Congress does not need to declare war for us to go to war. Lot's of precedents for this. The Korean "War", for one, was never a declared war if I'm not mistaken.

When Bush ( the elder) bombed Libya there was no declaration of war.

Here is some good info from Wikipedia about Congress and wars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaratio ... ted_States[/url]

If Bush starts a Korean-style war without the consent of Congress, that's a guaranteed impeachment, and he may even get thrown out of office.

For a brief military action, he could get away with it if he had some pretty compelling evidence.

This isn't going to happen guys. It doesn't matter that the Republicans have wanted this since the 70's or that we will have the forces to do it at some point next year. The American people wont allow it, the Republicans are scrambling right now to dodge/ deflect the blame for the war in Iraq that already caused the GOP to lose a big chunk of their power`. Even if it gets to the point where they have no chance to win the presidential election, they aren't going to go out with a bang. The republicans still have house and senate seats that they need to hold onto and starting a war in another middle eastern country over WMD's would cause a huge negative response from the American people and an even larger loss of power for the GOP. The Republican party is smarter than to do this.