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“If you ask whether we learned anything, I would say not enough,” says former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who opposed the war in Iraq, long after Tonkin and Vietnam.

In the last five decades, Tonkin has not kept Washington from backing wars, but it has shadowed relations between presidents and Congress. Debates about foreign conflicts, whether in Bosnia, Syria or Iraq, have also been referendums on trust. Is the war really necessary? Is the president telling everything he knows? What should be the parameters, if any, for military action?

Graham was chairman of the intelligence committee when the Senate debated, in the fall of 2002, whether to authorize military action in Iraq. Did Saddam Hussein, as alleged by President George W. Bush’s administration, possess weapons of mass destruction? Graham found the case “soft and unreliable” and voted no. But most of his colleagues disagreed. The Sept. 11 attacks were barely a year old, and the midterm election was just a month away, a difficult time to turn away the president or the Pentagon.

The Senate approved the Iraq resolution by 77-23, the House 296-133. A U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, opening a conflict that lasted for years. As Graham and others feared, the weapons were not found.

Former Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, who had been badly wounded in Vietnam, was among those who supported the 2002 legislation. “I can’t believe I volunteered for one war, which turned out to be a massive tragedy for the United States, and I went to the Senate and voted for another war, which turned out to be a massive tragedy,” he says.