Joe Biden is a foreign policy wonk whose credentials sets him apart from the rest of the field

[Sloumeau]

25. Regarding the AUMF against Iraq:

Per Wikipedia...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Iraq_Resolution_of_2002#Passage_of_the_full_resolution

...the number of people who voted for the AUMF was as follows:

215 Republican Representatives, 81 Democratic Representatives, 48 Republican Senators, and 29 Democratic Senators.

Every single one of them was lied to by the GWB Administration.

Vox.com wrote an article about How GWBs former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was still lying about the Iraq War in March 2019.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/20/18274228/ari-fleischer-iraq-lies-george-w-bush-wmds

The article pointed out a Mother Jones story that pointed out some of the Bush Administration lies:

Mother Jones’s David Corn has been excellent about chronicling specific examples over the years. Here are just a few:

In October 2002, Bush said that Saddam Hussein had a “massive stockpile” of biological weapons. But as CIA Director George Tenet noted in early 2004, the CIA had informed policymakers it had “no specific information on the types or quantities of weapons agent or stockpiles at Baghdad’s disposal.” The “massive stockpile” was just literally made up.

In December 2002, Bush declared, “We do not know whether or not [Iraq] has a nuclear weapon.” That was not what the National Intelligence Estimate said. As Tenet would later testify, “We said that Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009.” Bush did know whether or not Iraq had a nuclear weapon — and lied and said he didn’t know to hype the threat.

On CNN in September 2002, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed that aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs.” This was precisely the opposite of what nuclear experts at the Energy Department were saying; they argued that not only was it very possible the tubes were for nonnuclear purposes but that it was very likely they were too.

Even more dire assessments about the tubes from other agencies were exaggerated by administration officials — and in any case, the claim that they’re “only really suited” for nuclear weapons is just false.

On numerous occasions, Vice President Dick Cheney cited a report that 9/11 conspirator Mohamed Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer. He said this after the CIA and FBI concluded that this meeting never took place.

More generally on the question of Iraq and al-Qaeda, on September 18, 2001, Rice received a memo summarizing intelligence on the relationship, which concluded there was little evidence of links. Nonetheless, Bush continued to claim that Hussein was “a threat because he’s dealing ith al-Qaeda” more than a year later.

In August 2002, Cheney declared, “Simply stated, there’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” But as Corn notes, at that time there was “no confirmed intelligence at this point establishing that Saddam had revived a major WMD operation.” Gen. Anthony Zinni, who had heard the same intelligence and attended Cheney’s speech, would later say in a documentary, “It was a total shock. I couldn’t believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program.”

The Bush administration on numerous occasions exaggerated or outright fabricated conclusions from intelligence in its public statements. Bush really did lie, and people really did die as a result of the war those lies were meant to build a case for. Those are the facts.