Before I go any further, here is the EXACT wording of that authorization: “AUTHORIZATION: The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to; 1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and 2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.”

That’s it Ben… That’s the whole part of the authorization clause. Nothing about overthrowing a dictator to establish democracy. Nothing about rape rooms, torture chambers or “gassing his own people.” This authorization was given SOLELY to protect the security of the United States against Iraq and Saddam’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction and to enforce current UN resolutions. That was what Senators were given to vote upon. To vote for any other reason would not be voting for the resolution as written. Any other arguments for going to war were created afterward by the administration and right-wing media in an attempt to justify the invasion. Contrary to what Sean Hannity claims every day on the radio, the only authorization was given to protect the United States of America and to enforce UN resolutions.

If you go back to my linked article and read the whole authorization from top to bottom, you can see that the actual powers given to George W. Bush in the authorization were given in VERY broad strokes. Senator Robert Byrd noted that it was “giving a blank check” to the administration to go to war. However, the reason that so many Democrats supported this resolution was because they had trust in George W. Bush that he would honor the spirit of the authorization, which Bush claimed in front of the American people was merely to give teeth to previous UN resolutions that were not being enforced and to protect the US against potential WMDs. If, as a Senator, you trusted George W. Bush as a good man — a man of integrity — you believed that the resolution you were approving was to give George W. Bush the power he needed to go to the UN and tell them that the situation in Iraq was serious, that there might be WMDs there that threatened the United States of America, and that inspectors needed to get in there immediately. They needed to make sure Saddam was complying with UN resolutions or there would be DIRE consequences because Bush had the whole weight of the United States Representatives behind him in demanding that the resolutions be enforced. Before this, Iraq was sort of thumbing its nose at the UN. After the vote, which gave teeth to the resolutions, Iraq began to cooperate (reluctantly) and the inspectors were let back into Iraq.

For many who voted for the resolution, this was the desired result — Saddam would be disarmed, any WMDs would be found, and would not be a threat to the US. Iraqi citizens being tortured, killed, raped, whatever, was NOT the basis upon which war would be authorized. For the administration’s hawks, inspectors back in Iraq making sure the threat to the US was nil was not enough. Remember that the US, UK and Spain drafted ANOTHER RESOLUTION following the return of inspectors to Iraq. The resolution stated that military action would ensue if Iraq did not comply with “total disarmament” by March 17th. The resolution was never voted on, because it was never submitted, because there was NO SUPPORT for this resolution, and Bush knew this. Had a vote been allowed on this resolution, it would have been clear that the world was not yet ready to go to war with Iraq (and while I’m not sure all Democrats would’ve had the spine to vote against such a resolution, certainly many more would have voted “nay” than did for the original authorization). Instead, what happened was that George Bush then decided this “blank check” was enough to go to war, and in we went.

So I will never be convinced that a vote for this resolution — by ANYONE — was a clear vote for war, or a war to install a democracy, or a war to protect innocent Iraqis against a brutal dictator. It wasn’t, and that wasn’t the intent of the resolution at the time that it was being voted upon.

As for the issue of morality and this war, I believe THIS war is immoral because it was NOT specifically authorized by the members of Congress. It is illegal, and as this recent cable from the US Embassy in Iraq to the Secretary of State shows, things in Iraq are not as the administration would have us believe. Ordinary Iraqi citizens are paying the price for our war of election. THAT is immoral. Was Saddam a bad guy? Certainly. Did he kill upwards of 100,000 innocent Iraqi citizens that are now dead as a result of this war? Doubtful.

If you want to talk about whether or not we should’ve crafted a resolution to “install democracy” and protect innocent civilians against torture, rape and murder, there will be a whole list of other areas of the globe that you’d have to talk about too where horrible crimes against humanity are occurring.

Bill Clinton
“The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow.”
John Kerry (one of the senators who voted in favor of the “Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq Resolution of 2002″)
“We need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. …And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War.”
Al Gore
“We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”

The fact of the matter is a lot of people from all over the political spectrum thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction so there had to be a good reason to believe that he had them whether he actually did or not and if there’s a good reason to believe that a person like Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction it would, in my opinion, be irresponsible to not send our military into his country. Also, I don’t understand why you think that this war is immoral. We overthrew an evil dictatorship and established a democracy enabling the innocent citizens of Iraq to vote for officials that will mold their country into the country that they want it to be and they will have rights so that they won’t have to worry about themselves or someone they love being tortured and/or raped and/or killed. I don’t think that’s immoral, I think that’s heroic.