User talk:LunaticLarry

Iraq War Resolution
I had read quite some time ago that Wellstone was the only Senator facing reelection in 2002 who voted against the Iraq War Resolution. When I was reading this week about Biden's stance supporting the AUMF, I then read the Wellstone article, as I had previously read what you have correctly pointed out was not true, that Wellstone was the only Senator who was up for reelection who was opposed. I presume that one reporter got that wrong, back in October 2002, and that error has been repeated in other sources that have been accepted as reliable. So I looked at the articles on Dick Durbin, Carl Levin and Jack Reed, who were in the same position. I think that Wellstone was certainly the only Senator whose reelection was endangered by his opposition to the AUMF. Reed won by 78.4% that November, and Durbin by 60.33 and Levin by 60.61%. I was further astonished to find out that Durbin knew the whole WMD story was bunk, but because he only knew that from testimony in a closed Intelligence Committee (and Levin may have attended it as well) situation and had taken an oath not to reveal it, kept his mouth shut. When I made my edit, I had no idea that you had just correctly reverted the misinformation that had been sourced to what was believed to be a reliable story. I appreciate your correction, but think that the article should reflect the reality, that Wellstone was the only Senator who was in danger of losing his election who voted against the AUMF. What do you think? I am further reminded of Rumsfeld's contention, that the war would be over in "six weeks, six months at the most." Also, what do you think about this situation, which I've not seen before, where editors have relied on sources accepted as reliable but misreporting an important event? Lastly, I wondered if other Senators knew the facts about the contention, that the existence of the supposed WMD's wasn't true, yet voted to permit the invasion? For instance, did Daschle have access to that information? Activist (talk) 22:56, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi there, -I did not know that Durbin got information revealing the fact that the WMD excuse was a lie. It's frankly scary how much critical information was withheld from the public in the Iraq fiasco. You'd expect this sort of decisionmaking in a totalitarian state and not a supposedly democratic one.

-It is, of course, correct that Wellstone was the only senator in a *competitive* reelection campaign who voted against the AUMF. I was thinking of taking note of that in my edits, instead of removing the sentence entirely. The reason I ultimately decided against it is that I felt it would violate the rule against original research (my whole info to support that contention would be the eventual vote totals for the other candidates, and I got those totals from the respective Wikipedia articles). In addition, I could not find much information about the reelection campaigns of Durbin and Levin that would confirm they weren't considered competitive (as we have seen, sometimes an election is considered competitive but ends up being decided by a landslide; see, for example, the 2014 U.S. Senate election in Michigan to succeed Sen. Levin). Editing the article to the effect of stating that Wellstone was locked in a close reelection race and the Iraq vote was risky seems reasonable enough, but saying that he was the *only* such senator would appear to violate Wikipedia rules.

-In my opinion, the most reliable information as to how lawmakers voted is best obtained from Congress' website, and I cite from there whenever I edit to that effect. As to Wikipedia rules, it seems quite obvious that the editors cannot check the reliability of every citation, so they accept the statements as true if they came from a generally trusted source. I think there's a certain responsibility to check primary sources before citing information from secondary ones, but Wikipedia can't check if you did that or not.

-I don't know what the secrecy rules are for Intelligence Committee hearings, but it would seem plausible that other senators (including those not on the Committee) knew the information revealed in its hearings. After all, the composition of the Committee is up to the whims of the majority and minority leaders, and the members serving on it do not need security clearances and the like. But revealing that information outside of the Senate is a big no-no. Mike Gravel (D-AK) did something like that during the Vietnam War, when he read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional record. While he could not be prosecuted for that under the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution, he did lose all committee assignments for a while. I'm sure many senators had strong misgivings about going to war in 2002, but did not voice them because of the massive public support for the war and the apparent confidentiality of the underlying information. I guess no senator wanted to be stripped of his committee assignments and be denounced as a traitor in the bellicose atmosphere of the time (you might remember that the Bush administration was sending operatives to *elementary schools* in order to educate children about the complete certainty that Iraq had WMDs and how dangerous that was for the US and other such nonesense, among other absurd hysteria). LunaticLarry (talk) 07:40, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

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Appeal to unblock my account
LunaticLarry (talk) 21:58, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

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