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I disagree.

1) Kerry can't weasel out of his vote. It hangs around his neck like a South African necklacing.

2) Saddam and AQ connection. Its there. Salman Pak. Doug Feith memo. Lots of other things. The WMDs are in Syria right now. There has been LOTS of newsmedia coverage (not mainstream) on this, particularly on FR.

Taking out Saddam was definitely the right thing to do and was directly in line with defending America.

While your point about a formal Declaration of War is a good one, so is having the frigging UN (and I HATE the UN) back up its resolutions passed as a condition of ending Gulf War I.

To me, the Congressional authorization to use force is equivalent in this case with a DoW.

This is why I do not perceive Peroutka as a serious candidate. I say this as someone that voted for Howard Phillips the last two presidential elections. If it were not for this idiotic position, I would be voting CP this time around.

I am glad to hear we are not that far apart, beliefs-wise other than how Iraq was handled. Kerry is going to try to weasle out of his vote, based on the idea that what he voted for was less than a full declaration of war. Here is an exceprt of his rantings from another thread.........

As for the use of force, Kerry talks about exhausting all the alternatives first. That is what he says Bush failed to do in the weeks leading up to Iraq, at great cost. This is a source of particular anger because, Kerry says, he voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq to give Bush diplomatic leverage against Saddam Hussein, not a blank check.

He says his decision was based on a clear promise from Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell that they would use force as a last resort and only with a broad coalition supporting it and that if they went to war, there would be a plan for what to do with Iraq once U.S. troops got to Baghdad. "This President broke every single promise that he made," Kerry charges, "and I'm going to hold him accountable for that."

The French looking candidate could not pull this stuff if he had voted for a straight-up declaration of war.

Just because we have had a lot of undeclared wars in the past does not mean that it was right. Governments often try to slip the bonds of Constitutional restraints. Citizens must constantly remind their office-holders that those restraints apply, or they will be trampled.