Below is an op-ed that appeared in the NEW York Times by a Yale law professor who questions whether Bush even has the authority to withdraw unilaterally from the ABM Treaty without Senate approval.  Apparently the Supreme Court ducked the issue years ago as a 'political question", meaning it's up to the Congress to decide.

Let's put some spine into them and call for a debate on whether he has the right to decide without the approval of the Senate, which had to ratify the ABM Treaty by a 2/3 vote.

ALSO: At the May 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the nuclear weapons states, including our own, pledged to take 13 practical steps on the road to honoring their promise for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

ONE OF THEM WAS TO PRESERVE THE ABM TREATY!!!

(Others were to ratify the CTBT, take weapons off alert, make nuclear disarmament measures irreversible--none of which Bush is doing)  Use these points in calling your Senators, if you think they are useful.

Bush is acting beyond his authority to take it upon himself to kill the ABM treaty--don't you think the Congress has given him enough powers!!

Besides, if we're worried about nuclear proliferation and terrorists attacking us with nukes, starting a new nuclear arms race with China and possibly Russia will contribute to great national INSECURITY!!

Let's get the Senate to move on this!!

Alice Slater 

Presidents don't have the power to enter into treaties unilaterally. This requires the consent of two-thirds of the Senate, and once a treaty enters into force, the Constitution makes it part of the ''supreme law of the land'' -- just like a statute.

Presidents can't terminate statutes they don't like. They must persuade both houses of Congress to join in a repeal. Should the termination of treaties operate any differently?

The question first came up in 1798. As war intensified in Europe, America found itself in an entangling alliance with the French under treaties made during our own revolution. But President John Adams did not terminate these treaties unilaterally. He signed an act of Congress to ''Declare the Treaties Heretofore Concluded with France No Longer Obligatory on the United States.''

The next case was in 1846. As the country struggled to define its northern boundary with Canada, President James Polk specifically asked Congress for authority to withdraw from the Oregon Territory Treaty with Great Britain, and Congress obliged with a joint resolution. Cooperation of the legislative and executive branches remained the norm, despite some exceptions, during the next 125 years.

The big change occurred in 1978, when Jimmy Carter unilaterally terminated our mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. Senator Barry Goldwater responded with a lawsuit, asking the Supreme Court to maintain the traditional system of checks and balances. The court declined to make a decision on the merits of the case. In an opinion by Justice William Rehnquist, four justices called the issue a political question inappropriate for judicial resolution. Two others refused to go this far but joined the majority for other reasons. So by a vote of 6 to 3, the court dismissed the case.

Seven new justices have since joined the court, and there is no predicting how a new case would turn out. Only one thing is clear. In dismissing Senator Goldwater's complaint, the court did not endorse the doctrine of presidential unilateralism. Justice Rehnquist expressly left the matter for resolution ''by the executive and legislative branches.''

The ball is now in Congress's court. How should it respond?

First and foremost, by recognizing the seriousness of this matter. If President Bush is allowed to terminate the ABM treaty, what is to stop future presidents from unilaterally taking America out of NATO or the United Nations?

The question is not whether such steps are wise, but how democratically they should be taken. America does not enter into treaties lightly. They are solemn commitments made after wide-ranging democratic debate. Unilateral action by the president does not measure up to this standard.

Unilateralism might have seemed more plausible during the cold war. The popular imagination was full of apocalyptic scenarios under which the nation's fate hinged on emergency action by the president alone. These decisions did not typically involve the termination of treaties. But with the president's finger poised on the nuclear button, it might have seemed unrealistic for constitutional scholars to insist on a fundamental difference between the executive power to implement our foreign policy commitments and the power to terminate them.

The world now looks very different. America's adversaries may inveigh against its hegemony, but for America's friends, the crucial question is how this country will exercise its dominance. Will its power be wielded by a single man -- unchecked by the nation's international obligations or the control of Congress? Or will that power be exercised under the democratic rule of law?

Barry Goldwater's warning is even more relevant today than 20 years ago. The question is whether Republicans will heed his warning against ''a dangerous precedent for executive usurpation of Congress's historically and constitutionally based powers.'' Several leading senators signed this statement that appeared in Senator Goldwater's brief -- including Orrin Hatch, Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, who are still serving. They should defend Congress's power today, as they did in the Carter era. If they join with Democrats in raising the constitutional issue, they will help establish a precedent that will endure long after the ABM treaty is forgotten. Congress should proceed with a joint resolution declaring that Mr. Bush cannot terminate treaty obligations on his own. And if the president proceeds unilaterally, Congress should take further steps to defend its role in foreign policy.

We need not suppose that the president will respond by embarking on a collision course with Congress. His father, for example, took a different approach to constitutionally sensitive issues. When members of Congress went to court to challenge the constitutionality of the Persian Gulf war, President George H. W. Bush did not proceed unilaterally. To his great credit, he requested and received support from both houses of Congress before making war against Saddam Hussein. This decision stands as one precedent for the democratic control of foreign policy in the post-cold war era. We are now in the process of creating another.

Please phone your Senators today.

(202) 224-3121 (Capitol Switchboard)

Ask them to tell the President that they are shocked, appalled and dismayed that he is apparently planning the precipitous, unilateral withdrawal of the ABM Treaty. Ask your Senators to voice their strong opposition to the United States withdrawing from the ABM Treaty.

I know many of you have participated in the June  2000 Stop the New Arms Race Congressional Education Days. I ask you to immediately get in touch with the Offices you met with and impress upon them the urgency of speaking out right now.

The media is reporting that the President will make a formal announcement tomorrow.  So it is extremely urgent that you take action immediately.

Below are:

1. Press Reports from the New York Times, and  Excerpts from the President's Speech yesterday (Thanks to John Isaacs, Council for a Livable World for Compiling These)
2. Talking Points from the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, and a Recent Fact Sheet from PSR's Center for Global Security and Health
3. Please also see http://www.disarmament.org for further background on Missile Defense / ABM Treaty

The decision came after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, visiting Moscow in recent days, was unable to bridge differences with Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, on how to deal with an arms control accord that Mr. Bush has called a "relic" of the cold war, and "dangerous." But Mr. Bush concluded last week that Secretary Powell's last effort would likely fail, and it appears that he gave warning of his intentions in a phone conversation with Mr. Putin on Friday.

The decision ends a raging debate within the administration over the wisdom of withdrawing from the treaty, and marks a major policy defeat for Secretary Powell. He has long maintained that it was still possible to negotiate an agreement with Russia that would allow the Pentagon to move forward with the kind of tests it insists are necessary to develop an antiballistic missile system initially capable of handling the launch of a handful of nuclear weapons at the United States.

At the same time, Mr. Bush's decision was a major victory for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, fresh from the success of the military campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Mr. Rumsfeld has countered that there is no technologically satisfying way to amend the accord that President Richard M. Nixon signed with the former Soviet Union nearly three decades ago.

In the end, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, sided with Mr. Rumsfeld, several administration and congressional officials said today.

Mr. Bush made no mention of his decision when he gave a speech on the future of the American military today at the the Citadel, the military college in Charleston, S.C. But he forcefully repeated his contention that  the treaty is outdated, noting that last week the Pentagon conducted another "promising test" of missile defense technology.

"For the good of peace, we're moving forward with an active program to determine what works and what does not work," Mr. Bush told a cheering crowd of cadets. "In order to do so, we must move beyond the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, a treaty that was written in a different era,  for a different enemy."

The treaty allows either signatory to withdraw with six months' notice. If Mr. Bush goes ahead with his announcement this week possibly on Wednesday or Thursday it would mean that the administration would be free to conduct any type of test it wants by mid-June. The Pentagon plans to start construction on silos and a missile defense command center at Fort Greely, Alaska, in late April or early May. The silos and center would initially be used for testing allowed by the treaty. But Russian officials note that part of the plan is for the "test bed" to become part of an operational missile-defense system. For that  reason, some ABM experts contend that the work would violate the treaty.

Pentagon officials have also said they want to schedule tests in which ship-based radars track long-range missiles early next year. Such tests are not allowed under the treaty.Aides say Mr. Bush hopes his announcement will prompt discussions with Russia on what kind of agreement should become the successor to the ABM treaty. Presumably that will be the focus of his expected trip to Moscow, his first, sometime next spring. Ms. Rice said after the last meeting between the two leaders, at Mr. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., that the relationship between the two countries had been so strengthened that it could glide past the difference of opinion about the value of the treaty.

"This is a smaller element of the U.S.Russia relationship than it was several months ago and certainly than it was before Sept. 11," she said in Crawford.

At a meeting in Washington that preceded the Crawford summit by a day, Mr. Putin and his aides made it clear that while they were inclined to allow the United States to conduct antimissile tests despite the treaty, they wanted the right to approve each test of the system. "It was something we couldn't live with," a senior administration official said. "It would mean subjecting each test to separate scrutiny, and sooner or later they were going to say `no,' " one senior official said.

Today a senior administration official said that "the Russians won't like it, but the calculation is that they will learn to live with it, and they will quickly get beyond it. They've certainly known it's coming. "Another official said this evening, "In a way, the bigger question is how the Chinese will react." While China is not a signatory to the treaty, its arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons is so small only 20 or so weapons can reach American shores that Chinese officials fear that the arsenal would be neutralized by a modest American antimissile system built in Alaska or deployed on ships in the Pacific. That could prompt China to speed the modernization of its nuclear forces, something the White House believes it will do anyway.

In contrast, even when Russia reduces its nuclear arsenal to 1,500 or so weapons, a goal Mr. Putin has set, Russia would be able to overwhelm any antimissile system now on the Pentagon's drawing boards.

While White House officials maintain that strategic concerns, not politics, have always been at the heart of Mr. Bush's decision on the ABM treaty, it seems likely some major political calculations went into the timing.

Mr. Bush's approval ratings are as high as ever nearly 9 out of 10 Americans say they approve of how he is handling his job, a New York Times/CBS News poll released tonight reports and 75 percent say they approve of how he is handling foreign policy. In the spring, only about  half of those polled said they approved.

Other polls show that since Sept. 11, more Americans believe in the need for missile defense, even though the attacks three months ago used airplanes, not missiles. Mr. Bush has argued that the next attack could well come in a missile attack from a rogue state or terrorists.

But the critics of his plan are unpersuaded. Many say that Sept. 11 proved that America's major vulnerabilities have little to do with missile attacks. And this evening, Senator Joseph R. Biden, Democrat of Delaware and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, issued a statement warning that "unilaterally abandoning the ABM treaty would be a serious mistake. The administration has not offered any convincing rationale for why any missile defense test it may need to conduct would require walking away from a treaty that has helped keep the peace for the last 30 years."

European leaders have also criticized American discussion of abandoning the treaty, saying before Sept. 11 that the administration's treatment of the treaty was a prime example of a worrisome move toward unilateralism. But now administration officials appear to be calculating that the European reaction will be muted, especially if European leaders do not want cracks to appear in the coalition against terrorism.

Mr. Bush's speech today at the Citadel was, in many ways, a reprise of a 1999 address on military policy that he delivered there as a presidential candidate. The remarks today served as both a marker of the three month anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and a call for a more agile, modern military.The White House also used the event as a kind of "I told you so" about the threat of terrorism, a large theme of Mr. Bush's earlier speech. Today he warned that "rogue states" were the most likely sources of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, and said that they would be regarded as "hostile regimes" if they aided terrorists. "They have been warned, they are being watched, and they will be held to account," the president said.

Mr. Bush cited the American military campaign in Afghanistan as a model for future wars, and said the United States needed to further develop unmanned planes, like the Predator, and precision-guided bombs. Both have been used in Afghanistan.He also called for rebuilding "our network of human intelligence"  as well as new intelligence-gathering technology. "Every day I make decisions influenced by the intelligence briefing of that morning," Mr. Bush said. "The last several months have shown that there is no substitute for good intelligence officers, people on the ground."