W. Va. Sen. on Iraq: 'My Vote Was Wrong'

Sat Mar 27, 10:29 AM ET
 
" If I had known then what I know now, I would have voted against it," Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said Friday. "I have admitted that my vote was wrong." The Democratic-led Senate approved the war resolution 77-23 on Oct. 11, 2002, one day after the U.S. House approved a similar resolution. "The decision got made before there was a whole bunch of intelligence," said Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I think the intelligence was shaped. And I think the interpretation of the intelligence was shaped. "We had this feeling we could be welcomed as liberators. Americans don't know history, geography, ethnicity. The administration had no idea of what they were getting into in Iraq. We are not internationalists. We border on being isolationists. We don't know anything about the Middle East." Rockefeller also said he is disturbed at the failure to involve the United Nations (news - web sites) in creating a new government and finding peace in Iraq. Many of the senator's feelings were strengthened last week during a weeklong trip with four other Democratic senators to Iraq and four other Middle Eastern nations. In Iraq, the senators visited a team of researchers investigating the presence of weapons of mass destruction. "They have three million pieces of paper," Rockefeller said. "But it is a sham. There is nothing to point to any weapons of any kind." Rockefeller said the influence of terrorist groups, such as al-Qaida, is growing in Iraq. He estimated that only about 5 percent of insurgents in Iraq are recent arrivals, with the rest "homegrown."

Information from: The Charleston Gazette, http://www.wvgazette.com