One of the reasons the mainstream media failed to expose the fraud perpetrated by the Bush White House during the run-up to war in Iraq was that it virtually ignored dissenters. And there were some. Even in Washington.

Most notably, in September 2002, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy gave a bold, moving speech outlining his view “that America should not go to war against Iraq unless and until other reasonable alternatives are exhausted.”

The elite Washington media barely even made mention of it.

So with that very much in mind, this blog intends to call attention to those few members of Congress who, in contrast to the Congressional Hyperbole Caucus, are saying things about the U.S. response to the Islamic State that indicate that they might possibly be advocating something somewhat like restraint. Maybe.

Jen Bendery of the Huffington Post found exactly one member of Congress who wasn’t banging the drums of war: populist Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin.

“It’s fear-mongering. It’s what happened after 9/11. ‘Oh my god, they’ve got these planes crashing. Now they’re going to take over America.’ That’s nonsense,” Harkin told HuffPost. “We just keep jumping from one mistake to another. I have a feeling we’re going to do the same thing with [the Islamic State].”

Rep. Rick Nolan (D-Minn.) was talking about an alternate path in a statement he issued on Monday. “I encourage them to employ the same intelligence resources – and the same selective, highly effective means they used to bring down Osama Bin Laden,” he wrote. “Special operations of this kind do not involve U.S. troops on the ground, the killing of innocent people, or the re-involvement of the United States in another terribly destructive, expensive, open-ended conflict in that region.”

Nolan told a local paper that he will only support humanitarian efforts in the conflict in Syria. “When we get ourselves involved in that conflict, then we become a part of the problem and the solution becomes ours,” he said.

Here is Rep. Jim McDermott, a liberal Democrat from Washington State, on MSNBC’s Hardball the other night, after Chris Matthews asked him if he’d support the use of special forces in Syria to go after the Islamic State: