On the recordJuly 17, 2014
I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts, and I want to thank him for being a leader on bringing to the floor of the House not only this resolution asking for a vote about bringing our troops home from Iraq, but also the way that he speaks about the fact that 17 million American children go home at night hungry. That is another issue, I understand that, but it all ties in. When we continue to not debate whether we should be sending our young men and women to die, we are shirking our constitutional responsibility that we, in this Congress, have raised our hand to swear that we will uphold the Constitution of the United States, but we don't do that, Mr. Speaker, when it comes to war, and I blame myself. In 2003, I bought the lie that was told by the previous administration about the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein had and how he was going to use that against the American people. That misinformation that was given by the previous administration caused us to go into Iraq, and I voted to give the President at the time--President Bush--the authority to bypass the Constitution. It is called the AUMF, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, and I regret that and will until the day I die because I gave up my constitutional responsibility to debate and to vote on whether we should go to war or not, and that was the constitutional responsibility of this Congress and of me being a Member of Congress. Mr. Speaker, I have beside me a poster of a funeral.…
