I just got off a conference call with Senator Feingold. What he said was, essentially, the following:

1) There was a clear message in November, not that Americans didn't want a "surge", but that they wanted the war ended.

2) The Warner Resolution doesn't do this. It only stops the surge. It puts in no timeline. It has language which tries to stop the Senate from using the power of the purse to end the war. It actually mandates a surge in al-Anbar province (i.e. an escalation of the war.)

In fact, Feingold's take on the Warner resolution is that it is the moral equivalent of the original war resolution - Senators can try and say it was anti-war, but it's really a status quo bill that allows the war to continue, with nothing in it that attempts to bring the war to an end.

I am inclined to agree with Feingold that Democrats are making a mistake here. Americans voted to end the war. Democrats should be attempting to do that - not just to stop some surge. If they do not do so then they will be betraying their mandate and people will be quite justified in feeling that, at the end of the day, on the most important issue facing America, there's no real difference between the parties. They will also be justified in feeling that Democrats simply don't have the guts to face down George Bush, a President whose ratings are hovering slightly under 30%.

Feingold also argued that the best way to put pressure on Republicans is to have a clear bill that will end the war. At that point, with a clear up and down vote on a bill that matters, their own constituents will start applying the pressure. On a pre-compromised mess of pablum like Warner, the general public simply won't get worked up enough to apply significant pressure, and so the stalling can continue forever.

Feingold was right on the war. He was right on the Patriot Act (and the only Senator to have the guts to vote against that bill). I think he's right now, and that Senators who think he's wrong should think how much prouder they could be of themselves if on those key bills they had voted with Feingold.

I hope they'll do so now. The war needs to end. Americans are dying, literally, for nothing, for a war which can't, and won't, be won.

How Senators can look themselves in the mirror knowing that by not acting they are causing American soldiers to die, to die for a mistake, to die for nothing, is beyond me.

Feingold was right on the Patriot Act. He was right on the War. And he's right now. I hope that the other Democratic Senators, and eventually the Republicans, come to see that.

The war was a mistake.

A real man doesn't just admit he made a mistake; a real man fixes it.

Time for some Senators, including the women, to show what they are, or aren't, made of.

How many more soldiers have to die for their mistakes?