Chuck Hagel's interview with GQ:

[Ilsa]

This may be old news to many here, but we don't take GQ and I didn't see it here on DU. Since Hagel was asked about it yesterday, I thought I'd post it here. BTW, I did a search on DU and didn't find it.


When asked about voting for the resolution to go to war in Iraq, Hagel reports that one everyone mentions isn't what they were originally presented with. Hagel discusses the struggle with the WH over their authority to go to war, and the WH saying that they didn’t need that authority from Congress.

http://men.style.com/gq/features/full?id=content_5326&pageNum=3

SNIP

Which they seem to say about a lot of things.
That’s right. Mr. Gonzales was the president’s counsel at that time, and he wrote a memo to the president saying, “You have all the powers that you need.” So I called Andy Card, who was then the chief of staff, and said, “Andy, I don’t think you have a shred of ground to stand on, but more to the point, why would a president seriously consider taking a nation to war without Congress being with him?” So a few of us—Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I—were invited into discussions with the White House.

It’s incredible that you had to ask for that.
It is incredible. That’s what I said to Andy Card. Said it to Powell, said it to Rice. Might have even said it to the president. And finally, begrudgingly, they sent over a resolution for Congress to approve. Well, it was astounding. It said they could go anywhere in the region.

It wasn’t specific to Iraq?
Oh no. It said the whole region! They could go into Greece or anywhere. I mean, is Central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything they wanted. It was literally anything. No boundaries. No restrictions.

They expected Congress to let them start a war anywhere they wanted in the Middle East?
Yes. Yes. Wide open. We had to rewrite it. Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I stripped the language that the White House had set up, and put our language in it.


SNIP
Edited because I forgot the first snip.