Kerry, who ultimately voted for the resolution authorizing Bush to use force, also said at the time that he preferred the Biden-Lugar proposal.
"I believe this approach would have provided greater clarity to the American people about the reason for going to war and the specific grant of authority," he said on the floor of Congress on Oct. 9, 2002, a day before he and other legislators granted Bush the authority to invade Iraq.
Aides to both Biden and Lugar said that despite its emphasis on multilateralism, the proposal would have ultimately allowed the United States to invade Iraq on its own, because Bush did make an attempt to get a Security Council resolution.
"Without a question, Biden-Lugar would have granted the president the authorization to use force, with some conditions," said Norm Kurz, Biden's communications director.
Andy Fisher, communications director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said one of the reasons the amendment failed was that more liberal Democrats would not go along with it.
"Biden wasn't sure he could deliver many Democrats for this resolution because it was an act of war," said Fisher, a Lugar aide. "This would have been all the president needed."
Dean viewed the amendment as a tactical maneuver that would have slowed the rush to war and forced the U.S. to seek international support.
Last week, he argued that the war would never have happened if the legislation had been adopted because Bush would have had to attest to the fact that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which have not been found.
"He would have had to certify why Saddam was a danger and he would have had to certify all those claims that he made that turned out not to be true," he said in Concord last week.
But at the time, Bush was strongly arguing that Iraq posed an immediate threat to the U.S.
"Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger," the president told the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 12, 2002. "The first time we may be completely certain he has nuclear weapons is when, God forbids, he uses one."
There is no evidence that Bush would not have given congressional leaders the same rationale for going to war that he was making publicly at the time.
Dean advisor Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institute, said that at the heart of Dean's support for Biden-Lugar was an effort to put more constraints on the administration.
