In former Vice President Al Gore?s new book, “The Assault on Reason,” he quotes Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, a bitter critic of the Iraq war, as observing from the Senate floor shortly before the invasion:

“This chamber is, for the most part, silent ? ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the [U.S.] Senate.”