The story that ‘so deserves to be a scandal’: “The civics lesson of the Iran-Contra scandal was simple: No matter how powerful or well-intentioned, presidents cannot secretly fund wars without the consent of Congress. But according to Bob Woodward’s new book, President Bush apparently never learned that axiom. And now, Congress must demand answers.

Woodward alleges that in July 2002, the president secretly began to finance the war in Iraq with no authorization from Congress. He says $700 million was siphoned from operations against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and into planning an Iraq invasion. The president allegedly took the money from one of the two supplemental spending bills passed after September 11 and left lawmakers ‘totally in the dark.'” — David Sirota (director of strategic communications at the Center for American Progress and former chief spokesman for Democrats on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee) The American Prospect