U.S. Senate Floor Speech Snips on War with Iraq, 1991

9/5/2002--So President Bush wants to get approval from Congress instead of exercising his Constitutional authority? Let's look back to Iraq and 1991 and listen to the heroes of the U.S. Senate in debate on going to war against Iraqi aggression. Too bad Bush took another whack at the Constitution with the Congressional ax.

Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), Jan. 12, 1991--Why are we in such a rush to go to war when many avenues of diplomacy are apparently still being explored by the United Nations, by the French . . .

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Jan. 3, 1991--President Bush stubbornly insists that he needs no authorization from Congress to take the Nation into war. But saying so does not make it so. Perhaps the President can scrounge up a scholar or two to defend his indefensible position. But the overwhelming weight of the evidence is against him. And for good reason, because the President is wrong--dead wrong--and thousands of American soldiers may soon be dead because of him.

Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC), Jan. 3, 1991--The President likes to rile us all up about this wild man Saddam Hussein, saying that Saddam has attacked two of his neighbors in the last 10 years. But that is exactly what the U.S. has been condemned for in the United Nations in 1983, not by 12 votes as in the case of Resolution 678, but by 109 members of the United Nations condemning the United States for an act of aggression in Grenada, and by 75 votes just December a year ago for an act of aggression in Panama.

Read Al Gore's incredible, inspiring, firm, convincing, forceful, vote on war with Iraq in 1991

Senator Albert Gore (D-TN), Jan. 12, 1991--I have been an intent student of these events . . . attended virtually every minute of the long hearings . . . But my decision today is the product of an intense, may I say, excruciating, effort to find my way to a place as close to a sense of the ultimate truth in this matter as I am capable of getting. I have struggled to confront this issue in its bare essence: to separate what I think is fact, or at least highly probable, from what I think is false, or at least highly improbable; to strike a balance and to take my stand. We have all made that journey, regardless of where it has led us . . . I stood in a different place halfway through last year . . . I felt, up until recently, especially after the hearings, in which I played an active role, questioning, probing, searching for the truth . . . As I searched my heart on this issue over the last few days with special intensity . . . I found myself feeling . . . I found myself pulled . . . I cannot reconcile myself to a point of view and a vote . . .my effort to explain why I feel that way. I think there is wishful thinking . . . But I believe it is wishful thinking . . . in my heart and the hearts of us all . . .None of us should have any doubt . . . but I fear that it may again be only wishful thinking . . . that I will never be guilty of any kind of action . . . I wish that were so. It may be so . . . I doubt that . . .

Let's see if Bush II has as much fun with Iraq II as Bush I had with Iraq I.

Why he deals with these idiots is bewildering. Where have you gone, Ronald Reagan?