July 18, 2008 11:55 PM UTC

Carroll: Attacks On Udall Over Iraq "Bogus"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Even the staunchly conservative editor-in-chief of the Rocky Mountain News has heard enough:

Republican Bob Schaffer has spent the week suggesting that his opponent in the U.S. Senate race, Democrat Mark Udall, is a hypocrite because he sponsored a resolution in 2002 denouncing Saddam Hussein in the strongest terms, stipulating that he possessed a variety of terrible weapons and describing Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The resolution was even billed as a “preliminary authorization for the use of force against Iraq.”

If you fail to look closely, you could easily conclude that the supposedly anti-war Udall was actually on the same page as the congressional majority that ultimately did authorize war – and that Udall’s vote against their resolution amounted to splitting hairs.

That’s rubbish. Schaffer should cut it out.

Udall has never been part of the “see-no-evil” faction of the Democratic left that downplayed Saddam’s savagery or denied Iraq’s role as a destabilizing force in the Middle East and beyond. He never doubted the tyrant’s intentions regarding weapons of mass destruction, or mocked the U.S. goal of regime change.

But Udall did sincerely oppose the resolution that gave the president the green light to topple Saddam. That’s a fact, and it’s a big deal. Udall did so because he thought the measure gave the president an open-ended right to act whenever and however he liked, thus degrading the constitutional role of Congress, and because he thought it important for the U.S. to secure the support of the United Nations before acting. Otherwise, Udall worried, the U.S. would have a difficult time turning Iraq into a functioning republic.

Udall repeated these themes on the House floor, in public meetings and in correspondence. His own resolution was meant to further those goals, not to catapult us into Operation Iraqi Freedom…

A commenter posted a Youtube of Udall’s 2002 floor speech on the resolution, we’ve reposted it after the jump. And we agree with Vince Carroll: this was a stupid and duplicitous hit, the true facts of which make Schaffer look a cheap hack several different ways.