Clark has on many occasions made clear that he would not have voted for a blank-check resolution because there was no imminent threat, and any resolution should require the President to come back to the Congress for authorization to go to war if and when the threat became imminent. Furthermore, it is clear from the remarks of Senator Kennedy (below) that Senators who took the time to look at the evidence and ask the tough questions knew that there was no imminent threat.
KENNEDY: No. The best vote I cast in the United States Senate was...
KING: The best?
KENNEDY: The best vote, best vote I cast in the United States Senate (INAUDIBLE).
KING: In your life?
KENNEDY: Absolutely.
KING: Was not to go to Iraq?
KENNEDY: Yes, not to go to Iraq.
KING: Why did you vote against?
KENNEDY: Well, I'm on the Armed Services Committee and I was inclined to support the administration when we started the hearings in the Armed Services Committee. And, it was enormously interesting to me that those that had been -- that were in the armed forces that had served in combat were universally opposed to going.
I mean we had Wes Clark testify in opposition to going to war at that time. You had General Zinni. You had General (INAUDIBLE). You had General Nash. You had the series of different military officials, a number of whom had been involved in the Gulf I War, others involved in Kosovo and had distinguished records in Vietnam, battle-hardened combat military figures. And, virtually all of them said no, this is not going to work and they virtually identified...
KING: And that's what moved you?
KENNEDY: And that really was -- influenced me to the greatest degree. And the second point that influenced me was in the time that we were having the briefings and these were classified. They've been declassified now. Secretary Rumsfeld came up and said "There are weapons of mass destruction north, south, east and west of Baghdad." This was his testimony in the Armed Services Committee.
And at that time Senator Levin, who is an enormously gifted, talented member of the Armed Services Committee said, "Well, we're now providing this information to the inspectors aren't we?" This is just before the war. "Oh, yes, we're providing that." "But are they finding anything?" "No."
Because the answer was because they're moving things, because when we tell the team they're all infiltrated by Saddam's people and they're leaking that so that's the reason we're not finding anything.
They started giving all the places where we said there were places and they still couldn't find any. And at the end of now, history will show we never gave any information to the inspection team at all.
But I kept saying, "Well, if they're not finding any of the weapons of mass destruction, where is the imminent threat to the United States security?" It didn't make sense.
There were probably eight Senators on the Friday before the Thursday we voted on it. It got up to 23. I think if that had gone on another -- we had waited another ten days, I think you may have had a different story.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/20/lkl.01.htmlAt Clark's testimony before the House armed services committee, he made clear that the Congress should not cede war powers to the President with a "blank check" type of resolution:
"The resolution need not at this point authorize the use of force, but simply agree on the intent to authorize the use of force, if other measures fail...Force should be used as the last resort; after all diplomatic means have been exhausted, unless information indicates that further delay would present an immediate risk to the assembled forces and organizations. This action should not be categorized as “preemptive.”
http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/HearingsPreparedstatements/hasc-clark-092602.htm
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