Like many avowed liberals, I have a hard time getting past the personal history of Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Byrd spent a lot of his twenties as a member of the Ku Klux Klan -- something for which he has repeatedly expressed remorse and shame -- filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964, voted against the nomination of Thurgood Marshall to the United States Supreme Court in 1967 and was part of the "Gang of 14" who in 2005 compromised with Republicans on the appointment of right-wing judges.
But, at age 89, Byrd is the longest-serving Senator in U.S. history, is widely considered the Senate's foremost historian and expert in parliamentary matters and, when it comes to the Iraq war, was wise enough to be against it from the very beginning.[..]
Take a look at what a man with the perspective of a half-century in the Senate has to say about the worst president in our country's history.[..]
This President -- our President -- has a single-minded obsession with Iraq, and he appears to see no value in anything except continuing his chaotic "mission impossible." While tilting at windmills may have been a harmless procedure for Don Quixote, Mr. Bush's war is turning the sands of Iraq blood red.
Read the speech in its entirety here.
