Feingold

Why is he the only politician who can figure this out?

You know what’s going to happen in September? They’ll bring General Petraeus back and he’ll say, Just give me until the end of year. I think things are turning around. And then we’ll be out of session, come back in late January, February, and the fact is a thousand more troops will lose their lives in a situation that doesn’t make any sense and it is hurting our military, hurting our country. This should not wait till September.

OK, he's not the only one, there's Dodd, Kerry, Sanders and Leahy, along with John Edwards from outside the Senate. I just called Boxer and she's given no indication of how she'll vote. But isn't Feingold's point obvious? Name the last active-duty general carrying out a mission that would dare say "I don't think we can do it, guys, we should go home." It doesn't happen. Furthermore, generals SHOULDN'T dictate foreign policy. This isn't a military junta. It's supposed to be a democracy, barely.

Nobody likes this war and the Democratic leadership in Congress is about to fund it. Why?

UPDATE: It's tangential, but this from Rick Perlstein deserves wide attention.

President Bush today: "These people attacked us before we were even in Iraq!"

Can we have a little frankness, please?

The President of the United States is a racist. Or at the very least, an anti-Muslim bigot.

In Iraq, Shi'ites and Sunni are fighting each other to the death. Under what possible logic can they be joined by a common identity?

There is no "these people" except in their common Middle East-ness.

Iran and Iraq fought a decade-long war - Shia against Sunni. They are, to our president, "these people." "They" attacked us. "They" continue to attack us. Iran, Iraq: all the same.

And the Democratic leadership is endorsing these blurred lines by voting to fund a misbegotten war.

UPDATE II: The reason people hate this war, and especially the surge, is because it's not working.

More than three months into a U.S.-Iraqi security offensive designed to curtail sectarian violence in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, Health Ministry statistics show that such killings are rising again.

UPDATE III: