I’d call this fairly significant. When asked again if they’d vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq, the 2002 Senate switched from significantly yes to fairly solidly no.

By ABC News’ count, if the Senators knew then what they know now, only 43 — at most — would still vote to approve the use of force and the measure would be defeated. And at least 57 senators would vote against going to war, a number that combines those who already voted against the war resolution with those who told ABC News they would vote against going to war, or said that the pre-war intelligence has been proven so wrong the measure would lose or it would never even come to a vote.

For any Senate vote to switch from 77-23 in favor to essentially 57-43 against is quite remarkable, and far more so for a decision as significant as the one to go to war.

A 20 vote swing is nothing to sneeze at, no sir.

Now, of course, I can hear a lot of the supporters, and possibly people in the “don’t tell me about stuff that doesn’t mean anything” crowd. They’re all asking why this is significant. Of course they’re less enthusiastic about it now, it didn’t go well. The war is less popular in general than it was in early 2003 or late 2002, so the Senate changing their minds is no surprise.

Ah, but you forget. A big part of this “what you know now” is things we SHOULD have known in 2002 when the rumblings were starting. The larger issue isn’t that they don’t like it now, it’s that if they knew about the lack of Al Qaeda connections, the lack of WMDs, or the inevitable civil war that would erupt, they wouldn’t have supported the war.

“No, I would not,” said former Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H. “I know now there are no weapons of mass destruction.”

“I believe that had we known Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, the Congress would not have authorized the invasion of Iraq,” [Arlen Specter, R-P.A.] has said, since “we operated on faulty intelligence.”

Okay, you say. That’s fine, so if they knew that they wouldn’t have voted for the war. But they acted on the available intelligence, so is it their fault that they acted based on that? You can’t expect someone to vote based on what they think they might learn tomorrow, can you?

Well, reader, you’ve got a point. And that’s why I don’t blame the Senators (for the most part, I can get mad at them for not seeing through the obvious falsehoods like the mobile bio-weapons labs). They voted based on the information they were given. Where did the information come from? Well, that would be Bush and his patented Cherry Picker.

A big defense of Bush is that Democrats voted for the war as well. Which is sorta like if I call the police and tell them my neighbor has a huge pot garden in his basement, when they break down the door and don’t find anything, I defend myself by saying the police thought it was there, too.

Anyway, I’m glad that at least some of them are willing to acknowledge their mistake. It’s just a shame that they DIDN’T know these things then.