first McCain interview with Larry King, September 15, 2001:
Where’s the battlefield??
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: Yesterday, we prayed and tomorrow we fight, and it will be a war against those who choose to or seek to inflict damage upon the United States of America, who hate the United States of America -- both organizations and those countries that harbor them. If we wiped out Mr. bin Laden tomorrow, I still think we would face a terrorist threat from certain countries in the Middle East. And so...
KING: So what do we do? Where's the battlefield, senator?
MCCAIN: I think we have got to be patient. I think that tomorrow we could probably launch a bunch of cruise missiles, which have proven to be singularly ineffective in the past. I think this may take some time, I think it's going to take some planning, and I think it could include a wide range of military options, including putting troops on the ground. Not for a long period of time, but put them on the ground in order to get the mission accomplished.
"Where's the Battlefield, Senator?"
Judge Joyce Hens Green asked the same when she was appointed in September 2004 as coordinating judge over all 550 Guantanamo cases:
Who is an enemy combatant?
Green asked how the government defined an enemy combatant who aided terrorists or Afghanistan's now-toppled Taliban regime.
"It is not limited to individuals who carried a weapon and shot at American troops," Boyle replied. They don't have to be on the front lines; they can be strategic advisers, intelligence informants, or supply workers including cooks, he said.
Where is the battlefield?? How long might such a war last?
Noting the Supreme Court said detention was to keep combatants from returning to the battlefield, Green asked, "What and where is the battlefield the U.S.military is trying to detain the prisoners from returning to? Africa? London?"
Boyle: "The conflict with al-Qaida has a global reach."
Green asked if detainees are told how long they might be imprisoned. "When will this end?" she asked. "Can hostilities last as long as Muslim fundamentalists vow attacks on the United States?"
Boyle replied that was "a question for the president," not judges.
Does the battlefield of the Global War mean America?? Is America the battlefield??
US asks court for power to detain
Case on Illinois Muslim convert sparks debate
By Larry O'Dell, Associated Press | July 20, 2005
RICHMOND, Va. -- A government attorney argued yesterday that America is a battlefield and President Bush therefore has the authority to detain enemy combatants indefinitely in this country.
But moments after Clement began his oral argument, Luttig interrupted to say that ''arguably, Judge [Sandra Day] O'Connor in 'Hamdi' limited that law to the battlefield detention, did she not?" Padilla was picked up at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on a warrant from a federal court in New York, and only later turned over to the military.
''That's not how I would read the case," Clement responded.
''Those accusations don't get you very far," Luttig replied, ''unless you're prepared to boldly say the United States is a battlefield in the war on terror."
Clement answered, ''I can say that, and I can say it boldly."
The antidote to this Mad Hatter Perpetual War on the World can be found in the bill put forward by Sen. Dodd:
Restoring the Constitution Act 2007 S. 576
Dodd, Leahy, Feingold, Menendez Introduce Bill To Restore Habeas Corpus Rights, Ban Torture, And Uphold Geneva Conventions
Reintroduce Bill Correcting Flawed Military Commissions Act
Mr. Bush, I don't recognize the world you paint. I find your speech a form of sheer propaganda, having almost no relationship to reality. And I am very, very worried that you will allow to happen to the Oil Gulf what you allowed to happen to New Orleans. After watching you for five years I have become convinced that you don't have the slightest idea what you are doing in Iraq, that you are just reacting and playing it by ear. You can't do that, George Juan Cole
There are two ways to end this war... one is to defund it, and the other is to define it. Democrats are doing good work on both fronts, but restoring the Constitution will have the most far-reaching effects on wars the US considers waging in the future. One, only Congress can declare war, and two, that war must have a definition. Where's the battlefield, Senator McCain? Where's the battlefield, VP Cheney? Where's the battlefield, Mr. Bush?