Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I have a couple of things to say this morning. First, and briefly, I want to, and probably will, support the military action in Libya. I have been inclined to think that careful, surgical use of our forces can make a positive difference to the degree it would be worth the risk of that involvement. But I am not really sure of that. As a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, these are matters with which I am not totally unfamiliar. I was very confident from the beginning that we could execute a no-fly zone very effectively, and that--there is risk but not great risk because of our military capabilities. However, I do believe that over a number of years the Congress and the American people have expressed grave concerns over the executive branch committing the United States to military actions without full participation of the legislative branch. We have not used the declaration of war mechanism, truthfully, as the defining act for most of our military actions in recent years. We have used authorization of military force resolutions that authorized the President to utilize the military force. We spent weeks doing that before the Iraq invasion--not weeks, months. In fact, as I recall, the authorization for utilization of military force in Iraq was passed in the fall, I believe October, and the actual invasion did not occur until the next spring, in March. During that time, we had many hearings. We had full debate.…”