Twenty-three(23) Senators voted against the IWR

[vssmith]

Why haven't we got one of those people running for President?

These 23 Senators displayed courage, wisdom and foresight with their votes. Others say if they would have known what bush would do with that authorization they would like to take their vote back. I am sorry but every thoughtful person in America knew what Bush was intending. The Senators that voted yea had their own motives, mostly having to do with career goals. It is terrible that our young people had to die for someone's career goals.

I want a President that has courage, wisdom and foresight.

[Smith_3]

1. Probably because they voted against what the majority of americans wanted at that time. nt

[tyne]

2. What did the polling say

around that time?

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

5. If I recall, about 75% were scared into wanting the war. Then you have the case of my

state, NY, where the majority of the people were against it. In NYC, the city council agreed upon a resolution to be against going to war. With that said, one of the candidates did not listen to her constituency and voted for IWR. Schumer voted for it too. :banghead:

(BTW..I sent emails and made phone calls to convince both of my Senators to vote No)

[lapfog_1]

4. While there were many in the US that were buying the

Iraq has WMDs line... there were fewer that were buying the "Iraq supports Al qaeda" line.

By the time of the invasion, enough time had passed that people were beginning to question the "war lust" of Bush. I think more people were in support of the Afghanistan war since it was directly tied to getting OBL.

I'm sure the polling numbers were on the side of attacking Iraq, but I think it was definitely softening. I know I had a very sick feeling about it, even after Colin did the thing at the UN.
I kept thinking "how do they KNOW all this crap" and "did they really intercept a phone call about WMD weapons??? How convenient."

I wasn't the only person that felt that way.

[JackRiddler]

11. So if the "majority" of Americans wanted to invade Poland, that would be fine too

and what matter the lies - the "outrageous conspiracy theories" with which this "majority" was constructed? Fuck truth, I say.

Really, these Senate people had a lot of anti-democratic nerve. The vote should have been unanimous, right?

Also interesting is your implied blind acceptance of opinion polling results as expressions of "majority" will. How do you think it would have gone if they'd put the question on a national ballot?

What about the majority of Iraqis, do they get a say? What about every other country in the world, do they get a say?

Nominated for most disgusting single sentence "nt" post of the year.

[devilgrrl]

24. bravo!

:applause:

[The Stranger]

14. Bullshit. That is the reason why they should be President. Going against the grain is LEADERSHIP.

Principles over polls is exactly why Obama has defeated Clinton. She went with the political winds instead of what was right, and 4,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as a result.

[odelisk8]

15. because of

the LIES the people were told? riiiiight...these are the Immortal 23...God Bless Them...

[devilgrrl]

23. Wow! Pull stuff out of your ass much?

:nuke:

[tabasco]

27. The majority wanted politicians to make the wrong decision?

That's laughable.

[lapfog_1]

3. They didn't run.

A President Feingold or Boxer would have been great.

A President Wellstone... that just breaks my heart.

I don't believe any of the 23 ran for President.

So the next best thing is a very eloquent and good person who spoke out forcefully against the war and is a Senator now and IS running.

Maybe he will pick Boxer for VP (I like it!)

[Clear Blue Sky]

6. Senators don't usually run (successfully) for President.

Last Senator elected President was LBJ I think. None since. This year we will elect a Senator for the first time in a while.

[Mabus]

9. Actually LBJ succeded JFK to the presidency before being elected on his own

He wasn't elected president while a sitting Senator. JFK and Harding were the two presidents who were incumbent senators.

What are the chances of being elected president directly from a seat in the Senate? History's answer, at best, is "slim." While 15 of the nation's 41 presidents served in the Senate at some point in their public careers, only two—Warren Harding and John F. Kennedy—won their presidential races as incumbent senators.

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/A_Senator_Becomes_President.htm

[karynnj]

7. The causality may go the other way

That few of the 23 had the potential to run. Many were too old to reasonably run, like Byrd, Kennedy, and Akaka. Others were never in the tier of Senators that are mentioned. I think only Feingold, of the 23 contemplated a run and then didn't. In his case, it could have been that he was single and twice divorced.

I also don't think that the Democrats could have prevented the war. Bush was ready to go to war and was moving troops over there during summer 2002. The demand that he go to Congress and the UN likely postponed the war about 6 months. (I'm speaking of the pushback Bush did get - not the resolution.) Pushing it back made it more likely that it wouldn't happen - but clearly it happened anyway.

The other thing that happened is that many of the Democrats fought for changes in the IWR. Many things that Gore denounced in the IWR were corrected. The better competing resolution that Biden and the SFRC people were working on was effectively killed when Leiberman and Gephardt told Bush he had the votes on the revised version of the IWR. The Senators then had no further leverage. They had to decide if the compromises made were enough. I assume that all knew there was only a small chance that the path they pushed Bush on to could possibly skirt going to war. It may be that some thought they could pressure Bush to act in good faith or that it would give them some standing in demanding that he keep his promises - which it didn't.

While the IWR vote was wrong, because it gave Congress's approval in advance, your comment lets Bush off the hook. Bush started the war for reasons specifically removed from the original bill. A few Senators spoke up - but there was no outcry in Congress or the media. (There were people in the street.) Each Senator knows what they did and what they didn't do and why they did it. They may range from those who actively wanted war thinking it necessary and those working to try to find ways to avoid it. The vote is black or white, the actions and words of each Senator aren't.

(I know the bill left Bush to decide whether conditions were met - but, say, in terms of whether diplomacy was exhausted - there were still offers out there - it is clear that the condition was not met. This is the root of the problem with our signing statement President - He would have initiated war with ANY resolution or no resolution. The damage done to the Democrats was more personal - they know their names are connected to this even if they were working to avoid war.

[xchrom]

10. agreed -- bush and bush alone bears responsibility for this war,

the profiteering, gitmo, etc.

[odelisk8]

16. how about

senators who didn't even read the evidence they were given and then voted to give a maniac the power to send American troops into a country in direct violation of international and domestic law...? nah, no problem with that....

puhlease...

[karynnj]

21. I think that that is not a fair charge

First of all, if the conditions given in the IWR were interpreted by a reasonable person - which Bush wasn't - the process would not lead to a violation of international or domestic law. That is why in 2004, Kerry listed the violations of that promised process as the ways in which Bush mislead us to war, rather than argue about the lack of WMD - where Bush could and since has argued he didn't know they didn't - while it is still obvious that he did fail to do everything on Kerry's list. The problem with the IWR is that it gave Bush the ability to make that determination - though he already had the ability - without Congress - to attack if there was an imminent threat. He was the CIC.

The fact is that the NIE was limited to what the intelligence services knew - but there were 4 years when we had no one in Iraq. Valerie Phlame who worked in that area said that she did not rule out WMD. Iraq shares a border with the former USSR, known to have unsecured nukes. Given that there were no inspectors there for 4 years, and sanctions were going to lifted (many years later than should have been the case), the need for diplomacy and inspections was very real. With a different President truly committed to what Bush promised, the resolution would have been leverage - powerful but never used. (To get an idea of how strange it was - consider that by Dec 2002, Bush had an incredible victory - Saddam was letting inspectors in his palaces and destroying missiles. He could have made a show of lifting the sanction - that hurt people and actually gained us support in the area - not to mention - no war.)

[odelisk8]

22. anyone

who didn't know we were going to war against iraq, was deluded...sorry...i remember it all VERY well...i live in NYC and work across the street from the WTC site and was there on 9-11...i was all gungho to go into Afghanistan...and then the lunatic occupying the whitehouse started going after Iraq...we sent warships there...a huge build up....listen to Byrd's speeches...he knew...i knew...LOTS of people knew...howard dean knew...come on...anyone who DIDNT know has no business being President

[karynnj]

25. Howard Dean around the time of the IWR debate was

not a pacifist and was for Biden/Lugar, the SFRC alternative - that had it been the resolution would not have stopped Bush either. He likely would have used the same signing statement that he did.

I took my teens to protest in Jan 2003 (DC) and Feb 2003 (NYC). I am not saying the vote was right - it wasn't - what I am saying is that it neither increased or decreased the likelihood of war. The worst thing it did was to give Bush the ability to say it was bi-partisan. I was 100% against the war. I do fault Democrats who did not speak out on this via their vote or otherwise - but I think the die was cast when Bush became President and 911 occurred.


/

[xchrom]

29. i have always had my suspicions that bush wanted and was going

to try and get a war with iraq -- regardless of his no nation building speeches.

like you i protested and have been protesting the war as it has all gone along -- and as much as i decry dem capitulation to many republick party aggressive moves -- i hold bush -- by himself -- responsible for this war.

the nie was doctored -- as was discussed in frontline and other outlets -- cia operatives were pressured by the admin{still could be for all i know} -- bushco put on all out effort to controll ''history'' in order to get their war.

[MisterP]

28. well, Manson is as much in jail as Atkins, Kasabian, and Krenwinkel are n/t

[vssmith]

13. I am not letting Bush off the hook

His culpability was not the topic of this post.

[karynnj]

19. I stand with saying that your comment was too simplistic

I simply do not hold every Congress person, who voted for the IWR, responsible for the deaths - as they were deaths they did not make more likely. I am not arguing that they made them less likely. What I am saying is that every Senator knows what they did and didn't do. I see Harkin and Kerry, who voted for the resolution, while speaking out when it was not popular to do so before the war and working to push an exit plan as very different from say Leiberman, who pushed for war, not the resolution.

Those to me are the extremes - and Leiberman is further apart from Harkin and Kerry than Kerry and Harkin are from Feingold or Leiberman is from Bush. (Harkin had his own amendment around the time of Kerry/Feingold, some parts of which I think were included in K/F - he was a sponsor of K/F and was with, Boxer and Kerry the only Senator who co-sponsored Feingold's amendment to censure Bush. Kerry would have changed the policy had he gotten 59,000 more votes in Ohio - He likely would have been blasted by the Republicans as losing Iraq, but no one here would be speaking of IWR, although I'm sure he would have his critics for something. As it is, who would you prefer a newly elected Democratic President put more weight on advise on Iraq from - Levin, who voted against the IWR and who pushed a weak Democratic amendment to make it safe for Democrats to vote against Kerry/Feingold or Kerry, whose 2004 and 2005 plans were close to the Iraq Study Group recommendations and who led the effort to move the country and the Democratic party to the position they are in - stating conclusively that we need to make it clear to Iraqis that they will not be there indefinitely?

Notice I did not mention as defense saying they were wrong, though they did. The defense was the totality of what else they did. Now, I do not know where all the other Senators were. The question for each is what did they do to avoid or end the war versus anything they did to support it or give Bush cover. The IWR more than anything else gave Bush the cover to say that it had bipartisan support. The media helped here by speaking as if the vote and invasion was close - in real life I have had to threaten to pull up links from Thomas to prove that the Congressional vote was not in February or March 2003, but in October 2002 - and all the Blix and El Beradei reports finding nothing in between those dates.

That is why I said you let Bush off the hook. Most Democratic Senators, voting both aye and nay, included the possibility that Hussein had WMD in October often mentioning that we had no inspectors in for 4 years - most also said that - there was no imminent threat at that point - now, by March 2003 - it was more obvious that it was unlikely there were WMD and Hussein's compliance in destroying missiles had to make the potential that he was an imminent threat far far less likely if not near zero probability. This is why I do fault Democrats who spoke for the invasion at this point. This was a second instance, with far more information, that they gave Democratic support to Bush's invasion. These comments then CAN NOT be spun as wanting the inspectors in or wanting more diplomacy. Those that praised the invasion itself are guilty of a third instance. Those that attacks other Democrats as "cut and run" for wanting an exit plan get another demerit.

You or I could continue or revise that list - to create more complex, more accurate profiles of what individual Senators did over the last almost 7 years - starting in summer 2002 - with those who said that Bush didn't have the authority under the terror authorization to things said now. I wrote the above paragraph to demonstrate what I meant by other factors- you would likely create a different set. Either set would be better than looking at one vote in isolation.

[xchrom]

20. great analysis. nt

[vssmith]

30. You make some good points

Let me express this another way.
In 2002 I knew two things--probably you and many other here knew too:
1. It would be a serious mistake to invade Iraq and I mean even if they did have WMD
2. Bush, if given even the slightest opening(the IWR provided that), would invade.

I want a President that has at least as much and hopefully more good judgment than I claim to have.

It was no accident that the vote was scheduled only a couple of weeks before the 2002 mid-term elections--I am sure a number of Senators and Reps succumbed to that pressure.

I will somewhat defend Kerry(along with 29 others) by mentioning that he did vote for the Durbin Amendment about attack on Iraq only in case of imminent threat.

The answer to your question is Levin.

[PassingFair]

8. Don't forget a STRONG majority of HOUSE DEMS voted "NO", also. n/t

[wellstone dem]

12. Only one of the 23 was running for office that year

Senator Paul Wellstone. He voted against the war because he opposed it. He knew it might hurt his chances for reelection. But instead, his standing in the polls rose, because people knew any other vote would have been to win reelection. And then he died.

[Withywindle]

26. Nope, two.

Dick Durbin of Illinois did also, and he was up for re-election in 2002. He knew his seat was safe and his opposition weak, but he still did it. Didn't hurt him in IL any, he was re-elected by a landslide. Chicago itself adopted a resolution opposing the war.

[spanone]

17. here's the tally

United States House of Representatives
Party Ayes Nays PRES No Vote
Republican 215 6 0 2
Democratic 81 126 0 1
Independent 0 1 0 0
TOTALS 296 133 0 3

United States Senate
Party Ayes Nays No Vote
Republican 48 1 0
Democratic 29 21 0
Independent 0 1 0
TOTALS 77 23 0

[frogcycle]

18. a good place to start

in picking whom to support in the coming hostilities:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5248031&mesg_id=5248031