| Date: | Saturday May 24, @03:55AM |
|---|---|
| Author: | ewing2001 |
| Topic: | News |
| from the dept. | |
Robert Byrd Opposed the Iraq War, and He's Not About to Yield
By Peter Carlson-Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 24, 2003; Page C01
"What is happening?" Robert C. Byrd asks. "What is happening to us?"
His voice is soft but etched with an unmistakable anger. At age 85, the West Virginia Democrat, the Senate's most senior member, has become its most outspoken dissident.
Our nation is in peril, he says, threatened not by foreigners but by the Bush administration, which he describes as warlike, arrogant and elitist -- "an administration of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy."
Byrd, who supported the Vietnam War right to the bitter end, has emerged as Congress's most vociferous critic of the war in Iraq.
"We just fought a war that didn't need to be fought," he says, sitting on a white armchair in his Senate office. "There was no real justification for sending those 300,000 men and women to Iraq to fight. Contrary to what Mr. Bush tried to convince this nation of, Saddam Hussein did not constitute an imminent danger to this nation. .
. . We've lost 145 men and women killed -- not a great number but too great a number. We didn't need to lose any of them. And we killed thousands of men and women and children in Iraq! Thousands of 'em! That was needless slaughter."
He pauses, but only long enough to draw sufficient breath to launch another verbal fusillade. "We have an administration that has projected this new doctrine of preemptive strike -- totally foreign, totally alien to our way of life -- and we're contemplating attacking other nations without provocation."
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printed from Robert Byrd: Our nation is threatened by the Bush administration on 2004-05-26 00:10:46