Robert Byrd: Iraq War Speech - Part 1 (2003)

[babyboy19841984]

RIP Sen Byrd! you will be miss!

[briancatinthehat]

Our Cicero is gone. Now the republic will fail as it did before...

[WinkyMaeve]

Rest In Peace sir, you were a proud strong man.

[docnona64]

A great American. Superior in his intellect, patriotism, fidelity to what is right.

[Patrickemin]

One courageous man in the USA, that's not a lot...

[drgonzo767]

Although a man of faults, as Byrd was the first to admit, this shows him as a great statesman, as the Senate was meant to be populated with. Tell me any of those left in that body are even capable of such thought and eloquence, and I will tell you that you are full of shit. Democrat or Republican, this nation would be better served with 100 Byrds than what we now have.

[emncaity]

Hardly anybody in the sound-byte era will listen to this whole thing (all four parts)--but those who do will hear what amounts to biblical-style prophecy. How is it possible to be any more right than this?

[billpatton1]

Old, served much too long, gave WV a lot of pork, former KKK member, not afraid to use the N word, pretty, pretty, pretty, just an old man who has left this world and will now have to, like all of us, give an accounting. RIP

[emncaity]

@billpatton1

He was about 85 when he had the brass balls to give this speech when nearly every Democrat went along with Bush and Cheney. Was he too old then?

I know there were times when he meandered, and maybe you can make an argument that retirement and replacement by a younger person of a similar bent might've been a good thing. But even in his last 10 years he made more sense than a lot of them.

And what does "not afraid to use the N word" mean?...

[emncaity]

@billpatton1

...It's not like he threw it around every day. He was a Klan member out of unbridled ambition, then--as a white senator from a Southern state--renounced them and their views. Yes, I know he famously made the "white n----r" comment--a term used widely in the South by people who are invariably making an _antiracist_ argument that behavior doesn't fall along racial lines.

As for "pork," that's what senators and representatives do. Pork is in the eye of the beholder...

[drgonzo767]

@emncaity Byrd grew up, that is the simple truth. A real man is not afraid to confront his beliefs and change them if he finds fault with himself. And yes, the white nigger remark was an unfortunate way to make a valid point, and is common with older people in the South. On the pork, I think a lot of people have NO IDEA how isolated and in need of infrastructure WV still is. WV has given much to this nation in raw resources, and deserved every cent Byrd steered there for schools, roads, etc.

[emncaity]

@billpatton1

...Ask some of those out-of-work coal miners or minimum-wage retail clerks how good it was to get jobs working on public projects that left both them and the state better off.

His accounting will be just fine. My dad gets more credit for being nonracist than I do; he grew up in rural Texas in and after the Depression, while I grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood in L.A. (Lynwood) just east of Watts and just north of Compton. Easy for me to be nonracist; not so easy for him.

[bapyou]

This man was a bundle of contradictions. But, on this day, speaking of the impending war in Iraq, he was brave, honest, and prescient. Unlike most of Congress who, at the time, acted like groveling weasels. RIP Senator. You were admirable. Which is far more than can be said of 99.9% of you politicians out there.

[emncaity]

@bapyou

I don't know about a "bundle of contradictions." I think I know what you're saying, but it's not like he held contrary positions at the same time, for the most part; he was aligned with demented racists at one point in his career (by all accounts, even his own, just because of his own political ambition) and then renounced the whole business, which as a white senator from a Southern state was a helluva thing to do. But boy, do I agree with you on the rest.

[nihonima]

Senator Byrd was spot on about the folly of going to war with Iraq, too bad more people didn't listen. RIP Senator.