Chuck Hagel does his best John Kerry impersonation during an interview with GQ. Bold is GQ, regular text is Hagel.
Do you wish you’d voted differently in October of 2002, when Congress had a chance to authorize or not authorize the invasion?
Have you read that resolution?I have.
It’s not quite the way it’s been framed by a lot of people, as a resolution to go to war. That’s not quite what the resolution said.It said, “to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.”
In the event that all other options failed. So it’s not as simple as “I voted for the war.” That wasn’t the resolution.But there was a decision whether to grant the president that authority or not.
Exactly right. And if you recall, the White House had announced that they didn’t need that authority from Congress.
Later in the interview Hagel says that he regrets his vote in favor of the AUMF:
So to answer your question—Do I regret that vote? Yes, I do regret that vote.
Hagel makes clear throughout the interview that he has serious problems with the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war, as well as the pre-war push to fight without approval from Congress and the use of torture by the American military. Hagel’s pissed and he’s finally willing to start telling the world about it.
Leaving aside the snarky similarities between Hagel’s justification of his vote in favor of the AUMF and John Kerry’s repeated pleas for slack on AUMF during the 2004 campaign, Hagel has yet again set himself out as the most principled opponent to the Bush administration within the Republican presidential field. More and more Republican voters will split from Bush as the Iraq war devolves deeper and deeper into failure. Hagel’s principled opposition will likely make it possible that he pick up support from these voters as they flee the Bush wing of the Republican Party.
Something to say?
