Yesterday, Democratic Senators Byrd, Kennedy and Leahy took to the Senate floor to honor the sacrifice US troops have made in Iraq by launching a broad assault on the Bush administration. Invoking Vietnam repeatedly, Vermont's Leahy offered the most detailed attack that touched on all the talking points of the war's opponents. But Leahy added a twist reminiscent of Congress' actions during the Vietnam era -- the cut-off of funds for US forces.

Without answers -- real answers, honest answers -- to these questions, I will not support the open-ended deployment of our troops in a war that was based on falsehoods and justified with hubris.

In the past, Leahy has been a reliable weather vane pointing in the direction Senate liberals are headed. The bigger question for Senators like Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman is whether they allow Senators such as Byrd, Kennedy, Leahy and Durbin to define where the Democratic party stands on Iraq and other major foreign policy challenges facing the nation.