It is common knowledge that Saddam Hussein is a short-timer among the ranks of dictators. Even Saddam knows it as he has been busy arranging the lines of succession to his reign. It is a fait accompli waiting to happen. Except that there is a small matter of the U.S. Constitution to be reckoned with. Personally, I'm hawkish on Saddam; I could easily pull the trigger on him. Nevertheless, I'm more hawkish on preserving the Constitution which my fellow hawks and conservatives invariably demand liberal judges attend to rather than creating their own `judge-law'.

The Constitution grants only Congress the power "to declare war". No mere President has the capacity "to declare war". That's the job of Congress, the People's representatives. My favorite Old, Dead, White Men - our Founding Fathers - assigned the capacity to declare war to the largest of the three branches of the federal government. They knew war was hell long before Sherman said it. They also wanted many points of view to be heard before committing the country to a state so searing as war. And, they wanted to prevent the president, any president including Washington, from possessing such dictatorial power. Commander-in-Chief is the power to conduct war; to declare war is vastly different. Those Old, Dead, White Men were smarter than all get-out weren't they? They knew how and which powers to separate.

Presidents have stepped around this separation of powers for decades. Sometimes there may have been good reason; sometimes the question concerned whether it was a "war" or not. Truman termed Korea a "police action" and did not go to Congress for authority. Thus Truman set the stage for the Viet Nam strategy followed by another Democratic president, John Kennedy. The results of both decisions turned out to be disastrous. In total, 100,000 American deaths, victory in neither place and a renting of the nation's fabric which persists to this day.

Hopefully, George W. has thought about this at some length. It's one thing for him to declare a war on terror, join with other nations and root out the rotten killers world-wide. He has that power. Whether that power extends to the action taken in Afghanistan is debatable though moot. It is entirely different for him to exercise a power he does not possess: attacking a sovereign nation - disgusting and rotten as Iraq is - without asking authority from Congress. Roosevelt asked Congress "to declare war" after December 7th though surely he could have declared it himself and no American would have argued.

In addition to the Constitution, the President would be a political winner by going to Congress, laying out his rationale and asking it to declare war against Iraq. What if it said "No, Mr. President. We are not going to declare war." Politically perfect for the President. A new Congress would be installed in November. Gone would be Gebhardt, Waters, Pelosi, Waxman and company. But no Congress is going to turn the President down. It would not dare. If nothing else, Congressmen and women can count votes and not declaring war is a loser for almost all of them.

Thus, by doing the thing right, the President will at once strengthen the country by uniting it in opposition to Saddam, get a huge boost in his popularity and, last but not least, on some nights as he walks about the White House, he can take deep pride hearing those Old, Dead, White Men saying to him: "Well done, Mr. President."