WaPo: Bush had the authority to go to war! Wrong! It wasn't a vote for
war "They made the point: We do not want to win this war, only to lose the peace and swell the ranks of terrorists who hate us," Spratt said.
Skelton had written Bush a month earlier, after a White House meeting, to say that "I have no doubt that our military would decisively defeat Iraq's forces and remove Saddam. But like the proverbial dog chasing the car down the road, we must consider what we would do after we caught it."
Rep. David R. Obey (Wis.), who will chair the Appropriations Committee, was among the group that organized the Democrats. He spoke then about poor preparation for postwar Iraq, a concern he developed after listening to State Department officials.
Baldwin said recently that she put together her statement after reading public commentary and talking with like-minded colleagues and her staff about what would come next. "A vote like this, I didn't undertake lightly -- I almost fully expected they would find weapons there," she said. "But we hadn't heard about an exit strategy; it was such a blank."
The day after the House vote, The Washington Post recorded that 126 House Democrats voted against the final resolution. None was quoted giving a reason for his or her vote except for Rep. Joe Baca (Calif.), who said a military briefing had disclosed that U.S. soldiers did not have adequate protection against biological weapons.
Everybody voted for different reasons, which were mostly about preparation. They expressed the same concerns about WMD and needing to continue inspections---the same concerns as Kerry and Feingold did!
This is Bush's war!