"An administration of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy."

"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.

"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."

"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."

"And what is this binge we're on in defense spending?" he asks. "I'm a strong defense man. I supported Johnson and Nixon on Vietnam. I've supported strong defense ever since I got to Congress. But here they are, asking for $15 billion over last year. And last year was 15 percent over the previous year. And the previous year was 10 percent over the previous year. What do we want all this for? We're already spending more than the other 18 NATO nations combined, plus the eight rogue nations!"

"What are we gonna do with all this?" he asks. "What new worlds do they want to conquer now? We went through Iraq like a dose of salts. We were told by this president that Saddam Hussein constituted an imminent threat to our security. Bunk! That man couldn't even get a plane off the ground!"

He rose in the Senate to attack the Bush administration as "reckless and arrogant" and denounce its "senselessly bellicose language." He also chided his beloved Senate for its silence: "We stand passively mute . . . paralyzed by our own uncertainty."

"War must always be a last resort, not a first choice," he concluded. "I truly must question the judgment of any president who can say that a massive unprovoked attack on a nation which is over 50 percent children is 'in the highest moral traditions of our country.' This war is not necessary."

"To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the president to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech," Byrd said. "I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors . . . but I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech."

"The Bush team's extensive hype of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as a justification for a preemptive invasion has become more than embarrassing," he said. "It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world?"

Yes