In 2002, President Bush and his Administration misled the American people by claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to U.S. national security. The White House’s public relations campaign was directed towards one goal: justifying an unnecessary war of choice in Iraq.

Congress debated the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force for war in Iraq, and many of us strongly opposed it.

On the floor of the House, I offered an amendment that would have prevented the war by requiring the U.S. to work through the United Nations to ensure that Iraq was not developing weapons of mass destruction. My amendment failed, and a decade-long war was unleashed.

Sadly, the tragic situation in today’s Iraq is the direct and predictable product of that authorization. America’s unjust invasion sparked the sectarian war we are seeing today.