Has the US Congress's power to declare war been rendered superfluous by recent conflicts?

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What you may be confusing in this case is what is termed the War Powers Act which gives the President latitude to actually engage in military operations for up to 90 days before declaring war or going to Congress. Part of this stems from the face that Vietnam avoided this with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which then President Lyndon Johnson used to initially get Congress to accede into allowing soldiers to be sent to Vietnam. Later there were disputes about the accuracy of the attacks cited to get the resolution passed, note the end of the article which mentions the major points. While the War Powers Act has been side-stepped since its passing, the discussions on this came up most recently after the September 11th attacks, a good read on this at Slate which goes over the War Powers act and some of the discussions around sending troops into combat.

So to reiterate my comment, its not like it used to be but times and the methods of war have changed since the Constitution and the Presidents powers have been written.

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