What a shock:

Last week marked the fifth anniversary of the votes in the House and Senate to authorize the Iraq War. The resolution was called “A joint resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq….”

Yet, we still hear spin from candidates that their vote was a vote for diplomacy. The facts say otherwise.

Americablog then proceeds post a quote from a White House press conference to prove that the 2002 vote was “for war.”

Except that the transcript they quoted shows exactly why the vote wasn’t just “for war:”

Q If the President gets the same kind of a vote from the Senate, does he feel that he can immediately or at any point have a free hand to go to war?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, under the Constitution, Helen, the President, of course, does have the authority –

Q — or even with or without allies.

MR. FLEISCHER: Under the Constitution, the President does have the authority as Commander-in-Chief to make those determinations. The President has asked — said he would ask the Congress to weigh in on this matter, and the Congress is doing so and doing it today. And the President thinks that will be very helpful in keeping the peace. The President has made no decisions about what the next step will be. Clearly, we will continue to talk to the United Nations about the inspection process, and that’s where the matter currently stands.

A few points here. First, we now obviously know that Fleischer’s contention that “the President has made no decisions about what the next step will be” is false as it is now apparent that Bush had fully intended to invade Iraq from the start. Going to the UN was just to see how many major powers he could get on board.

However, back to the point of this post that liberals are once again missing the point. Note some of the things Fleischer says. He starts to say that the President has the power under the constitution as President to start a war, and that he has “asked” congress to “weigh in” on the matter. He doesn’t actually say that the AUMF has “authorized” him to go to war because Bush already believed he had that authorization, both under powers granted to him as president by the constitution, as well as the original Gulf War Resolution.

In fact, the biggest concern for democrats at the time was that Bush wasn’t even going to try to go to the UN, and that he was going to invade without even bothering with a diplomatic solution, and saw the AUMF as a way to at least force Bush into going to the UN first, as the resolution states that he can’t go to war without first declaring to Congress that diplomacy has failed.

On top of this, just look at the very first paragraph of Senator Clinton’s speech on the resolution:

Today we are asked whether to give the President of the United States authority to use force in Iraq should diplomatic efforts fail to dismantle Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons and his nuclear program.

You obviously don’t start off a blood-thirsty “give me war now” speech with a condition like that, but Senator Clinton continues later in her speech:

Some people favor attacking Saddam Hussein now, with any allies we can muster, in the belief that one more round of weapons inspections would not produce the required disarmament, and that deposing Saddam would be a positive good for the Iraqi people and would create the possibility of a secular democratic state in the Middle East, one which could perhaps move the entire region toward democratic reform.

This view has appeal to some, because it would assure disarmament; because it would right old wrongs after our abandonment of the Shiites and Kurds in 1991, and our support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980’s when he was using chemical weapons and terrorizing his people; and because it would give the Iraqi people a chance to build a future in freedom.

However, this course is fraught with danger. We and our NATO allies did not depose Mr. Milosevic, who was responsible for more than a quarter of a million people being killed in the 1990s. Instead, by stopping his aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo, and keeping on the tough sanctions, we created the conditions in which his own people threw him out and led to his being in the dock being tried for war crimes as we speak.

If we were to attack Iraq now, alone or with few allies, it would set a precedent that could come back to haunt us. In recent days, Russia has talked of an invasion of Georgia to attack Chechen rebels. India has mentioned the possibility of a pre-emptive strike on Pakistan. And what if China were to perceive a threat from Taiwan?

So Mr. President, for all its appeal, a unilateral attack, while it cannot be ruled out, on the present facts is not a good option.

Once again, hardly a comment in favor of a resolution that the left would like you believe told Bush “OK, you can bomb Iraq at any time now!” Then there is more:

While there is no perfect approach to this thorny dilemma, and while people of good faith and high intelligence can reach diametrically opposed conclusions, I believe the best course is to go to the UN for a strong resolution that scraps the 1998 restrictions on inspections and calls for complete, unlimited inspections with cooperation expected and demanded from Iraq. I know that the Administration wants more, including an explicit authorization to use force, but we may not be able to secure that now, perhaps even later. But if we get a clear requirement for unfettered inspections, I believe the authority to use force to enforce that mandate is inherent in the original 1991 UN resolution, as President Clinton recognized when he launched Operation Desert Fox in 1998.

If we get the resolution that President Bush seeks, and if Saddam complies, disarmament can proceed and the threat can be eliminated. Regime change will, of course, take longer but we must still work for it, nurturing all reasonable forces of opposition.

If we get the resolution and Saddam does not comply, then we can attack him with far more support and legitimacy than we would have otherwise.

Ah yes, the weapons inspections. Many on the left forget (perhaps intentionally) that weapons inspectors occurred after, and really only because, of the AUMF resolution. And of course, what Clinton said was true, had Bush followed through on the resolution like he should have. Instead, weapons inspections weren’t showing up WMDs like he was wanting them to, and so before the idea that Iraq may not have had any WMDs could gain any traction, he invaded Iraq.

Of course, there is the question of whether Congress should have given Bush an authorization to attack that early, and most liberals would say no. However, assuming that a President isn’t basically insane or otherwise blood-thirsty like Bush, giving the President a big stick while going into negotiations over something important such as whether Iraq had WMDs isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It shows that you mean business and doesn’t give the other side an opportunity be like “oh yeah? what you gonna do about it if I don’t do what you say?” as what we’re “gonna do about it” is pretty clear.

If Congress hadn’t given Bush that authorization (and assuming Bush would have actually waited to get authorization – which he probably wouldn’t have), there is a, I think, very valid argument that the inspections would have started with no teeth behind them.

Of course, above I mentioned if the President wasn’t insane and blood-thirsty. The biggest problem with the AUMF wasn’t the bill itself, but the President who Congress was giving the authorization to:

President Bush’s speech in Cincinnati and the changes in policy that have come forth since the Administration began broaching this issue some weeks ago have made my vote easier. Even though the resolution before the Senate is not as strong as I would like in requiring the diplomatic route first and placing highest priority on a simple, clear requirement for unlimited inspections, I will take the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a UN resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.

Of course, looking back on that, taking President Bush at his word is largely why we are in this mess. However, considering the circumstances that Bush had only been in office for just about two years, and had just completed a seen-at-the-time largely successful engagement in Afghanistan, really only a “I’ll never agree to what a President of the opposing party wants to do” partisan had much of a reason to cast a blind “I don’t trust him” stamp on Bush.

I’ve long said in posts on other blogs and the like that President Bush has done great damage to this nation for the very reason that the Congress can’t and shouldn’t just trust the President to do the best thing when sending troops into a war anymore. Congress should be able to trust the President in such matters, regardless of what party controls Congress and the Presidency. However, they can’t do that anymore because we have seen all too well what happens when the President betrays that trust that Congress has for the President.

As a result, the ability for a President to properly respond to a legitimate threat may very well be inhibited in the future.

Addendum:  This is largely why I think Senator Clinton’s refusal to “apologize” for her vote for the AUMF isn’t a big deal.  I think she sees the situation the same way I do: with a typical president who is actually sane, voting for such a resolution isn’t necessarily a big deal because you expect that, if the resolution says the president has to fully go through the diplomatic process first, that the President will actually fully go through the diplomatic process.

On top of this, as I said before, there was the threat that Bush wouldn’t even try going to the UN.  I’m not sure what liberals thought the Congress would achieve by voting down the AUMF.  I think most people still thought Bush was going to war, except it would be even less legitimate than it was (which wasn’t all that legitimate to begin with).

Saying that the AUMF gave Bush permission to go to war is obviously misleading because he already thought he had that authorization, so the AUMF did no such thing.  It wasn’t a “vote for war” because Bush already thought he could go to war.  It was a vote to try to herd Bush towards a diplomatic solution while not fully tying his hands.   That’s why the vote isn’t as bad as many on the left making out to be.

The problem in this equation was Bush and, of course looking back with hindsight, whether Democrats should have trusted or believed Bush or not.  I think many of the problems with the Iraq war, from starting it to ending it, the left blames the democrats a lot more than they should be blamed.