Will the Democrats Cave Again?

There's some scary, frightening stuff lurking in the night, tonight. Apparently Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl think that our military isn't yet stretched enough, because they seem bound and determined to set up a confrontation with Iran. They've offered a fairly innocuous-looking amendment that smoothes the way toward military confrontation with that country. That's right, Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University on Monday and was met with ridicule. Any respectability he may have courted was lost as he made himself the butt of jokes, but ridicule is apparently not enough for Lieberman and Kyl when potential combat is available.

Josh Marshall has a video take on the matter, describing the implications of the amendment, and ThinkProgress chronicles developments through Tuesday. At one point it appeared that a vote on the amendment might actually come on Tuesday, but after Jim Webb identified the legislation as a de facto call to war, the amendment was pulled back to be retooled, but according to Think Progress, the new language does little to assuage worries. Reid seems to have some idea of the trouble he's courting if the Democratic Senate jumps on this amendment, but he seems to be personally up in the air over whether to support the amendment. After the travesty of the Iraq war vote, the idea that he and the other Democrats would consider such a piece of legislation is almost enough to make one give up hope.