Reply #157: Exactly. IWR was a bill for coercive diplomacy

[ConservativeDemocrat]

That was how it was sold to the U.S. Senate and the American public.
George Bush explicitly promised that he would go to war ONLY as a last resort, and the law was written that he had to certify that he'd tried everything else before committing U.S. troops to a conflict in which some of them would obviously die.

Now while it may sound rather quaint these days, there was a time in American politics where the statements of the President of the United States, even one not of your own party, was considered more reliable than a dictatorial tyrant such as Saddam. Further, the vast majority of Americans want that to be true, so voting for the IWR was not a hard vote at all to make. Many conservative Democrats still feel that was the correct vote to make, even if George Bush profoundly abused the power he was given.

And in case you're interested, even Howard Dean stated that while he was against the I.W.R. he would have voted for one with a similar sounding amendment (which - through lies - Bush could have still found a way to get his war).

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community