Would you have voted for the Iraq War?

[angus]

Definitely not.  Only twice in my life have I written letters to both my US senators asking them to oppose legislation.  Once was in 2002 when I wrote my senators, Boxer (D-CA) and Feinstein (D-CA), asking them to vote against this bill and trying to lay out a case against the money and blood that would be wasted there.  (I grossly underestimated the amount of both, but my idea was right.)  Only one of them wrote me back to say she was against it. 

The other time I wrote my two US senators was in 1991 when I wrote Bentsen (D-TX) and Tower (R-TX) asking them to oppose a similar invasion, into Kuwait.  As in the above case, only one of the two wrote me back to say he was against it.  Bentsen actually wrote me a thoughtful, detailed response pointing out the huge amount of money that would be spent and lives lost.  (He and I were wrong, as it were.  The whole Operation Desert Storm thing lasted only a few weeks and wasn't very expensive after all--just over 60 billion, which you can probably find between your sofa cushions after any superbowl party--but it was still a really bad idea.) 

At least the first Gulf War was somewhat controversial.  The Senate vote was pretty close, and it happened only after a reasonable amount of debate.  The second one was horrificallly underdebated, and hardly controversial.  As I recall more than 3/4 of the chamber supported it. Even those who were "against the Iraq War before they were for it" went along with it.

I voted No(R).  I'm unaffiliated now, but at the time I was a registered Republican and I was decidedly against the invasion, so that's the option that fits best.