Looking back, it’s a little hard to believe, but in October 2002, 77 our of 100 senators voted for the Iraq war resolution. With this number in mind, ABC News’ Jake Tapper reported on an interesting survey — how do those 77 feel now? ABC asked each of them and, after acknowledging the obvious difficulties in recreating all the various political factors, found that Bush “would never have been given the authority to use force in Iraq.”
By ABC News’ count, if the Senators knew then what they know now, only 43 — at most — would still vote to approve the use of force and the measure would be defeated. And at least 57 senators would vote against going to war, a number that combines those who already voted against the war resolution with those who told ABC News they would vote against going to war, or said that the pre-war intelligence has been proven so wrong the measure would lose or it would never even come to a vote.
For any Senate vote to switch from 77-23 in favor to essentially 57-43 against is quite remarkable, and far more so for a decision as significant as the one to go to war. […]
Twenty-eight of the 77 senators who voted to authorize the war in Iraq indicated, many for the first time, that they would not vote the same way with the benefit of hindsight. Six others indicated that, in retrospect, the intelligence was so wrong the matter would not have passed the Senate, or would not have even come up for a vote.
“This is very significant,” said congressional scholar Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. “If they were asked that question a year ago, I think the likelihood of getting anywhere close to a majority voting against the war would be impossible. What this tells me is that Gordon Smith’s very stunning speech was in some ways the tip of the iceberg.”
Some of the senators from 2003 are no longer in office, but those who now know better include Republicans (Campbell, Fitzgerald, Bob Smith, Snowe, Hutchison, Specter) and Dems (Biden, Dodd, Breaux, Rockefeller, Daschle).
Some owned up to their mistake, others took a cowardly way out. Former Sen. Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) said, “We rushed into there, very frankly, we were kind of pushed in. The problem with being a public official is public opinion jams you around. And public opinion then was we had to do something about all the people being abused and tortured and killed.”
Yes, of course, it’s Americans’ fault Sen. Campbell was wrong. Classy.
Regardless, the real mystery for me are the 43 senators — some still in office, some not — who still think they made the right call.
Many senators stood by their vote, including Republican Sens. Dick Lugar of Indiana, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Orrin Hatch of Utah and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, as well as Sens. Joe Lieberman, formerly a Democrat but now an independent from Connecticut, and Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat.
Other senators that had previously expressed such sentiments included former Sen. George Allen, R-Va., and Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who has said in retrospect he would still vote for war for “humanitarian” reasons.
In his 2004 speech to the Republican National Convention, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the issue of whether or not Saddam Hussein “possessed the terrible weapons he once had and used, freed from international pressure and the threat of military action, he would have acquired them again.”
The war in Iraq remains the right decision, McCain said, because “we couldn’t afford the risk posed by an unconstrained Saddam in these dangerous times.”
The ABC report seemed to suggest 43 Senate votes represents real progress, especially compared to the 77 who voted for the resolution in 2002, but I had the opposite take — 43 policy makers now know Iraq had no WMD, no connection to 9/11, no nuclear program, no meaningful ties to al Qaeda, is filled with ethnic strife that led to a civil war, and has devolved into a catastrophe of historic proportions, look back and conclude, “Yep, I made the right call.”
Isn’t this almost the definition of “delusional”?