And you "don't care about the details?"

Really?

The details are the nub of the matter. Bush NEVER would have tried for the IWR had he not had the AUMF under his belt--in fact, if you recall, he pretty much said "I've got this AUMF, I don't need your IWR, this is more about 'solidarity' than anything else." And his surrogates also insisted that it was more of a "bargaining chip" than anything else, to show that mean old Saddam that We Mean Business!

The framing IS important.

But the first "war" vote? Bernie beat Clinton on that by a mile. He not only voted for the AUMF, he also voted--not once, but TWICE--for regime change in Iraq.

Now, by "regime change" we're not talking about having free and open elections where some schmuck would run against Saddam. We're talking "regime change" at the end of a rope, like we saw in all its ugly horror.

And BS voted FOR that. TWICE.

So let's not perpetuate this fiction that the Senator from Lockheed Martin is some kind of peacenik, because he's not. He likes drones, he likes fighter aircraft, he likes military authorizations. He likes them best when the pork of these things accrues to his state and covers him in glory.