With the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff, in the Plamegate scandal, perhaps our nation will finally get to the bottom of how the Bush Administration lied about the reasons for invading Iraq in 2003.

I welcome this inquiry.  This war is a terrible mistake.

But Democrats need to bear part of the responsibility of this debacle. 

Major Democrat U.S. Senators John Kerry, Joe Liebermann, Hillary Clinton, and yes, our own Tom Daschle did not say and do enough to oppose the war.  In fact, most Democratic lawmakers supported the war.  They now claim they were "duped," but that argument is hard to buy.  I know that privately, Daschle had great misgivings about the war.  But why did he not speak out until it was too late? 

Our own Democrat U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth campaigned that she supported the Bush Administration's prosecution of the war.  There was a lack of Democrat guts on this issue.

Back in during the Vietnam War, our U.S. Senators, Jim Abourezk and George McGovern, courageously opposed that misadventure.  So did other Republican and Democrat Senators and Congressmen. 

As a former Democrat, I cannot begin to tell you how disappointed I am that my party did not do the right thing and oppose the Iraq War and question its prosecution.  Instead, it did the politically expedient thing for the short term and became Bush's lap dog.  Now, they don't have the credibility to strongly oppose the war because they look like they are merely taking advantage in the change in public opinion.

While the Bush Administration bears the bulk of responsibility for this stupid war, the "big" Democrats need to bear part of the burden as well for shirking their duty as the "loyal opposition" and as decent, humane, and patriotic Americans.  Perhaps if they had spoken out louder when it mattered, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in now in Iraq.