Political Quotes

“I speak only for myself on this issue and will tell you why I am so motivated about this resolution. If we think back on the modern history of our country and if we think of the two most significant foreign policy decisions--the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq and the unbelievable unintended consequences that those two destructive wars had--what we conclude is that in both of those wars--one under a Democratic President and one under a Republican President--the Congress abdicated its responsibility. It did not ask the right questions. In both instances, we got into those terrible wars based on lies. The Johnson administration lied as to why we should get involved in the war in Vietnam, and the Bush administration lied as to why we should get involved in the war in Iraq. It just seems to me that if nothing else, based on those two examples of what the war in Vietnam did and what the war in Iraq did, Congress has to take a deep breath and understand that the people who wrote the Constitution were not fools when they said it must be the elected people who are closest to the constituents who have to debate these issues and who know that decisions being made will result in the loss of lives of the people in their own States, and we have abdicated that responsibility. No one can predict whether the decisions made by Congress are going to be good decisions with regard to war and peace, whether we are going to do better than Presidents did. I don't know.…”