he Bush Administration clearly had an interest in seeking a Congressional authorization for military action against Iraq, for several reasons. In terms of recent historical precedent, the 1991 Gulf War resolution provided a model of an action that was nearly equivalent to a declaration of war, and served essentially the same policy and political functions.
A Congressional authorization is useful primarily as a legitimizing instrument. It establishes a military action as a national purpose rather than simply an Administration initiative, both in the domestic and international arenas. Each of these types of legitimacy were relevant concerns for Administration policymakers. Each may be dealt with independently, though in practice they dovetailed together.
A. Domestic Legitimacy. During the summer of 2002, as planning for war with Iraq was taking form, the Bush Administration was in a strong political position. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had produced a great swell of public approval for President Bush, reinforced by the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. While support had slipped from its post-9/11 high, it was still very strong.
Nevertheless, during the summer of 2002, support for a further action against Iraq was quite uneven. On the one hand, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War had firmly established the place of Saddam Hussein in American public demonology. He had in the past used poison gas, both against Iranians and Iraqi Kurds, and had made efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. Since the late 1990s the UN inspection program intended to prevent Iraqi possession of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons (collectively "weapons of mass destruction," or WMD) had broken down, so no one could be certain that Iraqi programs had not been reconstituted. Moreover, the American public was ready to suspect some degree of complicity by the Iraqi regime in the 9/11 attack, even...