WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle said Friday that he made the "wrong call" when he voted to authorize force in Iraq five years ago.

Daschle, the South Dakotan who was defeated by Republican John Thune in 2004, said in an Iowa speech that he has thought and prayed about that vote.

"Like many others, I often get asked whether I made the right or wrong call," he said. "Let me be perfectly clear: it was the wrong call."

In his speech to the Iowa chapter of the National Security Network, Daschle said the United States needs to regain international trust.

"We must do better, and we are right to call on the presidential candidates to commit to do better -- and then to hold them to those commitments," he said. "Trust is especially important when it comes to the use of our military power. On this principle more than any other, (President Bush) has dramatically failed our country and our military."

Daschle considered a run for the presidency last year but decided against it. Since then, he has endorsed Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

His words were stronger than those in a speech about the war he delivered in November 2005.

In that speech, he also said he had thought and prayed about his vote to authorize force. Similarly, he said he often was asked whether he made the right or wrong call. But he stopped short of saying he thought he made the wrong call.

"The way these questions are often asked of me, it feels as if it's some kind of game of political gotcha," he said then. "It is indicative of a disconnected self-indulgence in Washington that believes what matters most is what Washington does and how it feels about what it has done."

Daschle said in 2005 that "the truth is what matters most right now is not whether we made the right call before; it is whether we will make the right calls now."