Sense of the Senate: Iran totally sucks

I realize it's not the same thing as the Iraq War Authorization of 2002, but it is a little bit shocking that the sense of the Senate bill calling for the U.S. government to be in a de facto state of war with Iran passed by the exact same margin. The former passed 77-23, the latter 76-22. Obviously the makeup of the Senate is a bit different now, and there are several more Democrats today than there were in October 2002, which explains why more Democrats voted for Lieberman-Kyl. But this still seems to me to be strong evidence that our elected officials in Washington have learned basically nothing about how to prevent the United States from getting into desperate quagmires like Iraq. In fact, by my eye, there are at least three Democratic senators--Reed, Levin, and Mikulski--who voted against the Iraq authorization but voted for the garbage amendment of two days ago. It's as if, after having been proven dramatically correct over the last five years, they came to the odd conclusion that the best political move of any of their careers was a somewhat poor guide to future Persian Gulf policy decisions.

Reed, it should be pointed out, is, appropriately, one of the Dems' go-to anti-war voices.