And Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia has died at the age of ninety-two. Elected in 1958, Byrd served an unprecedented nine terms in the US Senate. He was a leading critic of President Bush’s push to invade Iraq. On the eve of the US invasion in March 2003, Byrd delivered one of his most memorable speeches.

Sen. Robert Byrd: “After the war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America’s image around the globe. The case that this administration tries to make to justify its fixation with war is tainted by charges of falsified documents and circumstantial evidence. We cannot convince the world of the necessity of this war for one simple reason: this is not a war of necessity, but a war of choice.”

In the 1940s, Byrd was a prominent member of Ku Klux Klan in West Virginia, rising to the position of “exalted cyclops.” He opposed the desegregation of the US military and filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Byrd would later apologize, saying his association with the Klan was a sad mistake. In 2008, he endorsed President Obama for president.