The Biden administration Tuesday encouraged lawmakers to finally repeal an authorization for military action in Iraq crafted when Saddam Hussein was still alive, rejecting Republican arguments that it would further signal to Iran that the U.S. is retreating from the Middle East.
Debate in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on ending Congress' 2002 resolution for military force against Iraq is part of a larger discussion by some lawmakers on axing or replacing decades-old congressional authorizations for military force.
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Tuesday's debate also is part of a growing tug of war between the administration and lawmakers who say Joe Biden is only the latest U.S. president to flout congressional authority with military strikes and deployments in Somalia, Syria, Iraq and other hot spots.
Appearing before the panel, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman spoke up for one apparent area of agreement between the White House and Democratic lawmakers in the debate: ending Congress' standing 2002 authorization for U.S. troops to strike in Iraq.
U.S. forces -- acting on later-disproved U.S. claims that Saddam was sitting on weapons of mass destruction -- invaded Iraq in 2003. They captured the Iraqi leader months later and turned him over to a new Iraqi government, which hanged him in 2006.
The committee is to vote today on repealing the 2002 resolution and a 1991 measure authorizing the U.S.-led Gulf War to beat back Saddam in an invasion of Kuwait. Biden voted for the resolution in 2002, later calling it a mistake, and against going to war in 1991 in his long career as a senator.
Iraq today is a partner of the United States, not an enemy, Sherman told lawmakers. She argued that repealing the 2002 resolution would demonstrate the changed relationship and be a setback to rival Iran, which wants neighboring Iraq firmly in its sphere of influence.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi had pushed the Biden administration when he visited Washington last month to remove some of the last vestiges of the U.S. invasion, which effectively ended in 2011.
Several committee Republicans argued that repealing the decades-old authorizations would send the wrong message to Iran.
That's especially so as the administration ends the U.S. military role in Afghanistan and -- at the request of the Iraqi government -- formally rebrands any remaining combat mission in Iraq to one focused on training, advising and intelligence-sharing.
"Why take the chance that ... this is misinterpreted in the Middle East?" Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, asked Sherman in regard to repealing the 2002 military authorization.
"This has extraordinary ability to be misconstrued as America's pulling away," Romney said. "The risk is much greater than the benefit."
The administration has cited other legal authority, including Biden's constitutional war powers as commander in chief, in airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, and Pentagon strikes on the al Shabab Islamic insurgent group in Somalia, without seeking congressional approval for each strike.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have efforts underway that would repeal and replace some standing authorizations of military force, including a 2001 authorization regarding Afghanistan, al-Qaida and the Taliban still cited in other U.S. counterterror strikes.
Other legislation introduced by Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, would shift substantially more power on foreign policy and national security to Congress from the executive branch.
