Sen. Chaffee (R-RI) On Iraq

Today’s Morning Edition featured a profile of Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI) which featured this tidbit (at 2:15 into the story):

BRYAN NAYLOR, NPR: In 2002, Chaffee was the only Republican senator to vote against authorizing the war with Iraq. He tells Chamber [of Commerce] members he never bought the Bush administration’s argument that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, even after Chaffee visited CIA headquarters.

CHAFFEE: And they showed me satellite pictures and I just — nothing convincing at all. They talked about aluminum tubes they were going to make uranium or something in. Uh, Mancini’s hardware [garbled]

[Chuckles from crowd]

CHAFFEE: But I, uh, I was unconvinced.

So, Sen. Chaffee could see through the rhetoric of the mushroom cloud. Why couldn’t Democratic senators like Clinton, Kerry, and Biden? Or did they buy into the strategic concept of a war in Iraq? Or were they just worried about looking soft?