Joe Lieberman: “I want to say, as he talked about reading the resolution--and I think that is important and I hope all our colleagues…”

“I want to say, as he talked about reading the resolution--and I think that is important and I hope all our colleagues will read it--not just the ``resolved'' part, but the ``whereas,'' the preamble. There have been suggestions here and there that either this resolution we have adopted was sort of patched together in a hurry, or that the White House just dictated it. The good news is this resolution is the result of a bipartisan, bicameral, House-Senate negotiation with the White House in a spirit of accommodation and compromise as part of a desire to go forward together. Some significant changes were made in the resolution from the original draft sent by the White House that were requested by Members of Congress, including particularly Members on the Democratic side of the aisle. I just want to mention very briefly those changes. They include, first, support for and prioritization of American diplomatic efforts at the U.N. Just so there would be no doubt that what we were authorizing or intending to authorize was a unilateral, go-it-alone, ``don't care what anybody else says in the world'' military strike at Saddam Hussein, it is not that.”