David Corn on Bush's Rewriting of History on the IWR Vote

David Corn writes about how Bush is rewriting history when he claims that the IWR vote was a vote supporting his decision to invade Iraq. He refutes many of Bush’s recent statements on the war including “When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support.” Corn responded with:

Actually, Congress did not approve Bush’s decision to remove Saddam. In October 2002, the House and Senate approved a resolution that gave Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq if he deemed that appropriate. At the time, Bush and his aides were claiming it was their goal to force Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction and his WMD programs (which, we know now, did not exist). When the resolution passed—and in the weeks after—the White House insisted that Bush was not bent on “regime change” and that he was willing to work within the UN to force Saddam to accept UN inspectors (which Saddam did) in pursuit of the goal of disarming Iraq. Is Bush now saying that he had already resolved to invade Iraq at this point and all his talk about achieving disarmament through the UN process was bunk? Is he rewriting history–or telling us the real truth? In any event, when Bush did order the invasion of Iraq months later in March 2003, he did not ask Congress to vote on his decision to remove Saddam.