Political Quotes

“Madam President, I rise today to express my support for S. 316 and the repealing of the 1991 and 2002 authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF. I commend Senators Kaine and Young for their relentless work on this bill, and I am glad to be a cosponsor of it along with 43 of my colleagues. I voted against the 2002 AUMF when it was introduced more than 20 years ago. And I can assure you that as we debated that bill at that time, no one would have believed that 20 years later we would be on the floor debating its repeal. The war against Saddam Hussein is long over, and our bilateral relationship with Iraq is fundamentally different today. In our current fight against violent extremists, the Biden administration has clearly stated it does not rely on the 2002 AUMF as the basis for any ongoing military operations. Let's remember what the 2002 AUMF authorizes. The United States went to war, ``to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.'' The Bush administration alleged, falsely, that Iraq had amassed an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Bush administration officials also alleged that the Iraq Government had ties to the al-Qaida terrorists that attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. These false pretenses and cherry-picked information provided the basis for Congress to authorize the war in Iraq in 2002--again, an authorization I opposed. And this costly war of choice caused the United States irreparable harm.…”