The Big Lie On Fiscal Conservatism

Perhaps my favorite moments in the speech were the parts where the President had the temerity to mention that "fiscal conservatives" don't give a damn about being fiscally conservative.

Part of the reason I faced a trillion dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House is because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for – from the Iraq War to tax breaks for the wealthy. I will not make that same mistake with health care [...]

Add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years – less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration.

Sarah Palin lashed out at this by saying that the President hates 9/11 (no link because I don't want to validate her), which proves they've got absolutely nothing to rebut this. I'm not Andrew Sullivan's biggest fan, but he nailed this a couple days ago.

If you believe in fiscal conservatism, the last place on earth you should look for salvation is the GOP. They have single-handedly destroyed America's finances since the 1980s, with the sole exception of George H W Bush, who was rejected by his own party precisely because of his fiscal sobriety. The current debt is overwhelmingly inherited by Obama, and it would have been nuts to enter office in the downdraft of the sharp recession and set about cutting spending. Bush had eight years to restrain it and he didn't. He let it rip. Think of the GOP's phony concerns about the cost of the current healthcare bill and compare it with the GOP's prescription drug entitlement that Rove rammed through the Congress when the GOP held total power. The costs then were about eight times as great as the proposed costs now. But that was a Republican measure and so it doesn't somehow count as evidence of fiscal irresponsibility. But Nancy Pelosi only has to raise an eye-brow and the alarms go off.

You cannot say this enough. The fiscal scolds who only pop up under Democratic Presidents are out of their minds if they think progressives should let them get away with their selective outrage designed entirely to forestall a progressive agenda. They have no credibility.

...John Dingell on this. In general Democrats have been very feisty today:

Q: Republicans, though, say that the bill explodes the deficit after 10 years because the revenues don't keep pace with spending growth.

A: Well, I'll give you several answers. First, that's fully consonant with Republican practices. They did it all the time, and can speak with authority to the evil of it. But that doesn't mean it's so. I don't honestly believe that's the case [that deficits expand], and the work has not been concluded. But if this is as factual as some of the other things they've said about the bill, I wouldn't pay too much heed.

More on Bush's Iraq Treaty

Some have questioned whether or not the locking in of a status of forces agreement (SOFA) would create a situation that would make it difficult for a future President to halt military activities in Iraq. I just got off a conference call with legal scholars Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway, and Rep. Barbara Lee, who has introduced a nonbinding resolution expressing the sense of the Congress that the Administration must go to them to get authorization for a bilateral treaty of this type. The issue is that the UN mandate for American troops in Iraq expires at the end of this year, and without anything to supplant it, US troops would be operating in the country illegally, in violation of international law. The two ways to remedy this are to extend the mandate (which will be the subject of an upcoming House bill from the leadership) for a short period of time until the next President sets the policy, or to create this bilateral status of forces agreement, which is binding on the US government. In addition to the standard SOFA arrangements - protection for military personnel, postal and banking services, criminal exemption for military members - this agreement as it is being negotiated by the Bush Administration would include, in a completely unprecedented fashion:

1) an "authority to fight" giving US troops the legal authority to operate inside Iraq beyond the UN mandate;

and

2) legal immunity for private military contractors like Blackwater who are operating in accordance with the US government.

One can easily see why this is problematic. The precedent would be that the President can dictate the terms of military involvement unilaterally and without the expressed consent of the Congress. The authority to fight is completely beyond what has ever been in a SOFA before, and could be used as a precedent for all sorts of additional military actions (for example, would the authority to fight include Iranian troops across the border accused of "meddling"?). So for that reason alone we should never allow this for one second. Even regular strategic framework arrangements like we saw in Japan or Germany received Congressional approval first. These go further and the Administration claims no need to involve Congress.

As far as tying the hands of the next President, there are legal considerations and political considerations. It is a fact that this agreement would If a Democrat wins and seeks a new course in Iraq, he or she would be obliged to break an international commitment, which they can do but not without some difficulty. Dana Perino today pushed back against this idea that this would commit the next President to staying in Iraq, but note the spin:

"It's important to note what this agreement will not do. It will not tie the hands of the next President. It will not say how many troops should be there. It will not establish permanent bases. What it does is it provides for a secure environment for our troops to work, in a legal framework," she said [...]

Perino sharply criticized Bush's Democratic critics -- some of whom have raised the alarm over the agreement, saying it would commit his successors to an open-ended commitment to a vastly unpopular war.

"The Iraqis want it. Iraq's Arab neighbors want it. It appears that the only ones who are agitated about it, and in fact demagoging about it, are a subset of Democrats," she said. "I don't that their concern is merited."

This obviously plays into the Dolschstosslegende. Now you have this setup where only these rogue America-hating Democrats want to take Iraqi's freedom away. Let's get real. Bush is unilaterally making this deal with Maliki, who was installed by the Americans and in no way speaks for the Iraqi people. Having to break an international commitment to move forward on leaving Iraq will renew calls of stabbing the country - and the Iraqis - in the back.

So on several fronts, we don't want the President to have the power to negotiate the terms of permanent military deployments all over the world, especially in Iraq, where this occupation remains a disaster. This is absolutely an effort to, in the words of Prof. Ackerman, to "commit the next Administration as explicitly as possible to the policies of this Administration."

Iraq Insider has more.

L'Etat, C'est Moi

Another day, another novel legal imterpretation to evade Congression input:

The Bush administration yesterday advanced a new argument for why it does not require congressional approval to strike a long-term security agreement with Iraq, stating that Congress had already endorsed such an initiative through its 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein.

The 2002 measure, along with the congressional resolution passed one week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks authorizing military action "to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States," permits indefinite combat operations in Iraq, according to a statement by the State Department's Bureau of Legislative Affairs.

Of course an authorization to use force against Saddam Hussein still applies! Haven't you ever seen Dawn of the Dead?

They're really grasping at any straw they can, and considering that Congress has failed to hold them accountable for this whatsoever, they'll probably get away with it. And by the way, this is not just about Iraq; this is about making sure that any other potential war doesn't need Congressional oversight or authorization, either. If they need an October surprise to win the election, they don't want to have to mess with any pesky "laws" in order to make it happen. So the precedent of using the 2002 AUMF is also about a pretext to use the September 20, 2001 AUMF for Afghanistan to strike any "terrorist" anywhere in the world. And we know who comes up with the definition of a terrorist.

(Of course, it's also a problem to allow a status of forces agreement to pass without Congressional authorization, as it makes it very difficult for the next President to unentangle an Iraq commitment.)

The Iraq Debate Returns

With all the race/gender nonsense in the Democratic Presidential primary, I'm happy to get back to an actual issue. And Iraq really ought to be front and center of the debate. When you're talking about becoming President, your foreign policy should simply be the primary factor, since the ability for a President to set their own course outside of Congress on foreign policy is (sadly) far more pronounced than on domestic policy. So yes, let's get back to the Iraq vote. And I really can't understand for the life of me what the Clintons are doing.

Bill Clinton really wants to blunt Obama's advantage on Iraq. His "fairy tale" comment was clearly about this; it had nothing to do with race. But what is he really saying here, and what is Hillary saying? Nobody disputes that Obama gave a forceful speech rejecting the Bush Administration's case for war back in 2002. The Clintons want to say that Obama hedged on his anti-war rhetoric in 2004 (based on truncating a quote), and that he hasn't followed that up with action in Congress. But has Hillary? It was part of Clinton's attack that "Hillary and Obama have the same voting record on the war." Why does that in any way reflect well on EITHER of them? If your argument is "Obama is just as bad as my candidate on the war," it's not exactly a ringing endorsement, nor does it help get us any closer to ending the war. Not to mention that there are other mischaracterizations involved in this as well.

Plus, Obama's speech in 2002 DID matter. That was the time to be forceful and outspoken against what George Bush was trying to do in Iraq. And Hillary Clinton did not lead when the country needed her. Dick Durbin says this pretty well:

“I’m really troubled by his questioning the sincerity of Barack Obama’s opposition to the war in Iraq,” Durbin said. “I really think it is unfortunate to question Barack’s sincerity on the war. He has been there from the start, opposing this war.” [...]

“It was not easy to be against that war back when we cast that vote in October of 2002,” Durbin said. “I was one of 23 who voted against the war. Barack was supportive — one of the few candidates speaking out strongly against it in Illinois.

“If President Clinton had opposed that war as strongly as Barack Obama at the time, it would have helped a lot of us who had voted against authorizing an invasion.”

Instead, Bill did not speak out, and Hillary voted for the war, and now she's trying to lie about it and sell to us that a vote on the "Authorization of Military Force in Iraq" wasn't a vote for military force. She's also claiming that Bush would have gone to war anyway so... it was responsible to give him a Congressional authorization to do so? She also continued on this horrendous line of argument that she "trusted" Bush to use every diplomatic recourse and then was "misled" by him, and frankly I don't want anybody in the White House gullible enough to be "misled" by George Bush (I suspect she wasn't misled at all, but simply thought that war was a good idea, which is also disqualifying).

What I really don't understand is why the Clinton campaign would want to highlight this issue. It puts her in the worst possible light, and reminds everyone that she voted for the war. As Matt Taibbi said on Bill Maher's show, "We have 70% of the country opposed to the war and may wind up with 2 pro-war candidates. If that doesn't tell you how fucked up the system is..." Obama's campaign isn't exactly making the war a centerpiece of his campaign. He mentions it in his stump speech, but that's about it. His recent commercials haven't brought it up at all. Why the Clintons would pre-emptively discuss her war vote is baffling. She's simply not on solid ground here.

When In Doubt, Lie, Lie Again

Karl Rove is a born liar. It's actually what political professionals like him do for a living. Yet he somehow has achieved this mythic status in the traditional press and parlayed it into some sort of status. He's even writing a column for Newsweek now.

This claim that the Democrats in Congress were responsible for pushing the Iraq War Resolution vote right before the 2002 midterm elections has been completely discredited by everyone, even Rove's associates in the White House like Ari Fleischer and Andy Card. Yet Rove's instinct is to continue with the lie, in the hopes that the media will play it as an "opinions differ" issue instead of a "one guy is lying and everyone else is telling the truth" issue. In this way, Rove DEPENDS on a broken media system to give his lies credibility. Indeed, when the Washington Post reported on the controversy, they shied away from using the word "lie" and depicting Rove as telling obvious falsehoods. So he went ahead and lied again this morning.

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Karl Rove reiterated his false claim that Democrats in Congress — not the Bush administration — forced a war vote prior to the 2002 midterm elections. Despite having being contradicted by former Chief of Staff Andrew Card and former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, Rove continued to press his make-believe story about how the Iraq war vote occurred.

On the Charlie Rose Show a little over a week ago, Rove said that “the administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002.” This morning, he changed his tune, saying that it is not true that Bush “was the only person” pushing Congress to vote on the war resolution:

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): Now you’ve tried to suggest, and revise history here, clearly things have not gone right in Iraq, and you have tried to revise history and suggest that the Congress got ahead of the President on the Iraq war resolution.

KARL ROVE: No, that’s not what I said. What I said was that the general conventional wisdom was that the President was the only person pushing the Congress to vote on the war resolution before the November election, and that’s simply not true.

In other eras, people with this kind of unfamiliarity with the truth would simply be drummed out of public life. Even his allies would see him as a liability and would see to it that he was kept in the basement.

This is not such an era.

Obama Makes His Move

Barack Obama gave a major speech today about terrorism, and the takeaway that most of the media is getting is that it was a tough speech which argues for the possibility of strikes inside Pakistan to take out Al Qaeda leaders whether or not the Pakistani government authorizes them, which by the way is the right thing to say. And it was a tough speech. But it was also a speech that talks about the fundamental problems with the foreign policy of the Bush years.

But then everything changed.

We did not finish the job against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We did not develop new capabilities to defeat a new enemy, or launch a comprehensive strategy to dry up the terrorists' base of support. We did not reaffirm our basic values, or secure our homeland.

Instead, we got a color-coded politics of fear. Patriotism as the possession of one political party. The diplomacy of refusing to talk to other countries. A rigid 20th century ideology that insisted that the 21st century's stateless terrorism could be defeated through the invasion and occupation of a state. A deliberate strategy to misrepresent 9/11 to sell a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 [...]

The political winds were blowing in a different direction. The President was determined to go to war. There was just one obstacle: the U.S. Congress. Nine days after I spoke, that obstacle was removed. Congress rubber-stamped the rush to war, giving the President the broad and open-ended authority he uses to this day. With that vote, Congress became co-author of a catastrophic war. And we went off to fight on the wrong battlefield, with no appreciation of how many enemies we would create, and no plan for how to get out.

This is smart, because it puts the critique against invading Iraq in the larger context of the overall struggle against Islamic radicalism. It comes close to John Edwards' critique of the "war on terror" as a "bumper sticker" without using those explicit terms. It casts a new response to 9/11 as one concerned with fundamental human rights and moral authority for America as much as military action, a classic balance of hard and soft power. It also critiques our continued stay in Iraq as a continued distraction in the overall terror war, vowing to redeploy while being honest about his belief in residual forces there to fight Al Qaeda (I tend to disagree with that portion). Here's essentially the precis of the policy changes:

It is time to turn the page. When I am President, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists and the world's most deadly weapons; engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism; restoring our values; and securing a more resilient homeland.

It should come as no surprise that this hews closely to Samantha Power's excellent New York Times op-ed, where she avers that "the war-on-terror frame has obscured more than it has clarified." Power is a foreign policy advisor to Obama's campaign, and that fact alone causes me to give him a long look.

Really, this speech is an example of Obama's continued push to press the advantage from his dust-up with Hillary Clinton over proper diplomacy and negotiation. By the way the YouTube questioner who asked about diplomacy has come out as agreeing with Obama's answer, which offered a break from the failed Washington consensus of the past that says you must punish your enemies by not talking to them and being bold and tough enough to negotiate. It's telling that most of the Republican candidates have come out on the question against Obama. Obama has gotten the better of that question by wrapping it in a larger critique of the cautious, nervous Democratic leadership that refuses to be ruled by anything but fear.

One difference between Obama and Clinton does not seem to me to have been stressed enough. They are of different Democratic generations. Clinton is from the traumatized generation; Obama isn't. Clinton has internalized to her bones the 1990s sense that conservatism is ascendant, that what she really believes is unpopular, that the Republicans have structural, latent power of having a majority of Americans on their side. Hence the fact that she reeks of fear, of calculation, of focus groups, of triangulation. She might once have had ideals keenly felt; she might once have actually relished fighting for them and arguing in thier defense. But she has not been like that for a very long time. She has political post-traumatic stress disorder. She saw her view of feminism gutted in the 1992 campaign; she saw her healthcare plan destroyed by what she saw as a VRWC; she remains among the most risk-averse of Democrats on foreign policy and in the culture wars [...]

Obama is different. He wasn't mugged by the 1980s and 1990s as Clinton was. He doesn't carry within him the liberal self-hatred and self-doubt that Clinton does. The traumatized Democrats fear the majority of Americans are bigoted, know-nothing, racist rubes from whom they need to conceal their true feelings and views. The non-traumatized Democrats are able to say what they think, make their case to potential supporters and act, well, like Republicans acted in the 1980s and 1990s. The choice between Clinton and Obama is the choice between a defensive crouch and a confident engagement. It is the choice between someone who lost their beliefs in a welter of fear; and someone who has faith that his worldview can persuade a majority.

The progressive blogosphere arose out of disgust with that political post-traumatic stress disorder. We refuse to keep in that defensive crouch. And if Obama continues to move in this direction, acting bold and confident, he will receive a great deal of support. It doesn't mean he will win; in fact, his drift toward Edwards' point of view may end up knocking both of them out. But it's clear that there's a legitimate choice to be made between the Clinton-era worldview of the past and the Obama-era worldview of the future.

UPDATE: Obama's speech today is right in line with the civil rights pledge that a coalition including Human Rights Watch is urging Presidential candidates to sign. It's a hopeful vision.

We are in the early stages of a long struggle. Yet since 9/11, we've heard a lot about what America can't do or shouldn't do or won't even try. We can't vote against a misguided war in Iraq because that would make us look weak, or talk to other countries because that would be a reward. We can't reach out to the hundreds of millions of Muslims who reject terror because we worry they hate us. We can't protect the homeland because there are too many targets, or secure our people while staying true to our values. We can't get past the America of Red and Blue, the politics of who's up and who's down.

That is not the America that I know.

The America I know is the last, best hope for that child looking up at a helicopter. It's the country that put a man on the moon; that defeated fascism and helped rebuild Europe. It's a country whose strength abroad is measured not just by armies, but rather by the power of our ideals, and by our purpose to forge an ever more perfect union at home.

That's the America I know. We just have to act like it again to write that next chapter in the American story.

Switching Teams

Something truly bizarre is going on in Washington. It's like both teams switched sides and started wearing each other's uniforms. I can't seem to figure it out.

The Bush Administration is bowing to pressure from the Democrats and the public on a host of fronts. Steve Benen chronicles them all nicely in the context of this new report that Condi Rice will atend a high-level conference in Baghdad of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria.

Many of the media reports this morning emphasize that the Iraq Study Group recommended this course of action several months ago, but it was rejected by the Bush administration until now. I’d add that it wasn’t just the ISG — John Kerry and several Democratic presidential hopefuls from 2004 were recommending the exact same thing (regional conference, U.S. talks with Iran and Syria, etc.). At the time, the White House and its GOP allies said Dems didn’t know what they were talking about.

Is it me, or has this been happening a lot lately?

* The Bush administration did a complete 180-degree turn on its policy towards North Korea this month, embracing Bill Clinton’s approach to the conflict, despite years of blasting Clinton’s policy.

* In 2004, John Kerry insisted that the size of the military needed to be increased. At the time, Bush said Kerry was completely wrong. In December, Bush embraced Kerry’s policy as his own.

* Throughout 2006, Dems said the administration’s warrantless-search program through the NSA needed to be subject to judicial oversight. The Bush gang said it would be dangerous, and practically impossible, to do so. Last month, the White House acceded to Dems’ demands.

* The White House argued that criticism of the war in Iraq from congressional Dems was pointless and counterproductive. Then the White House decided the criticism served a diplomatic purpose after all.

I can think of another one, with Dick Cheney threatening Pakistan that Democrats will cut off financial aid unless they take a harder line toward terrorism and Al Qaeda. So there are at least three instances where the Bush Administration was willing to let Democrats play bad cop and use their ideas on foreign policy as a wedge to get others to act. And it's not like core conservatives are happy about this approach, particularly with respect to the North Korea deal, which they lambasted.

What is clear is that even as nutty a group as the Bush Administration is capable of responding to public pressure. There may be a variety of reasons for these responses, and the cynic in me can pull out a bunch of them (North Korea was back-burnered to clear the decls for Iran, Bush wants to increase the size of the military to wage more wars, the regional conference in Iraq would happen even without the US so we're there to babysit and veto things we don't like), but obviously, the Bush Administration sees value in adopting the language and policies of the Democrats. If they don't, their party will sink even further into the morass.

And yet, at the same time when Democrats are finally starting to move the debate in their direction, they have apparently decided to unilaterally disarm with regard to Iraq. Why?

House Democratic leaders are developing an anti-war proposal that wouldn't cut off money for U.S. troops in Iraq but would require President Bush to acknowledge problems with an overburdened military.

The plan could draw bipartisan support but is expected to be a tough sell to members who say they don't think it goes far enough to assuage voters angered by the four-year conflict.

Bush "hasn't to date done anything we've asked him to do, so why we would think he would do anything in the future is beyond me," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., one of a group of liberal Democrats pushing for an immediate end to the war.

The Jack Murtha readiness plan, which has been victim to a vicious smear before it was even finalized, is now not likely to gain majority support in the House, despite the fact that it has majority support in the country. So we're going to let troops forego desert training and increase their chances of being killed? Bush will have to sign waivers now that admit he is letting troops be deployed without proper equipment or training. The man hasn't an ounce of self-awareness or shame, so what will this impact? But yet even Nancy Pelosi has now backed off from the readiness strategy. I really don't get it.

And in the Senate, it's even worse.

In the Senate, a group of senior Democrats wants to repeal the 2002 measure authorizing the war and write a new resolution restricting the mission and ordering troop withdrawals to begin by this summer. But Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Iraq would have to wait until the Senate finishes work to improve homeland security.

"That would mean we would hold off the Iraq legislation for a matter of days, not weeks," he said.

They couldn't attach the proposal to homeland security measures because Joe Lieberman chairs that panel. But surely they knew that already. And when they do introduce this de-authorization resolution, the word is that it will also be nonbinding. I am beginning to question the commitment to actually end this war, or just to scowl with disapproval about it.

The thing is that the kitchen sink strategy was working. Concessions were being made. The White House was back on its heels. And then the Democrats let up on the gas. Antiwar leader Tom Andrews is unhappy.

"The Republicans should be on their heels," Andrews says. "They have put the troops in these conditions -- and they're the ones on the offensive!"

"There should be a relentless attack" from Dems, Andrews continues. "Dems in Congress should be talking relentlessly about the lack of equipment, the lack of training, the multiple deployments, every day. There should be a relentless demand for accountability."

Russ Feingold is unhappy.

Wisconsin's Russ Feingold says the Iraq bill his fellow Senate Democrats are working on is so weak that it "basically reads like a new authorization" of the war.

"I am working to fix the new proposal drafted by several Senate Democrats," Feingold said in a statement this afternoon. "I will not vote for anything that the President could read as an authorization for continuing with a large military campaign in Iraq."

He hasn't given up on "using our Constitutionally-granted power of the purse to bring this catastrophe to an end," he said, though the Senate leadership has not only rejected that approach, but said it would be tantamount to abandoning the troops.

One of Jack Murtha's top supporters is unhappy.

To think that Mr. Murtha would take an action that is not in the best interests of our troops is lunacy. No one in the Congress has spent more years in combat nor more time listening to the young men and women and their families who serve our country than Jack Murtha. Just as Mr. Murtha forced Congress and the President to spend money on protective body armor and up-armored Humvees, Jack is now the first American leader to propose a true plan that "supports our troops" in a more genuine way than simply cheering them on into battle.

But for the most part, Democrats are perfectly willing to let this nightmare in Iraq continue without pressuring the Administration to bring it to a close, a strategy that was WORKING. What happened, where the Republican President started listening to the other side and the Democratic Congress started laying down their arms? It's baffling and it really disappoints me, as it does Chris Bowers.

It is hard for me to decide what pisses me off about this the most. It angers me to no end that Democrats are crushing aside a strategy, the Murtha plan, which has overwhelming popular support. The Democratic majority in congress, when considered as a whole, is clearly far behind the public on Iraq.

It also angers me that one of the main reasons Democrats are backing away, if not the main reason, is that Democrats are too scared of Republican talking points to do anything that might anger the Republican Noise Machine. Even though the public never did, Democrats on the hill bought so thoroughly into the "cutting off funding" for troops in the field line that they were too scared to do anything. Clearly, Democrats are far more scared of the Republican media machine than they are of the people who put them in power.

It further angers me that we won't even get a roll call vote on Murtha's plan, or on binding legislation to rewrite the AUMF. If they are not going to push for a roll call vote, I can only assume that there is no majority for Murtha's plan in the House. We need to know which Democrats are in opposition to it, but we are not going to. Instead of pushing members to support Murtha's plan, the leadership is dumping the plan altogether, and not even forcing the Democrats who oppose it to stand up and be counted. The leadership is covering for these cowardly Democrats, rather than leading them.

It is now difficult to see another opportunity for Democrats in Congress to restrict and / or end the war in Iraq for another year. I don't know who is behind this, but I strongly suspect Steny Hoyer. No matter who is behind it, it is clear that many Democrats in Washington, D.C., do not view their position as derived from the electorate, but rather than conditional upon their favor within beltway circles. As long as that attitude persists, you will never see a populist, much less a progressive, majority in Washington, D.C.

We're going to have to get together and make sure everyone in the Democratic caucus is held accountable on Iraq. That goes for Presidential candidates as well, especially ones who say things like "She believes in executive authority and Congressional deference, her advisers say, and is careful about suggesting that Congress can overrule a commander in chief." These are people who mean to rule with the same iron fist that has characterized the Bush years. It's un-American to say the very least.

We need leadership in Congress and not this backsliding. They may not get a winning vote, but each time they further isolate Republicans and the President. And it's been WORKING. I really don't get it.

Iraq In More Fragments

The health care system is so broken in Iraq that even the President of the country has to fly to Jordan for treatment of what appears to be little more than exhaustion.

Both Shiite leader Abdulaziz al-Hakim and Vice President Adel Abdul-Madhi narrowly escaped assassination attempts in the past two days, as suicide bombings continue to kill dozens.

The son of Hakim was taken into custody and then released by an embarrassed US military, prompting tens of thousands to demonstrate in Najaf.

Ahmad frickin' Chalabi is back in a leadership role, in charge of funding Iraqis caught in the crossfire of US security sweeps. I'm assuming he won't take anything off the top, as it's not like he's ever been convicted of embezzlement or anything.

There are pretty much no qualified civilians able to carry out the vast amount of reconstruction and democracy promotion duties needed in the country.

The National Guard may be stepping into the war zone without rifles for all of its men.

America is solidly behind a readiness plan to help the troops before they are exposed to Iraq, but it's unclear if Democrats will have the political will to carry it out. Meanwhile the plan to de-authorize the 2002 AUMF in Iraq is being scuttled by Joe Lieberman in the Homeland Security Committee (they wanted to attach it to 9-11 Commission recommendation enactment).

If the average Republican up for re-election in 2008 read all of the above information, how could they possibly not vote to end this war tomorrow? How, instead, do you have 25 Republican members of Congress who speak out against escalation and vote for it anyway?

And for the Democrats, there's no political downside to continuing to fight to end our occupation in Iraq.

In fact, a partisan division over the war probably would help Democrats by further damaging the Republicans between now and next year's Presidential election. After all, if it isn't merely President Bush, but also his entire party, that supports the war and ignores public opinion, Democrats would seem to benefit.

Obviously there are a handful of high profile Republicans who have opposed the Bush policy in Iraq for a considerable time - most notably Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska in the Senate and Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina in the House - and a number of GOP members of Congress have over the past couple of months sounded increasingly critical of Bush policies.

But the House vote demonstrates that Republicans still have not left the President's ship, even though it clearly seems to be sinking, and Democrats ought not be so wedded to their talking points' emphasis on bipartisan opposition to the war that they refer to a "bipartisan resolution" that clearly was nothing of the sort.

Iraq is breaking apart, and the neocons just want everybody to shut up about it. Those who speak out and work to end this war will be rewarded. It's bizarre that the political class doesn't yet understand that.

Poor George

George Will today:

Regarding Iraq, the Democratic-controlled Congress could do what Democrats say a Democratic president would do: withdraw U.S. forces. A president could simply order that; Congress could defund military operations in Iraq. Congressional Democrats are, however, afraid to do that because they lack the courage of their (professed) conviction that Iraq would be made tranquil by withdrawal of U.S. forces.

AP tonight:

Determined to challenge President Bush, Senate Democrats are drafting legislation to limit the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq, effectively revoking the broad authority Congress granted in 2002, officials said Thursday.

While these officials said the precise wording of the measure remains unsettled, one draft would restrict American troops in Iraq to combating al-Qaida, training Iraqi army and police forces, maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity and otherwise proceeding with the withdrawal of combat forces.

The officials, Democratic aides and others familiar with private discussions, spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying rank-and-file senators had not yet been briefed on the effort. They added, though, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) is expected to present the proposal to fellow Democrats early next week for their consideration.

The plan is to attempt to add the measure to anti-terrorism legislation that scheduled to be on the Senate floor next week and the week following.

Will would say that his column and the Democratic action is not mutually exclusive; he thinks that the Congress lacks the power to interpret military missions. But if Congress declared the war, or gave the President the authority to do so, Congress can just as well revoke that authority, no? Joe Biden and Carl Levin seem to think so, that's why they've crafted this amendment.

Congress giveth, Congress taketh away. And George Will sits their blubbering because the Democrats called his bluff, and he's sitting there with a perfectly irrelevant op-ed.

...adding, this is good policy and great politics. The Democrats are handing the Republicans an anvil over and over again. They're actually doing the kitchen sink strategy, forcing the GOP on the record with a vote (and everybody understands that cloture IS the vote in this case). This is what a good majority does, especially if they want to expand their majority.