Buchanan Hits Warmongers and Cowards

One of the few prominent conservatives who has not sold his principles down the river to jump on the President's handbasket bandwagon is Pat Buchanan. He has always spoken with uncommon clarity. When he's wrong there's no rhetoric to hide behind--when he's right, as he so often has been on George Bush, his erstwhile brethren dare not engage him. Buchanan's latest is another shot from the wilderness that puts the leadership on both sides to shame. $Q: There is a reason the Founding Fathers separated the power to conduct war from the power to declare it. The reason is just such a ruler as George W. Bush, a man possessed of an ideology and sense of mission that are not necessarily coterminous with what is best for his country. Under our Constitution, it is Congress, not the president, who decides on war. Many Democrats now concede they failed the nation when they took Bush at his word that Iraq was an intolerable threat that could be dealt with only by an invasion. Now, Bush and the War Party are telling us the same thing about Iran. And the Congress is conducting itself in the same contemptible and cowardly way.