Never Again  A healthy constitutional system learns from its
mistakes, and we have made a big one. Congress should never
again write the president a blank check to make war. The
precedent left by the first President Bush has cast a very large
shadow on this present crisis. Before making his war in the
Persian Gulf, Bush Senior first gained the consent of the United
Nations Security Council before turning to Congress for
authorization. These actions presaged two great principles for
the new world order emerging out of the Cold War.  The first was
the principle of double veto: There could be no major war
without the consent of both Congress and the United Nations. The
second was the principle of Congress' last say: Only after the
UN Security Council established that war was consistent with the
UN Charter would Congress decide whether it was in the best
interests of the United States.  This time around, President
Bush asked Congress to sacrifice the second principle to save
the first. He argued that unilateral w