The Edwards war record.

• Position: Letter to the editor

Contrary to Elizabeth Edwards's claim, the Iraq War resolution supported by her husband, then-Senator John Edwards, in no way involved "forcing Bush to go to the U.N. first." (See Ruth Conniff's interview with Elizabeth Edwards, August issue.) Indeed, in supporting this unconstitutional measure granting President Bush unconditional and unprecedented war powers, Senator Edwards explicitly claimed that "our national security requires" that "we must not tie our own hands by requiring Security Council action."

Rather than seeming "troubled" by the prospects of voting to authorize the invasion, as his wife claims, he was actually one of the war resolution's most enthusiastic and outspoken supporters. The month prior to the vote, in the face of growing public skepticism of the Bush Administration's calls for an invasion of that oil-rich country, Edwards rushed to the Administration's defense in an op-ed article published in The Washington Post . In his commentary, Edwards claimed that Iraq, which had been...