The Facts About Leonard Boswell’s Stand on the Iraq War

The Facts About Leonard Boswell’s Stand on the Iraq War

 Congressman Boswell now supports ending the Iraq War, but it took him five years to start changing his mind.  

·         Boswell voted for the Iraq War, even though House Democrats voted against it 126-81 (H.J.Res. 114, 10/10/02).

·         Boswell continued to vote consistently to support the war – from 2002 through 2006.

·         Boswell’s votes in 2007 were mixed, voting both for and against troop withdrawals.

o   First, in March he voted for H.R. 1591 (03/23/07). When the bill came back from the Senate amended, he voted for the bill a second time (04/25/07). After President Bush vetoed the bill, he voted to override the veto of the same bill (05/02/07).

o   When they didn’t succeed in overriding the veto, House Democrats voted 169-59 for H.R. 2237, which contained a timetable for partial withdrawal. This time, Boswell voted against it (05/10/07). He then voted for funding that did not include a timetable (H.R. 2206, 05/10/07). 

o   In July, he voted for H.R. 2956, which called for troop withdrawal (07/12/07).

o   In November, he voted for H.R. 4156, which contained withdrawal language (11/14/07).

·         Boswell has said that he voted in favor of the war because President Bush said we had evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). The CIA released a report on 10/06/04 stating that Iraq had no WMDs at the time of our invasion in March 2003 and had not attempted to produce them. Presumably, as a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Boswell knew this even sooner. But he continued to vote for the war for another two years!  

On the related issue of torture, too, Congressman Boswell’s voting record is inconsistent with his public position.  

·         Boswell has expressed publicly his disapproval of torture and said that he did not know it had been taking place (at his appearance before STARPAC on 02/04/08). 

·         But Boswell voted for the Military Commissions Act (S.3930, 09/27/06), which gave Bush the ultimate authority to determine which interrogation techniques qualify as ‘torture.’ 82% of House Democrats voted against this bill, which violates long-held American principles of justice. It permits the admission of statements into evidence that were obtained by torture, as well as giving retroactive immunity to any officials who authorized acts of torture.  It suspended habeas corpus, allowing the government to detain hundreds of prisoners for years without ever filing charges against them.

·         Yet in April 2004, over two years before that vote, news of the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. Published photos confirmed that American military and intelligence personnel had tortured, abused, and sexually mistreated prisoners. The same year saw the disclosure of the infamous memo approving torture by then White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez dated 10/01/02.

·         Boswell has still not cosponsored H.R. 952, which would end the practice of ‘extraordinary rendition,’ whereby the Bush Administration transfers prisoners to other countries to be tortured. It was introduced in the House on 02/17/05 and has 77 cosponsors.

Ed Fallon has opposed the Iraq War since before it began, has endorses A Responsible Plan to End the War, and opposes the use of torture and extraordinary rendition.