The US Senate voted today, Wednesday, in favor of a legislative text repealing a law that gave permission to wage wars in Iraq, 20 years after US forces invaded this country to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

The text, which won bipartisan support, repeals the "Authorization to Use Military Force" issued in 2002, a law that enabled then-President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. The text also cancels the 1991 version of this law, which enabled then-president George H.W. Bush to launch the first Iraq war in response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.

The leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, said, "The United States, Iraq and the entire world have changed since 2002, and it is time for legal texts to keep pace with those changes."

And he stressed, "These two authorizations to use military force have outlived their intended period. Revocation of these authorizations will not harm our soldiers abroad and will not impede our ability to keep Americans safe."

And 66 members of the House voted in favor of repealing the law against 30, and 18 Republican members supported the initiative, which was led by Democrats.

US President Joe Biden pledged to sign the legislation if it was referred to him, but passing the text in the House of Representatives, where the majority is Republican, seems more complicated.

In response to a question posed to him recently by the American news network "NBC News", Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not want to commit to a vote to revoke the two permissions, and said, "I will have to look first at what the bill they are putting forward leads to."

The revocation of the authorization issued in 2002 is more controversial than the 1991 version, given that the most recent authorization was used to justify several military operations in Iraq after the end of the war, such as in response to militias allied to Iran.

The reliance on this permission was indicated in an operation carried out by the United States in Baghdad in January 2020 to assassinate the commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Soleimani, on the orders of the President at the time, Donald Trump.

The legislation does not revoke the authorization given in 2001 to invade Afghanistan, which granted successive presidents wide-ranging powers to use military force against al-Qaeda and affiliated groups in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and other parts of Africa.

Until the last American combat forces left Iraq in 2011, about 4,500 American soldiers were killed in Mesopotamia, noting that the war resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians, according to the "Body Count in Iraq" group.
More than 32,000 Americans were injured, and tens of thousands continue to suffer today, from toxic burns, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other chronic conditions.