Reply #2: Kerry was one of the people arguing that Bush needed to go to Congress

[karynnj]

Here, I get his point that there is a time issue - and this should actually have been done earlier. Where I have a problem is that getting Congressional approval conditional on the UN resolution could have been attempted 3 weeks ago - when he was first asking for it.

The fact is that Iraq and Afghanistan had the authorizations - unlike all the examples Kerry gave - Kosovo, Serbia and Libya, under Reagan. The first two were UN and NATO approved, but Libya was not - I believe the justification was that Libya attacked US interests. If this war goes badly, not getting that authorization will mean that it is just on Obama's head. (Kerry as an advisor and someone very public on this will likely be blamed as well - and I bet the Republicans will forget they were for it.)