House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the number two Democrat in the House, says he stands by his vote in favor of the 2002 “use of force” authorization that led to the war in Iraq.

“Removal of Saddam Hussein was an appropriate policy,” Hoyer said at a breakfast meeting with reporters Thursday sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. “I still believe that.”

But he added that he would not have voted for it if he had known “how incompetently it would be executed.”