Seth Moulton: “When is enough enough? The vote to go to war against Iraq in 2002 was a mistake. Congress should have been more careful…”

“When is enough enough? The vote to go to war against Iraq in 2002 was a mistake. Congress should have been more careful, questioned the intelligence, and made sure that we exhausted every other option before we put young American lives in danger. It is time that we stopped living off those past mistakes. Both the Obama administration and the Trump administration have maintained that the 2002 AUMF only serves to reinforce currently existing legal authority. So it needs to end. We need to repeal it. Because keeping it in place does not support current operations, and it could be used as a legal pretext for future escalation in the Middle East that has not been authorized by Congress. If we ever need to go to war against Iraq again, Congress has the constitutional obligation to make that decision. And we are fortunate that now that decision will be made, in part, by the generation that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is coming to Congress to step in for the generation that sent us there. So let's get rid of this mistake, clear the decks for a new generation of better, more accountable leadership, and ensure that Congress takes more careful responsibility for these decisions moving forward.”