The administration has asked Congress for an immediate $20 billion to begin building the military and intelligence force required to start the military campaign. Congress is moving swiftly to approve the funds, although some lawmakers, citing the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and other earlier blank checks written to presidents to conduct undeclared wars, expressed uneasiness about Congress’s so quickly ceding its constitutional powers to declare war and control the national treasury. The planning and the language used by administration officials was read by military analysts as a sign that Secretary Powell, a former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is preparing the way for a military force that could ultimately be used to occupy Kabul, the Afghanistan capital, and overthrow the ruling Taliban. The Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, while the United States fought a proxy war using mujahideen rebels against the Soviet troops, who began to withdraw in 1988.