Andrea Joy Campbell: “I give high commendation to my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado, for bringing this to the floor. Two arguments…”

“I give high commendation to my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado, for bringing this to the floor. Two arguments have been made against what the gentleman has achieved. I wish to respond to them. First, to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) that the authorization to go to war passed in 1991 would still apply today, it does not. Today we are discussing the use of force in response to the failure of Saddam Hussein to allow inspection of his mass destruction weapons facilities, which occurred after we drove him out of Kuwait. Logically, this could not have been anticipated at the time of the 1991 vote. I was here. I voted yes then, as well. But we had no consideration then of force to terminate weapons' programs. It would be as dangerous to say that the 1991 authorization applies today, as it was to say that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution gave approval for everything that followed in Vietnam. We must be careful in what we approve. We were careful in 1991, so that the men and women in our armed forces whose lives are at stake might know what their representatives have approved. And that was not an unbridled authorization for action seven years later. The argument of the gentleman from Indiana, that because of this provision, the President will not be able to respond to Saddam Hussein's use of anthrax, is absolutely false.…”