Bayh says his vote on Iraq war would be different today

INDIANAPOLIS -- Sen. Evan Bayh said Thursday that he would not have supported a resolution authorizing military action in Iraq if he knew then what he knows now.\n"I did what I thought was right. Some of the facts I relied on were inaccurate," Bayh said. "Of course I would do things differently knowing what I know today. Unfortunately, you know, that's not how life works. The important thing is what we do going forward."\nBayh was among 77 senators who voted for a resolution in October 2002 that gave President Bush the power to use military force to enforce United Nations orders that Iraq dispose of its weapons of mass destruction. The House also approved the war resolution.\nBayh, an Indiana Democrat who has been testing the waters for a possible presidential run in 2008, said he cast his vote then "based on the facts as we understood them at the time."\n"Now it turns out that some of the facts were inaccurate," he said. "There were no weapons of mass destruction; we didn't realize this undertaking would be carried out as in some ways as incompetently as it's been carried out. So knowing what we know today, of course we'd do things differently.\n"But I think it's important to say that in a way that does not obscure that we do support freedom, we do support democracy, we don't support dictators, and we want to assure the troops who are representing us in Iraq that they have our unwavering support even though we realize ... that things haven't gone quite as we expected them to go."\nBayh did not say there should be a set date for a withdrawal of troops, but some said he believed in timing benchmarks for progress and how that progress will be measured.