In respect to Kevin Drum's statement cited last time, Rep. Udall (D-CO) was on the Al Franken Show today and defended his vote against the vote in 10/02, a vote that Franken supported at the time. Franken felt that a congressional threat of force was necessary to pressure the U.N. to agree to real inspections, inspections of Iraq with teeth. The fear was that it was just a ruse ... as it basically turned out to be -- but Udall had an alternative: require a second vote. Now, the President (and Prime Minister Blair) assured us that there would be a second U.N. vote before the war. This never occurred and appears to be a violation of the U.N. provisions allegedly authorizing our efforts. Put that aside ... there also was a constitutional concern involved.
Foolish consistency is not a good idea, but reasonable consistency generally is sound advice. And, I have been reasonably consistent on this point: the problem with the vote, or rather a problem, was that it did not expressly demand the President come back to Congress if and when it was determined that war was necessary. The laughable requirement was that he let the leadership know that in his view that force was necessary. The facts on the ground, and Sen. Kerry was not alone in saying this, did not compel the use of force in 3/03. An argument, reasonable if not compelling (my test), could have been made anyway. But, not the one rose the previous October, no matter how much our liar in chief demands otherwise.
But, Kerry does not get a reprieve even as much as Sen. Edwards (who now said his support was a mistake -- 20/20 hindsight and all), the latter party more gung ho about the whole invasion thing.* Kerry could have and should have demanded that second vote. The Constitution did. His supporters try to skirt this, but they should not really be taken too seriously.
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* Among the War Democrats (one thinks of the War Hawks back in 1812), we had Sen. Lieberman, who has shown himself to be his frequent turncoat self yet again. Forty senators -- nearly all Democrat -- supported a non-binding resolution on Iraq policy. Guess who was among the few who did not? You guessed it, one included one of the handful of Dems who supported Lindsey Graham's habeas stripping bill.
On that front, the new provision (and this one might not even make it out of conference) still would deny habeas to those waiting enemy combatant status (quite a few) as well as many who were so labeled but still have many reasonable claims to make. OTOH, even experts aren't quite clear on what the provision would mean -- but, darn if they want to rush it out anyway.