Senate: Block Pompeo for Backing Presidential War with Iran, Starving Yemeni Children
CIA director Mike Pompeo, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, wants war with Iran, even without Congressional authorization. A Senate vote to confirm Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State would be an implicit Senate endorsement of unconstitutional war with Iran. A Senate vote to reject Pompeo would be a Senate rejection of unconstitutional war with Iran.
Under the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution, only Congress, not President Trump, can authorize the use of force against Iran. But the Senate in which we would need 51 votes against an authorization for the use of force against Iran [Iran AUMF] is the same Senate which is about to vote on the confirmation of Iran war advocate Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. If we know we’re going to need to find 51 votes in the Senate against war with Iran, we might as well find them right now.
Mike Pompeo’s Trump Administration believes in “Presidential war” – the claim that the President can wage war without Congressional authorization, in direct opposition to what it says in the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution. They are War Powers Resolution deniers.
On March 20, 44 Senators rebuked Mike Pompeo and the Trump Administration’s assertion of Presidential war power by voting for the Sanders-Lee-Murphy resolution against continued unconstitutional U.S. participation in the catastrophic Saudi war in Yemen. But Mike Pompeo’s Trump Administration continues to violate the Constitution by refueling the Saudi warplanes that are bombing Yemeni children and starving them by blockade.
As the New York Times has exposed, the CIA is the most slavishly pro-Saudi part of the U.S. government. The culture of the CIA is to slavishly assert that the U.S. is obligated to fight Saudi Arabia’s proxy wars against Iran. The last thing we need now is a Secretary of State steeped in the slavishly pro-Saudi culture of the CIA.
Urge your Senators to do everything in their power to block Mike Pompeo from becoming Secretary of State by signing our petition.
Thanks for taking action, and thanks for all you do to help make U.S. foreign policy more just,
Robert Naiman, Sarah Burns, and Tyler Bellstrom
Just Foreign Policy
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