On Monday, the president’s lack of a plan in Iran was outlined in stark terms in a letter to Congress obtained by CBS News officially informing lawmakers of the strikes.
“Although the United States desires a quick and enduring peace, it is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that may be necessary,” Trump said in the letter.
U.S. forces “remain postured to take further action… to address further threats and attacks upon the United States or its allies and partners,” he continued.
The letter was sent under the War Powers Act, a 1973 resolution requiring the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying U.S. forces if Congress has not declared war. The deployment cannot last more than 60 days without congressional approval.
Good to hear. Now I’m confident that the US definitely won’t succumb to mission creep and get sucked into an interminable war that will end countless thousands of lives.
People keep saying this is going to be America’s next forever war, but there’s a good chance we might just lose.
I’d like to expand on this thought. Its been bothering me.
Even when we “lose” wars we Americans do not experience the destruction we impart on other nations.
We bombed a school. No american school children will die in this war, but Iranian children already have.
Americans will disapprove of this war but it will only affect them in limited ways, making large protests feel foolish when many are trying to scrape by to make rent, and we live under a dictator.
I don’t know what there is to be done. It makes me sick.
I am hoping a carrier is sunk. Everybody lives, but a huge hole in the thing and all the planes go with it. America is in desperate need of a kick to the nuts. Without that, America will continue to be a drunken bully.
But jumping into a war with no clear objectives worked so well in Vietnam!
Play Solitaire
Lose
Blame the cards
Oh the republicans will be insufferable. I mean, even more.
We don’t even know what it is. How can we lose?
Well, he has a concept of a plan, you see.
“Plan” is just a fancy word for “urges and yes-men”.
He’s spent his whole life pointing at stuff he wants and telling other people to make it happen for him and getting everything he wants. He doesn’t know how to plan anything; he just knows how to be a rich asshole and bully people into giving him what he wants. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that he doesn’t have a plan for anything.
I mean Republican war hawks like Bolton have wanted to go to war with Iran for a few decades. I would have thought they would have had a concept of a plan.
60 days is so fucking long to be able to operate without congressional approval.
Yeah, it was made at a time when the concept of a war was a months long preparation of deploying troops and moving assets into place. They didn’t anticipate just attacking countries overnight.
This was a months- or weeks-long preparation. It’s been known for a while that the US was moving aircraft carriers towards Iran. This absolutely did not happen overnight.
Edit: and earlier, Military.com from 2026-01-29
Its not unusual for US air assets and carriers to be in this region in general. You might want to look at the preparations for the invasion of Iraq if you want to know what an actual preparation for a war looks like.
Right, and the massing of troops on the Ukrainian border by Russia was not a prelude to that invasion either. /s
This was in no way a bolt from the blue. People knew this was coming. Did you even read the linked article?
Yes. You are aware that February 20th wasn’t “months ago” right?
But January 29th was over a month ago, and you can bet that this plan started before the news noticed and reported on it.
Its OK that you said a stupid thing and then pretended you didn’t by changing the definition of what “stupid” is.
Half of US state capitals are in the middle of states because they were created at a time when travel times were large enough that you wanted to minimise them for political centres. I’m assuming this was around the same time so maybe it even took time to get congress together?
Oh, I can scroll up two comments. 1973. Scratch that
The interstate system wasn’t completed until 1992. Speed limits were lower in the 1970s as well and vehicles were not designed to go 70+mph at that time.
No, it was in the 1970s, for which 60 days was a reasonable amount of time to get soldiers into place in order to fight a war.
Doesn’t that just mean that there is no need to bypass Congress. They can approve while the troops are getting in position.
Yes, that is the entire point of the war powers act. It allows the president to quickly deploy troops to respond to issues and provides enough time for congress to approve the declaration of war once they are ready to go. Prior to this the US president was NOT permitted to deploy troops at all until congress declared war. The War Powers Act was an EXPANSION of presidential authority.
Wait until 60 days and we recall them for 24 hours just to turn around and… redeploy in the same place.
Sounds like one of the bullshit stunts Trump would try.
Haha! It’s like visas! Just attack a different country for like 24 hours then come back to Iran for another 60 days…
Greenland, I hope you’re ready for 24 hours of Heck!
And you know after 60 days he’s going to rename the operation to “Operation Big Dick Manly War” and claim it’s an entirely new thing that gets another 60 days.
There hasn’t been a declared war since WWII so on this there’s not much difference than how we’ve operated since the 50’s
And Congress can just retroactively make it legal
He’ll probably use the AUMF from 9/11 and it might be legal since Iran funds and directly supports two terrorist organizations.
Personally I think the legality isn’t as important since even if the supremes declare it illegal it won’t stop it. If congress really wants to stop this they’ll pull the funding for it.
If only we had some checks and balances in place
We collectively decided that those weren’t important, like we decided facts and science weren’t real.
We live in a collective delusion
The usa is a terrorist country who back up a terrorist genocidial state called Israel and thst terrorist state is backing terrorists in the west bank
At this point I’d rather have them say it’s illegal right now and keep going with the murdering of people without pointless interruptions that gets us nowhere.
Wont be 60 days , no amo , he gave it to israel
We all know he didn’t author that.
The red blotch admits Donny has no future.
Maybe stupid Americans shouldn’t elect a guy that admitted he only had concepts of plans while standing next to a woman who laid her plans out for voters.
So this was just an assassination.
You can be certain Mossad has had this as a war plan for years and they finally got their payment from Epstein to sign off on it
Mass murder.
“Although the United States desires a quick and enduring peace, it is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that may be necessary,” Trump said in the letter.
Clearly written by someone else. There is no way Mango Mussolini was this coherent.
For sure. There are many words longer than 5 letters. And certainly his base can’t read the bulk of this.
Marco Rubio said what I assume is the actual truth. Israel told us they were going to carry out the attack, and the US agreed to go along with it at the last second.
He also said what I think was a lie in the same explanation, that if Israel had attacked alone, then we knew Iran would attack the US and so we had to strike first to limit US casualties.
It’s a pathetic loser of a reason, that we can’t stand up to Israel. No wonder everyone else in the Trump administration has been lying about it non-stop.
Had Israel attacked alone and had we subsequently been attacked, do we really think there would have been far more US casualties? It seems dubious to me, based on the history, but I am not an expert.
If Iran did attack us like that, then we’d have complete justification for joining at that point.
The “if we don’t attack them there, they’ll attack us here” has been working as a great excuse for endless wars for as long as I can remember so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work on american voters this time
There’s no way Trump wrote a letter, especially not using those words.
This cum dump doesn’t have a plan period.
Cuz he’s a bumbling idiot who convinced other bumbling idiots that he’s smart. He never has a plan, he just wings everything, making decisions on impulse like a toddler.
Special Military Operation that was actually a 3 day operation
