Last night, I heard a Democratic Party pundit say the United States ought to withdraw from Iraq because it had accomplished the three things it set out to do there: give the people of Iraq a chance at democracy, remove Saddam Hussein from power, and determine if Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Yet the resolution to authorize the use of force in Iraq that Senators Biden, Clinton, Hagel, Kerry, Reid, and Rockefeller all voted for, along with Congressman John Murtha, in October 2002 also addressed a concern brought to the fore the moment American Airlines Flight 11 was slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center: