Yesterday the Senate passed 97-0 an amendment introduced by Joe Lieberman to the Defense Authorization bill. It expresses the sense of the Congress that Iran's proxy attacks against U.S. soldiers in Iraq constitute "an intolerable and unacceptable act of hostility against the United States by the foreign government in question," calls upon Iran to "take immediate action to end all training, arming, equipping, funding, advising, and any other forms of support that it or its agents are providing, and have provided, to Iraqi militias and insurgents, who are contributing to the destabilization of Iraq and are responsible for the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces" and requests that the military Command in Iraq and the U.S. Ambassador submit a report detailing the extent of Iranian support for attacks on American and Iraqi government troops. You can read Lieberman's speech articulating the Iranian threat to progress in Iraq here. Dave Weigel writes, "So sometime in September, before or after we've had our cute, useless debate over whether to keep surging in Iraq, we'll get a report on how Iran is propping up the insurgents. I'm sure nothing will come of that." By its actions in Iraq, Iran has essentially declared war on us. How the United States ought to react is still up for debate. Other than snark, what do Dave and those who, however bad their spelling, righteously call Lieberman a "warmongerer" suggest? The near-unanimous support for this amendment brings to mind the unanimous support for the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act. That act stated that "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime." Whatever one thinks about the wisdom of the Iraq war, keep in mind that regime change in Iraq was the official, bipartisan policy of the United States government years before it became fashionable for journalists to write tiresome, 5,000-word articles linking Ahmed Chalabi, PNAC and Paul Wolfowitz. --James Kirchick