Welcome the home page of Authorization of Force. Apologies if you arrived here via a redirect, this is now the permanent URL for the site.

This site is a still ongoing project, intended to publish pertinent Congressional Records related to The US Congress' consent to The Authorization of the Use of American Military Force in Iraq in the Fall of 2002.

Currently, transcripts from October 8, 9 and 10 have been marked-up. The pages have been heavily inner-linked to enable URIs pointing to legislators' words. We welcome any and all links to any content in this project. A detailed Table of Contents is available.

Each individual page has a navigational map on its left side. Having a javascript enabled browser is not required to view this site, but navigation is easier if it is.

Currently, the site begins with the Congressional Record of October 8, 2002.

This website has been intentionally designed with minimal mark-up and styling. For the uninitiated, Congressional Records transcripts can be both pompous and ponderous. Those who have a familiarity with Congressional Records are probably comfortable reading them as flat ASCII files. There is no need to conflate the content.

Much has been claimed about individual legislators' remarks. Often, their words have been taken out of context. No commentary has been added to the transcripts, and the reader must make their own analysis.

Hopefully, you will find the site informative;
The Liberated Text editors.

The primary source documents used for content on this site were obtained from the Government Printing Office wais server archives of Congressional Records. They are the official transcripts of Congressional commentary and debate about the Authorization of the Use of Force in Iraq.

The site's file structure,
using this page's folder as root,
is broken down into individual dates of the records.
Folders are titled with numerical date strings with the format: yymmdd.
Individual files have a base name that is the same used for its
DOCID reference number on the GPO's servers,
but House transcripts are prepended with 'h_',
and if the records were considered too long for a functional webpage,
the base names were appended with sequenced numbering beginning with '_01'.