Things I Said Would Happen That Are Happening

I mentioned that the new GOP talking point on the war in Iraq would be that it's now a war to fight Iran and its proxy army Hezbollah, and if we leave now we give up the whole joint to the Iranians. The Tribune-Review in Pittsburgh dutifully scratches this talking point out into editorial form.

The Bush administration disputes the "civil war" moniker. And it's not a semantic argument. Just Tuesday, The New York Times reported that "the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah had been training members of the Mahdi Army, the Iraqi Shiite militias led by Moktada al-Sadr." It's not the only outside influence.

Another thing I mentioned this week is that the Bushies are going to look for ways to keep defense spending up in a time when an incoming Democratic Congress will be unlikely to be as pliant as the outgoing Republicans were. I suggested their public call for NATO member countries to increase spending would be their gambit; apparently it also includes larding pork into the emergency supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan, and daring Democrats into not "supporting the troops":

The Pentagon is preparing an emergency spending proposal that could be larger and broader than any since the Sept. 11 attacks, covering not only the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but extending to other military operations connected to the Bush administration's war on terrorism [...]

The next request stands to be larger partly because of new rules laid out in an Oct. 25 memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England. Rather than strictly limiting spending to Iraq and Afghanistan costs, the memo said the military services could include costs associated with operations that are part of the larger war on terrorism.

Previously, the military portion of the supplemental spending measures has been used almost exclusively for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. England's memo would allow the military to include a greater number of expenses more loosely tied to the actual wars, such as new military weapons systems and training exercises.

Critics of the Pentagon budget process say the memo has encouraged the services to inflate their requests.

"The England memo basically said, 'Let her rip,' " said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project and a former congressional budget aide. "Anything goes, as long as you can put it under the pretext of not only Iraq or Afghanistan but the global war on terror." [...]

Democrats acknowledged that it would be difficult to move most of the costs to the regular budget without forcing massive cuts elsewhere.

Though there will be more scrutiny of the Pentagon requests, and the more elaborate spending proposals could be nixed, there is little doubt a large supplemental will be approved, some Democratic aides said.

"People will grouse that they are loading up the supplemental, but they will be hard-pressed to say no because they realize the services need the equipment," said the Democratic aide.

It's a terrible burden being right.