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WASHINGTON -- Two decades after the Iraq invasion in March 2003, Congress is seriously considering repealing the 2002 and 1991 authorizations of force against Iraq, with a Senate vote expected this week. Bipartisan supporters say the repeal is years overdue, with Saddam Hussein's regime long gone and Iraq now a strategic partner of the United States.

For senators who cast votes two decades ago, it is a full-circle moment that prompts a mixture of sadness, regret and reflection. Many consider it the hardest vote they ever took.

The vote was "premised on the biggest lie ever told in American history," said Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, then a House member who voted in favor of the war authorization. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said that "all of us that voted for it probably are slow to admit" that the weapons of mass destruction did not exist. But he defends the vote based on what they knew then. "There was reason to be fearful" of Saddam and what he could have done if he did have the weapons, Grassley said.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, then a House member who was running for the Senate, says the war will have been worth it if Iraq succeeds in becoming a democracy.

"What can you say 20 years later?" Graham said this past week, reflecting on his own vote in favor. "Intelligence was faulty."

Another "yes" vote on the Senate floor that night was New York Sen. Charles Schumer, now Senate majority leader. With the vote coming a year after the Sept. 11 attacks devastated his hometown, he says he believed then that the president deserved the benefit of the doubt.

"Of course, with the luxury of hindsight, it's clear that the president bungled the war from start to finish and should not have ever been given that benefit," Schumer said in a statement. "Now, with the war firmly behind us, we're one step closer to putting the war powers back where they belong -- in the hands of Congress."

In 2002, the George W. Bush administration worked aggressively, in briefing after briefing, to drum up support for invading Iraq by promoting what turned out to be false intelligence claims about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

In the end, the vote was strongly bipartisan, with Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., and others backing Bush's request.

Joe Biden also voted in favor as a senator from Delaware, and now supports repealing it as president.

Other senior Democrats urged opposition. The late Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., urged his colleagues to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall, where "nearly every day you will find someone at that wall weeping for a loved one, a father, a son, a brother, a friend, whose name is on that wall."

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, now the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, recalled on the Senate floor earlier this month his vote against the resolution after the threat of weapons of mass destruction "was beaten into our heads day after day."

"I look back on it, as I am sure others do, as one of the most important votes that I ever cast," Durbin said.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who also voted against the resolution, said that at the time, "I remember thinking this is the most serious thing I can ever do."

For many lawmakers, the political pressure was intense. Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, then a House member and now the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says he was "excoriated" at home for his "no" vote, after the Sept. 11 attacks had killed so many from his state. He made the right decision, he says, but "it was fraught with political challenges."

For those who voted for the invasion, the reflection can be more difficult.

Hillary Clinton, a Democratic senator from New York at the time, was forced to defend her vote as she ran for president twice, and eventually called it a mistake and her "greatest regret."

Markey says that "I regret relying upon" Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, along with other administration officials.

"It was a mistake to rely upon the Bush administration for telling the truth," Markey said in a brief interview last week.

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