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.
Why are you asking him? Ask his boss, Netanyahu.
Plan is as intended sign here sir and here and here
That fat tub of walking gonorrhoea never has a plan, it’s just stumbling from one child-like reaction to the next toddler tantrum.
Oh shit, since this BOMBSHELL letter has dropped, I’m sure MAGA will MELT DOWN and someone will SLAM trump with a brutal TAKEDOWN.
60 days is so fucking long to be able to operate without congressional approval.
It’s because americans are incapable of voting Libertarian. It has been quite clearly shown that neither Democrats or Republicans will let go of those war powers.
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.
They were designed for the faster speeds. Speeds were lowered to 55 mph in most of the country during the 1970s as a (perfectly rational) response to the OPEC oil embargoes in that decade. Lower speeds = lower fuel consumption per mile.
Yeah, that makes sense. I forgot the other important detail I was thinking about. Communications. While cell phones were a invented in the 1950s, I think, the technology didn’t start getting wide-spread usage until the 1990s and the internet didn’t exist either back in the 1970s. Sending out deployment orders took a lot longer to happen, just to track down personal and tell everyone. There probably now is just an app you install on your phone and most personal get notified instantly unless they are in a cell dead zone.
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.
Like George Washington rotating his slaves in and out of Pennsylvania so that he wouldn’t have to free them. It’s a time-honoured American tradition.
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
This is just a test to see if he can get away with it. Everything he does is poking the bear to see if it attacks. But, the ameribear is dead. He will be using this same method of bypassing Congress and the Supreme Court to declare martial law and take over the country as an official dictatorship.
Let’s be clear, Trump isn’t the one making these decisions. He doesn’t have the mental capacity to think that far ahead.
His handlers are the ones responsible.
Agreed. Though, I mean the administration more than him as a person.
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
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.
It’s not like there’s ever been a precedent for that sort of thing.
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 feel you, but honestly, with this administration, who fucking knows what will happen. The Secretary of Defense is an alcoholic, the President is sundowning, and JD Vance appears to already be in hiding. This might end with our unconditional surrender to the next Ayatollah after we lose a ground invasion.
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.
I don’t even think you can say, “America,” at this point; I think this 5 to 10 people at the top of the administration that thought they could repeat what they did in Venezuela. There are plenty of ghouls in both parties that have been dreaming of regime change in Iran, but even they wouldn’t be stupid enough to think they could just bomb the country for a weekend, kill the Ayatollah, and move on. Intelligence officials at the Pentagon directly contradicted the administration’s claim that Iran was planning an attack, and even John Fucking Bolton wrote an op-ed saying this was a bad idea. America is gonna get a kick in the nuts, but only a handful of people are actually responsible for this cluster-fuck, and they probably won’t learn anything or face any consequences for their actions.
But jumping into a war with no clear objectives worked so well in Vietnam!
It was a great way to dispose of surplus bombs from WWII.
Maybe in a few years they’ll start making movies about how much this war sucked for the invaders.
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?
Wait… didn’t Vance say a few days ago that the wars before were fought badly because of dumb presidents, how the fuck is this different!??
Trumps dumber than dumb
He is literally demented.
adjective
-
behaving wildly and irrationally on account of anger, distress, or excitement.
-
affected with dementia.
-
Because this isn’t a war, as only Congress can declare war. This is just one of Trump’s special military operations.
/s
Says the department of… WAR. you can’t make this shit up.
It’s different because it’s under a president he supports, duh. /s
Well, he has a concept of a plan, you see.
“Plan” is just a fancy word for “urges and yes-men”.
Shit planning, depleting precision munition stockpiles and not listening to your best officers. Mango Mussolini requests a ceasefire and the Iranians understand the US is spending about a $1 billion daily and tell him to go pound sand. This is MAGA “winning.” F-them.
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.
he doesn’t have a plan for anything.
He said he had “concepts of a plan” for health care on national television after nearly a decade railing about the fucking issue, and this idiot populace still re-elected him. It’s clear at this point that not only does he not have a plan, but that to much of the voting populace that’s completely fine and fucking dandy.
When he said that I thought that there was no way he was going to win and that there can’t be anyone stupid enough to vote for him, knowing full well that there were people stupid enough to vote for him after the thousands of other stupid, disqualifying things he’s done prior to that. Still can’t believe nothing can be done about the situation.
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.
“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.
Yeah, NOTHING in ALL CAPS.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER
For sure. There are many words longer than 5 letters. And certainly his base can’t read the bulk of this.
So this was just an assassination.
Of Iranian school children.
And 85 year old man lured out for peace talks. Both are war crimes. Both are also probably Israel’s idea, they’re running this show.
Bombing peace talks feels like its become a pattern under Trump, makes me wonder if anyones even going to bother negotiating with the US after this.
Mass murder.
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
We all know he didn’t author that.
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.
There’s no way Trump wrote a letter, especially not using those words.
The question is: did he even read it before it got sent over?
It seems like having a staffer draft the letter isn’t a huge deal, but a normal president would personally approve it, I imagine.
