Dick Cheney, the Secretary of Defense who offered such sage advice to then-President GHW Bush, is not, so Barton Gellman says, a neoconservative. Nor is he imprudent, contrary to the lunacy he offered the press about flower-strewn streets in Baghdad. In GHWB no doubt he saw limited possibilities for his ambitions- the one area, truly, where he is immoderate- and adapted his counsel accordingly, always watching for possibilities that could be exploited later.
The end of the first Iraqi engagement left fertile possibilities that lingered in his imagination. His very prudence then, in fact, may have been driven by a desire to return to the scene of this first crime later, when it could be more fully exploited. Or he may have used his own caution then opportunistically, as the foundation of one of his most ambitious later schemes (the mingling of fact and fiction being of great value here, since a single fact which is known to be so by its audience can make an otherwise hardheaded individual overlook a thousand lies).
Too, he may have realized that trimming Armed Forces could be used for its propaganda value. Col. Wilkerson's theme is apt: Sputnik terrified us into closing imaginary missile gaps, and the CIA would regularly alarm Presidents from Truman to Reagan about the need to counter expanding Soviet threats- not because they believed these reports to be true, but because earlier, more candid assessments ended up in the Executive trash. Presidents, with their eye to reelection, knew they could conduct that business better of addressing the public whenever a sheaf of exaggerated CIA reports had just been digested by their panicked top aides; it helped them exude the paternal air of calm the public (and their aides) craved, as well as the atmosphere of dangers well controlled that the public required.

John,

You'll get no disagreement on that from me although I might say it has been more like "shoveling the wealth" upward. Putting the minimum wage and unemployment benefits at some realistic level, re-instituting a truly progressive income tax, and taxing corporate profits that are not immediately returned to shareholders are ways to do that.

There's so much that needs to be done and can be done. How do we get over the four decades of propaganda extolling outright avarice as a virtue? The generation that went through the Depression were barely able to get a mild re-distribution of wealth and Social Security in place. Too many people have come to believe that the American Dream means have a chance to get rich. Prior to the Reagan Revolution, the American Dream was to have a decent life.

I have no idea of what is possible in terms of change. They literally stopped teaching economics about three decades ago. There is a lot of re-education that needs to go on. People know when they are screwed and have a sense for when they are getting screwed but they don't always see why or what can be done about it.

Aside from the unworkable move to self-funding for retirement, the changes to the tax structure have done the bulk of the work in pumping money towards the upper end of the scale. I'll stop. I could go on and on about all this. It pisses me off to no end.

I really was pleased to see that you said what you said the way that you said it.

Polk? That's a fairly obscure cite Ellen...You likely already know most, if not all of the backgrounder I'm posting here, but most Americans probably think that Santa Anna is just a city in So. California. The Lincoln letter you cited from was written to William Henry Herndon in 1848. Herndon was a law partner with Lincoln and after his assassination, became a well-known Lincoln biographer and archivist. Lincoln was a Congressional House member representing Illinois at this time. The Mexican-American War was fought 1846-1848, during the Administration of James Knox Polk. The Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo was signed February 2, 1848, effectively ending the War, and this letter was written two weeks later. I'm posting the whole letter here, because it offers good historical insight into the War Powers of The President. Many Americans felt that Polk had overstepped his Constitutional Authority by starting a war without Congressional consent, based upon a flimsy preemptive defense of The Nation predicate. Texas had just been annexed into the Union (1845), and there had been bloody skirmishes between the US and Mexican armed forces in South Texas, because of a border dispute. America claimed all land down to the Rio Grande, while Mexico claimed land up to the the Nueces River, around halfway between Laredo and San Antonio. It is how the American Southwest was won. Christian Soldiers Marching inexorably onward with blind faith believing in the righteousness of Manifest Destiny.

February 15, 1848. — Letter To William H. Herndon.
Washington, February 15, 1848.
Dear William:
Your letter of the 29th January was received last night. Being exclusively a constitutional argument, I wish to submit some reflections upon it in the same spirit of kindness that I know actuates you. Let me first state what I understand to be your position. It is that if it shall become necessary to repel invasion, the President may, without violation of the Constitution, cross the line and invade the territory of another country, and that whether such necessity exists in any given case the President is the sole judge.

Before going further consider well whether this is or is not your position. If it is, it is a position that neither the President himself, nor any friend of his, so far as I know, has ever taken. Their only positions are — first, that the soil was ours when the hostilities commenced; and second, that whether it was rightfully ours or not, Congress had annexed it, and the President for that reason was bound to defend it; both of which are as clearly proved to be false in fact as you can prove that your house is mine. The soil was not ours, and Congress did not annex or attempt to annex it. But to return to your position. Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us"; but he will say to you, "Be silent: I see it, if you don't."

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood. Write soon again. Yours truly,
A. Lincoln.

Lincoln, Abraham, John G. Nicolay, and John Hay. 1907. Abraham Lincoln; complete works, comprising his speeches, letters, state papers, and miscellaneous writings. New York: Century Co. Volume I; pp 111, 112