Permission to Wage War

The Brian Lehrer Show | Feb 13, 2015

President Obama has asked Congress for approval to use military force to fight ISIS. Fred Kaplan, Slate's War Stories columnist and author of The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, contends that this is basically a charade, as lawmakers rarely vote down a president's request for authorization to go to war. Plus: the Senate confirmed Ashton Carter as the next defense secretary yesterday.

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