A Warning to the Senate

Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia went onto the Senate floor on Thursday and in no uncertain terms attacked the passage a couple of weeks back of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment that put the government of Iran on notice that they just better watch their step. Although some earlier war-mongering language was taken out of the final amendment, there was plenty of saber-rattling left for the Prez to be satisfied. The Senate is leaping aboard the White House (or vice president's?) agenda to join in banging the war drums for no obvious reason that I can see.

Calling the vote an "international verbal spitball," Byrd made the obvious comparison with a previous vote:

Every day it seems the confrontational rhetoric between the United States and Iran escalates. We hear shadowy claims about Iran’s destabilizing actions in Iraq, with little direct evidence offered to back it up. The President telegraphs his desire to designate a large segment of the Iranian army as a terrorist organization—and instead of counseling prudence, the United States Senate rushes ahead to do it for him. I hope that we can stop this war of words before it becomes a war of bombs.

We have seen the results when the U.S. Senate gives this Administration the benefit of the doubt: a war that has now directly cost the American people six hundred billion dollars, more than 3,800 American deaths, and more than 27,000 American casualties. A war that has stretched our military to the breaking point. A war that the commander of our forces in Iraq just three weeks ago could not say had made America safer.

I daresay many-—perhaps most-—in this chamber wish we had never gone into Iraq. Are we willing to sleep-walk into yet another disastrous military confrontation with a Middle East tyrant?

ThinkProgress has the video and helpfully points out that Byrd made a similar speech four and a half years ago, for all the good it did then.