Why would you ever disagree, anyway?

Let's be brutally honest: The hours of U.S. Senate debate last week over Democrats' nonbinding Iraq war resolution that essentially says "we're against sending more soldiers to Iraq but won't actually do anything about it" were a terminally silly show that wasted time and money that could have been used productively.

Even sillier, though, were the frenzied Republican efforts to stop debate over the toothless resolution and the dire warnings that it would "embolden our enemies," who apparently watch C-SPAN religiously from a subterranean maze of dank caves with a clear view of the southern sky. If it's outside the realm of acceptability for President Bush's critics to suggest even a measure that does nothing more than wag a finger at the idea of flooding more troops into a poorly planned war, one wonders what exactly would be an acceptable way to express disagreement.