The vote was excruciating because Democrats made it so. There comes a time when moral clarity and political clarity lead to the same conclusion: Do the right thing.

1. The right moral decision is to bring our troops home and address the damage done to Iraq through non-military means.

2. The right political decision is to explain, clearly, concisely, with no spin or bull-shit, why 1. is the right thing to do.

That our leading Democrats could not lead our Democratic majority in Congress to do either distresses me deeply.

~

There are only two Senator's names from the era of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution I recall...

Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, and Ernest Gruening of Alaska


Senator Morse stated:

"I believe that history will record that we have made a great mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States. . . I believe this resolution to be a historic mistake. I believe that within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to make such a historic mistake." Congressional Record. August 6-7, 1964

"Regrettably, I find myself in disagreement with the President's Southeast Asian policy. . . The serious events of the past few days, the attack by North Vietnamese vessels on American warships and our reprisal, strikes me as the inevitable and foreseeable concomitant and consequence of U.S. unilateral military aggressive policy in Southeast Asia...." Congressional Record. August 6-7, 1964

From the point of view of a Democratic presidential candidate, taking a strictly anti-war position is obviously good politics. Clearly being a dove is popular in the primaries, but it also makes sense for the general election. If we're still in Iraq in November 2008, then an anti-war message will be very popular. If we're out of Iraq (which I doubt), it won't matter.

You have bought the right's framing of this issue hook, line, and sinker. Try "fully funded withdrawal" and "Bush's war" and "hopeless quagmire" and "civil war."
A "secret withdrawal" with Dubya in charge?
Heh, yeah, right. What are you smoking?
You are correct that this congress that approved further funds for Bush's war should cringe and pray for forgiveness every time the daily news tells the news of yet more senseless carnage in Iraq.
Too bad more didn't do the "right thing" and vote against this bill but I feel that Obama and Hillary, neither of which would indicate which way they would vote, waited until the bill was assured of passage before casting no votes.

With 70+% of the country wanting us out of Iraq (not too mention the Iraqis...remember them?), and wanting a timeline on which to do it, voting NO was both morally and politically correct.

The real problem here is why it took them so long to come to that conclusion. 

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

Yes - waiting until the whips had their counts before making a decision to vote "No" was not exactly the stuff of stirring leadership in the JFK mode.

sPh

Andrew regarding: 

(At leat) three tough questions for the candidates:

1. What's the right moral decision?
2. What's the right political decisions?
3. What's the right balance of 1 and 2 (and how do they influence each other)?

I take issue with the framing of these questions. There can't be a right or wrong moral decision unless everyone agrees on the morals. Typically, right or wrong are also value judgements. I believe a better way to solicit an idea of the morals that went into their decision making process is to pose a less judgemental question without framing it as a right and wrong ie:

1.  Did this decision challenge your moral views or what morals did you take into consideration or would you say impacted your decision making process?
2. What  were the political beliefs that shaped your decision?
3. How did you balance your political views and moral beliefs i.e. did one  have more influence than the other?

I think trying to shape this as a right or wrong makes the dialogue more contentious than necessary, when the objective is to learn how the invididual goes about making decisions which impact policy.

No" was not exactly the stuff of stirring leadership in the JFK mode.

To the contrary, JFK was quite the equivocator..it was Bobby who equivocated far less. JFK was not unequivocal about the Bay of Pigs, nor Bull Connor unleashing those water hoses in Birmingham. He waited each situation out and took the political temperature.

 Equivocation is a good thing prior to the decision. It is an admirable leadership quality as it means the person is not hot-headed and typically will attempt to gather information from all sides to make a well thought out decision as opposed to rushing to judgement. Once JFK made a decision he was consistent.

Folks typically are inconsistent when they rush to judgement having not considered all the facts and determining where they stand as well as how their decision will impact others.  Informed decision making is seldom rash and equivocation, as the data is weighed,  is  often part of the deliberative process.

Obama is very consistent...Hillary equivocates before, during and after the decison. Notice her statement asserts what she is not supportive of she gives escape clauses in virtually all of her remarks prior to her vote.

Neither Hillary nor Barack had the political clout to take a leadership role on this. Hillary lacks statesmanship and Barack has not been in the Senate long enough to have alliances. Chris Dodd however, is a senior statesman and he did take a leadership role here and come out against the bill to the extent of exhorting his colleagues Obama and Hillary to follow him in a political ad. All of us need to be taking Dodd's candidacy more seriously. Dodd also speaks Spanish.

I say job well done to our Presidential candidates.

I'm shocked that only 14 of our senators voted against. How can funding the war be so much more popular in the senate than it is among the general population? How can they just snub a majority of the population like this?

Based on the polls, it's not and they didn't. The polls, if I am not mistaken,  say that Americans are opposed to the war and want to end the war. They do not say they want to end the war by not funding the troops. The polls suggest that making the troops pay by not funding them vs. re-deploying has little public support.

You are doing the GOP's work for them.

Here let me ask you a series of questions.

1. How much of what you write is what you believe?

2. How much of what you write is written to generate traffic for a site that relies on advertising to be profitable?

3. Now what's the right balance between 1. and 2?

And while we're at it, "when did you stop beating your wife?"

Sorry man. I know it must be driving much of the blogosphere into apopleptic fits of despair that the Beltway candidates voted right this time, but get over it, give them the "gold star" they deserve, and stop hurting the party.

As I understand it, waiting to vote until after the bill had the votes to pass.

I'm not sure there's an answer. We can argue about what vote best expresses moral outrage or best keeps responsibility for this war in Bush's hands, so that public outrage will mount. But the former isn't entirely a moral decision, and the latter isn't worth worrying about, as the public gets it already. 

I very much like that Obama and Clinton both took a hard line, but as long as the debate itself continues in Congress, more is being done than if the GOP still had the majority.  Meanwhile, I'm just praying that the damage to the U.S. and others is still reparable by January 2009 or indeed is still reparable even now. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

Just as a simple matter, is there an easy link to a full vote in both chambers?  I want to know how Schumer and my representative voted.

Maybe it's worth a zero.

But I feel very strongly that any discussion that gives legitimacy to the idea that democrats -- any democrats -- have taken political considerations into account when casting votes that impact national security and/or military funding can not, in any way shape or form, be advantageous to the democratic party. not even in a meta-self-reflective sense.

i see nothing here that can be considered productive. and if i was a repug this discussion would make me smile.

I just can't imagine this discussion being advantageous to the Democratic Party.

that's my opinion on this.

=== However, I also don't agree with those who say that anyone who voted for it is "caving in." ===

If that is the way the Democratic leadership and the bulk of the (majority) Democrats felt, then they should have immediately given Bush the "clean bill" that he wanted and not gone through the charade. Even if you think that granting the no-oversight funding was the right thing to do, going through the charade and _then_ giving Bush what he asked for was a display of pathetic weakness.

sPh

Another coward.  To end this war requires tough choices.  When Bush is up against a wall he will have to make decisions.  It is clear he does not follow instructions when he has resources to do otherwise.  All the body armor in the world is less valuable than not sending the soldier in harms way in the first place.

RogerGathman

Correlein, interesting quote from Joe Klein. It begs the question: where was Jane Harmon when Bush vetoed the spending bill? Why wasn't she saying, the president has just ceased funding for 150 kids flying to fight in Iraq today. Why wasn't she saying, vetoing this bill is defunding their armor, their weapons, their safety. Why wasn't she saying, We just passed a bill funding our troops responsibly, to do what the people of the U.S. overwhelmingly want done - wind up the war - and the president vetoed it out of petulance.
No, she wasn't saying that in february. None of the Dems were. It is as if they were infected with Bremer-itis - not understanding the consequences of their own decisions. The first bill wasn't - or wasn't supposed to be - dope to soothe the base, and then the real bill is passed. Every single frickin criticism of the bill's defunding of the soldiers applied to Bush's veto. The case was never made. The negotiations, which should have been part of the strategy, were done on WH terms. I attribute this half to cyncism - the doping of the base theory - and half to stupidity - really, the Dems seem to be clueless about how to deal with National Security outside of the rightwing framework.

~

Speaking of those who are influential, or not: Who was the representative that in 1971 conducted a one-man filibuster against legislation renewing the military draft causing Nixon to withdraw the legisislation and not renew the draft ?

Now about Morse and Gruening? Ah yes. Influential they may not have been. Correct to the nth degree they were. And I repeat, their moral decisions were clear and unambiguous.

About Fulbright. Fulbright was a staunch multilateralist, and may have in your reading of whatever you elected to reference without citation, accompanied his vote for the resolution with a strident (or eloquent) statement, but his vote of "aye" in the political storm at that time remains upon the Congressional Record.

  Following is a citation of Fulbright's later view that rings so true of today's BS ... simply replace the section Gulf of Tonkin with  AUMF and the word Asia with Iraq.

Many Senators who accepted the Gulf of Tonkin resolution without question might well not have done so had they foreseen that it would subsequently be interpreted as a sweeping Congressional endorsement for the conduct of a large-scale war in Asia.

Throughout our history two strands have coexisted uneasily; a dominant strand of democratic humanism and a lesser but durable strand of intolerant Puritanism. There has been a tendency through the years for reason and moderation to prevail as long as things are going tolerably well or as long as our problems seem clear and finite and manageable. But... when some event or leader of opinion has aroused the people to a state of high emotion, our puritan spirit has tended to break through, leading us to look at the world through the distorting prism of a harsh and angry moralism.

Read Jim Lobe Nov. 29, 2003 at Common dreams

History does have a way repeating itself ... Eh?

In closing: When a man is up to eyes in alligators, it's time to get out of the swamp.

~OGD~

RogerGathman
Oops. I should have known better than to trust Joe Klein for a detail. Jane Harman voted no on the supplemental. So the whole point collapses.

So we should hide our dirty laundry and pretend that disagreement doesn't exist?
Ha! Right!
Zero it is.
If we don't recognize what's wrong with the party, we can't fix it.
If we have so-called Dem members of congress that vote against the interests and wishes of those they represent, then they damn well deserve criticism. And the party affiliation matters less than the treachery.

Any party should purge those who do harm to the party. Not discussing this cannot be healthy long term.

Why would you think otherwise?

It wasn't that Greg "said so." It's what he reported.

i believe every democratic senator that voted yesterday voted their conscience.

Seems naive to me. 

How about the AUMF? Vote of conscience?

You said it yourself, politicians consider the political consequences of their votes. You seem to be arguing both sides of the issue.

Yesterday, I heard a Dem Rep. on the radio, talking about how he comes from a very rural district, conservative. And while he voted against the AUMF, he was struggling with yesterday's vote. Because his district was about 50% Dem, and whichever way he voted, he'd be pissing off many people he represents.

Now, that's political calculation. That's weighing the political consequences. You can even dress it up, and say it's him trying to fairly represent the wishes of his constituents.

But it's not a vote of conscience. Not in my book.

Not if you're looking out for what's best for our country, and for the troops. It's pretty clear the "surge" isn't going to make a difference, that nothing we do is going to make a difference in Iraq while we're occupying the country.

It's pretty clear that what Americans want is to stop the blank checks to Bush for this war. And that bill is exactly another blank check.

So, unless you're solidly behind the President on Iraq, voting for that bill cannot be a vote of conscience.

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

Klein, in his typical idiocy, got Harman's vote wrong.

Edit:
Sorry, I see you just beat me to it.

So we should hide our dirty laundry and pretend that disagreement doesn't exist?
Ha! Right!
Zero it is.

Sorry, but that doesn't warrant a zero. Zeros should be saved for personally offensive remarks, and for obvious trolls. It doesn't even come close to the standard set here for zeros. And it certainly doesn't warrant the censoring of that comment from the public, which it what a zero does.

Censorship bad. Pretty good rule of thumb. 

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

Agreed.
Forgiveness requested.

Andrew asks an important question, I think, about morality. As much as I hate this war (and I've been against it from the start), I do feel that we have a huge moral obligation to re-construct Iraq. I hate it when the Democrats try to pin the blame on the Iraqi government. It makes me sick to my stomach. No one in Iraq asked for this war. It was purely a US decision to start the war--and morally it is completely our obligation to fix the mess we created.

What does this mean as far as keeping the troops there? If keeping the troops there helps the situation, then we must keep them there. However, as far as I can tell, our military presence is doing nothing to calm the situation over the long term and may be doing more to stimulate violence than reduce it. If this is the case, then the moral course is to remove our troops and pay for others to come in and do the rebuilding. We seem incapable of making progress in Iraq, so the morally responsible thing to do is step aside ourselves and provide funds to some other country or group to take over the reconstruction for us. Forget voting to fund our troops--let's pull our troops out and vote to fund some organization (I'm not sure who) that is more competent than the Bush-led US government (which, as Katrina and Iraq both prove) is utterly incompetent.

vote to fund some organization (I'm not sure who) that is more competent than the Bush-led US government

That's quite a low bar you've set.

I'll start the list with "Top 12 Finalists From American Idol." Pretty damn sure they'd do a better job.

I'd put "Random Individuals Standing Currently at 6th Ave. and 34th Street" next, and go from there.

:-) 

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

cscs, that's the best laugh I've had all week. With our luck, though, you'd catch David Brooks heading up Broadway to his office at the Times. And he'd be walking with Judy Miller.

Well, it's been a shitty week, so we'll take those laughs wherever we can get em!

And yes, just our luck...

I see no reason for Democrats, at least in office, to act like juveniles. They were not going to win this vote. This a point you do not seem to want to acknowledge. It carrriec 80 to 16 in the Senate.

You are proposing cutting off the funds to the troopss and leaving them in the field, Bush has the votes to block any vote with timetables. Therefore all those who want
an Alamo stand are effectively advocating they feeling morally superior at the expense of the troops.

Explain how you desired bill was going to pass?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Daniel, I'm sorry but you have been brainwashed. The TROOPS were not going to stop being paid. Do you have such contempt for the American military that you think ANY commander would leave troops defenseless in the field? All we had to do is stop sending troop transports full of the coward caucus for vanity visits and send troop transports to BRING THE TROOPS HOME.

if you got the goods, lets hear it. i want to see proof.

if you're just attempting to read someone's mind, well then i think it's a bad way to go about discussing things.

It is a little unclear to me how a person without the clout to take a leadership role in the /Iraq War Debacle/ is qualified to be President.

Hillary could not lead due to her inability to build alliances  and Barack does not have enough tenure in the Senate to leverage votes.

That being said leading Congress and the Senate is totally different from leading the nation, otherwise congressional and senatorial experience would be a constitutional requirement for  President and it is not. The only President, I know who had leadership when it came to Congress was LBJ and that was because he had indeed mastered the Senate and knew where the political bones were buried.

A person need not excell in one venue to be exceptional in another. Teachers,  women and mothers understand that different positions require different skill sets and experience.  CEO's typically make poor managers as they often lack team building skills while possessing strong executive skills.

If you truly believe your assertion then there is no one qualified running for President, other than Dodd, which I noted previously. Personally, I know that leading the nation is totally different from the skills needed to legislate and whip representatives for votes in Congress. Nothing unclear about that at all.

They were not going to win this vote.

There's something remarkably funny about this observation, given that the Democrats are now the majority party.

where was Jane Harmon when Bush vetoed the spending bill

Harmon is pro-AIPAC and supports the war...all that about armor is just a talking point for her pro-hawk/Israel stance.

Obama is right, the policy must change, and Bush must be dragged kicking and fear mongering to accept change. Simple logic would support the fact that any policy Bush opposes would work better than what he supports, he has been wrong 100% of the time. This administration of fools, incompetents, law breakers, political hacks and liars does not deserve any more blank checks.

RogerGathman

whiterosebuddy - your analogy about the pet makes no sense. We know who cut the funding - Bush did. He vetoed the funding bill. How clear does this have to be for you? To use your analogy - you run over my pet, then you pick it up and toss it in front of my car and claim that I really ran over my pet because I never liked it in the first place.

In fact, the whole point of sending as bill that Bush would veto was, a., to establish that Bush would cut the funding from the troops if he was forced to deviate an inch from his unpopular plan for the war, and then, b, negotiate the funding with the Republican legislators. That was it. If that wasn’t the point of the strategy, than the Dems are much dumber than I thought. Because they must have known Bush would veto the spending bill. Thus, the purpose must be sought in the a strategy that actually envisions this.

So, let me walk this through with you once again. The 13 percent you keep waving around did not want the army to starve to death, run out of bullets, or like that. Did they think that Bush, vetoing the bill, was proposing to starve the army, run them out of bullets, etc? No. Why? Cause people are smart enough to know that there is no funding emergency. What does that mean? It means that the Dems should have been using the time after the veto to – refuse to negotiate with the White House and negotiate solely with their GOP counterparts in Congress – point out the obvious, that the surge isn’t working – emphasize the increase in the deaths of the military – and lay out some basics of give and take. Basic, I think, is that the funding should be used responsibly. Basic, I think, is that the war should not take the aimless and incompetent course it has been going on for three years. Basic, I think, was building into the funding provisions to make it funding for winding the war up. That doesn’t mean, necessarily, retaining the timetable, but it certainly means retaining the benchmarks and appropriate measures for if the benchmarks aren’t met.

If negotiations with the Republicans, in an atmosphere carefully cultivated by the Dems to reflect their priorities, had not succeeded by Memorial day, then they would have to resume after Memorial day. There was no rush to fund. There was, however, the perfect opportunity to say, the veto defunded the troops, we are funding the troops, we are funding the wind up of the war in a way that achieves those aims we can, leaving behind a structure for the Iraqis to use. In other words, there was synergy between the funding issue and the responsible funding, and the Dems were on the popular side on both. You, on the other hand, simply repeat the Fox news points as if … anybody who was independent or democrat cared. The fox news notion that the Dems defunded the war would certainly be a hit with dittoheads. The rest of America, if the Dems had had one ounce of strategic sense, would blame Bush both for the defunding and the inability to fund responsibly. That’s it.
If you are going to strategize hoping to impress the dittohead crowd, you are going to lose. That is what the dems are doing. And guess what – the one sector of the American population who is least likely to vote dem, the white management type male, is the sector who is overrepresented in the Dem leadership. Because they are attuned to their type, they are scared. But they should get out more. They should learn to make a case. And perhaps they should retire if they can’t take the heat.

Yes, assuming George Bush is to Iraq as red light is to stop/go. But in America that is not the case.

I. F. Stone.  "There were giants in those days. . ."  Thanks for this from him.  I wasn't familiar with it.

aMike

I don't have any particular reference for Fulbright's support of the War at the time of
the Tonkin resolution. I wrote out of my own memory and it could certainly be a false memory..

Easy enough to check into the references to him on the net.

In any event his militancy simply echoed that of the majority of the country , of Congress and of the "Best and the Brightest .

It would be surprising if that weren't the case.
"When will they ever learn".

~

Hmmmm. . . .

if you're just attempting to read someone's mind, well then i think it's a bad way to go about discussing things.

i believe every democratic senator that voted yesterday voted their conscience.

well it's nice to see you hold all democrats to the same set of standards and bash them all accordingly.

i'll get the 0s for defending them.

hopefully you'll get a 5 soon.

Yes, yes, yes! I see your point perfectly. We cannot plan for withdrawal. Let's not even discuss it. Let's just keep drifting along until everything is a complete fiasco and troops are throwing their rifles in the river as they run like hell to scramble onto the last few helicopters, leaving jubilant Mahdi army regulars to dance among mutilated body parts of American GI's.

That's ever so much better. So let's not set any deadlines, and let's not do any planning at all.

Because obviously, that works ever time.

The problem is Congress doesn't have a strong enough pair of reins (yet) to actually pull Bush up short. They didn't have the votes and while people are sick of the war, there's no public consensus on exactly how to make it go away.
What we're left with is the plan I think the Dems are using: bled out the political authority of the Administration through a thousand cuts(U.S. attornies, pre-war intelligence and all the other rocks Congress is trying to flip over).
Remember, as grotesque as it is, the real war is in Washington. Iraq is the sideshow.

This is precisely what Bush says will happen if an exact timetable is created in Iraq. The enemy will wait out the U.S. withdrawal and then attack. You may not care but it is not ridiculous point.

Actually, that is a ridiculous point. Not to belabour this, but here it goes.

In an announced, staged withdrawal, the enemy has no motive to attack because they know that the ground will be theirs without contest. Indeed, there is a great deal of incentive not to attack, because in a planned stage withdrawal, the enemy knows that the defenders will have arranged their defenses to cover their withdrawing flanks, and will therefore meet concentrated firepower.

In an unannounced withdrawal, there is no way for the enemy to distinguish a withdrawal from a collapse or redeployment of forces. In such a case, the only thing to do is to attack, in either to prevent the redeployment of forces to greater effect or to hasten the collapse and prevent possible recovery.

This is not rocket science.

This should do it.

They don't need the votes. It is a war FUNDING bill.  No votes = no funding.  Carve it out of the Department of Defense War.

Let start by saying this "framing" stuff is so much feel good crap to convince oneself that you did not lose for cause.

Bush was not going to sign a funding with a timeline. That is the way it is. The Democrats have promised not to cutoff funding for the troops. (As I noted above perhaps a sign of what is wrong with timelines.) Now we can all argue that it would be Bush not the Democrats who cut off the funding. This is a game of chicken the Democrats can now win especially with both Warner's amendment out them and Petraeus coming back in September to report.

Now in September, when more Republicans will be ready to bail on Bush, it will be time for the Democrats to really squeeze the Republcians in the Congress.

A terrible outcome? It was the obvious and inevitable outcome. That you don't care about winning just being righteous is fine. It seems a bit of a waste of time.

As to your last point probably no officeholders, that is why they get elected, just the people here who would cut off the funds regardless, it won't bring them home unless Bush orders it. Is he going to do that?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

RG

Let's not get testy. Just because you do not understand something does not mean it makes no sense. You previously stated:

There was no question of funding or not funding the troops - the question was about how to fund the troops.

This sounds perfectly logical to you, even though your assertion is contradictory. On one hand you say the question was not about whether to fund or not fund the troop yet you conclude that it was about how to fund the troops. Hmmmm, now how can that be?  Either funding is the subject or not..you can't say how to fund is the focus if you declare that funding is not the question!!

Now let's go one step further and give you the benefit of the doubt, which I did when I gave the analogy of the dead pet, by assuming that funding was indeed the issue. My point is that no matter whether you were speeding when you went through the light or you sped up to make the light..the pet is dead.  In the case of funding that means no matter whether if the bill passed with timetables Bush was going to veto it, so therefore the troops were going to not be funded. In other words if Bush signed the bill the troops were funded if Bush vetoed the Bill they did not receive funds.

 The 13 percent you keep waving around did not want the army to starve to death, run out of bullets, or like that. Did they think that Bush, vetoing the bill, was proposing to starve the army, run them out of bullets, etc?

Umm, this is not me. Perhaps you have my response mixed up with another poster. I've not addressed anything about 13% let alone waved it around. lol

It means that the Dems should have been using the time after the veto to – refuse to negotiate with the White House and negotiate solely with their GOP counterparts in Congress – point out the obvious, that the surge isn’t working – emphasize the increase in the deaths of the military – and lay out some basics of give and take

Awww, back to the how...you are focused on the process and I am asserting that it is the outcome that is important to the voters and once again I refer to the dead pet. Folks, are not interested in how it came about the pet was dead. They are focused on whether the troops are funded or not which is analogous to whether the pet is dead or alive. Which is why in the end, not funding the troops is the worse possible outcome. You simply have a different issue in this fight. The public is focused on the dead pet, and you are focused on penalizing the driver! You want to blame. Blaming is not a political win situation when the victims are the troops! The American public may want Congress to stand up to Bush but they do not support a stance which has the end result of the troops being unfunded...no matter HOW that happens. The Dems get no brownie points if the troops lack funds for any reason whatsoever, i.e. asshole Bush vetoes funding. The troops suffer not Bush.

There was, however, the perfect opportunity to say, the veto defunded the troops, we are funding the troops, we are funding the wind up of the war in a way that achieves those aims we can, leaving behind a structure for the Iraqis to use. In other words, there was synergy between the funding issue and the responsible funding, and the Dems were on the popular side on both

Awww, the ol we have called EMS/vet, we will put the pet on life support we are doing everything we can to save him, but the driver merciless dragged the pet 50yards while talking on the cellphone and having a blood alcohol level of 3X the legal limit.  But we will do everything possible to resuscitate the pet. Don't worry we will put the driver up under the jail. And the only question the public asks is the pet alive. The minute that pet dies all the public says is 'you should not have played chicken with the pets live. You knew from jump the driver had 5 previous DUI's and a kazillion speeding tickets yet you still put that pet in harm's way. What else did you expect to happen?  You killed the  pet!

You, on the other hand, simply repeat the Fox news points as if ..

False. I agree with you yet I also see the political reality. You just have your panties in a knot about a no-win political situation that is basically a case of winning a battle to lose the war. The war is the hearts and minds of the American public versus  a losing partisan battle of Dems vs. GOP when the troops are in harms way.  If the voting electorate had our reasoning there would be no war to begin with because the polls would not have support going after the non-existent WMDs!

The upshot is that what American voters need to get is unless the Democrats have a veto-proof majority in the Congress and Senate in '08 the troops will not be coming home. Our system of government requires them not to just elect just a President who is committed to ending the war but to also send the congressman and Senators to facilitate their will, as well. THAT's the message to the public that Democrats Pelosi and Reed need to be saying. Electing a new President alone will not be sufficient to get our sons and daughters back home.

Bah!

What a crock. The troops will be safer and home faster the moment we announce that plans are being drawn up to withdraw our unwanted occupation troops from Iraq and those plans will be carried out. It couldn't be clearer. I'm sick to death of the hand wringers who can't see the forest for the trees.

I don't want to endorse the Democrats' backing down on a timetable to withdraw from Iraq (I support withdrawal in the absence of any evidence that our continued presence will do any good for the Iraqis)--but I don't think the politics of the vote were as bad for the Democrats as many pundits have claimed. The conventional wisdom seems to be that the Democrats now look weak and even a bit foolish having caved in to Bush. But the Democrats were able to make a statement that they favor withdrawal--a position which most Americans also favor. And they put Bush and his Republican backers in the position of having prevented withdrawal. In the long run, I think this will help the Democrats and hurt Republicans. The continuation of the war is now even more clearly the Republicans' responsibility--and the only reason we are not beginning a withdrawal is because there are still too many Republicans in power to allow the Democrats to prevail. The average American may come to realize that the only way to end the war, therefore, is to remove Republicans from office. This was the conclusion of the average American in 2006. This latest vote may only strengthen the perception that the Republicans are the problem--and lead to an even better result for Democrats in 2008.

All that said, I would still prefer to see the Democrats have a clear, unambiguous policy on Iraq and stand up for that policy firmly and with real conviction.

RogerGathman
White rose - wow, the public wants a result, they don't want a dead puppy. This seems to be your analysis.

Let's see, here you seem to have a little problem about how and whys. Okay, the Congress passed a funding bill. That is both the how and why of funding. So when you say:

"This sounds perfectly logical to you, even though your assertion is contradictory. On one hand you say the question was not about whether to fund or not fund the troop yet you conclude that it was about how to fund the troops. Hmmmm, now how can that be? Either funding is the subject or not..you can't say how to fund is the focus if you declare that funding is not the question!!"

Using your superduper logic, then I guess Bush signed that bill. What? He didn't? He didn't like the conditions attached to the bill? He didn't like how the Congress was funding the war?

My god, I guess he didn't see that, by superduper logic, that wasn't a problem. The public is clamoring for the dead puppy already!

You are simply eliding a fact by calling it a political reality. The political reality, contra you and some of the commentors above, is not that automatic blame goes to the Congress when a president vetos a bill. The analogy with Congress shutting down the gov under Gingrich is off target. For one thing, underneath the rhetoric, Gingrich got what he wanted - Clinton folded on all the issues that counted, like the budget deficit, gutting welfare. But more importantly, that scenario, with the Smithsonian shutting down etc, was not going to be repeated in this funding fight. If Congress recessed without passing a bill, there would be no shutting down of the military. Hence, Whiterose, the question of funding becomes one of how to put conditions on the funding bill.

The strength of the Democratic strategy - if it had a strategy - was to force the President to look like he was putting unacceptable conditions on the funding bill. That's it. His condition was that the bill should fund the war as he saw fit. The Dems should have been emphasizing that the funding, which they had already passed, had good conditions on it leading to the successful windup of the war, and the more competent management of the strategy. That's it.

As for this: "The public is focused on the dead pet, and you are focused on penalizing the driver!" - I don't know what you are talking about. The public was focused and is focused on how to get out of Iraq. If you have evidence that people are now forgetting that the troops are in Iraq, so long as they get paid, bring it on - otherwise, that is complete nonsense. The polls only reveal that the public wanted the coordination of two things:
funding for the troops
the windup of the Iraq war

With the president expanding the war instead, the funding was used - in the first bill that passed - to oversee winding up the war. Your pet analogy, which has made no sense all along, here has to be stuffed and mounted on a shelf. Or let's put it this way - the public wanted to give money to buy a nice cute dog, like a beagle, and the Congress brought them back a savage wolf.

As for this paragraph, it seems like you are still living in 2003:

"I agree with you yet I also see the political reality. You just have your panties in a knot about a no-win political situation that is basically a case of winning a battle to lose the war. The war is the hearts and minds of the American public versus a losing partisan battle of Dems vs. GOP when the troops are in harms way. If the voting electorate had our reasoning there would be no war to begin with because the polls would not have support going after the non-existent WMDs!"

The political reality isn't support for the war. There's no poll that says that. There is an election - in 2006 - that disproves it. And there is going to be a huge price to pay for the betrayal of trust just enacted by the Dems. That's political reality. Name one poll in the last year where there is more support for the war than support for getting out? There isn't any.

In sum, you think that the public wants the troops not to be defunded (check) and that they would blame Congress instead of Bush for the results of Bush's veto of the funding bill. I think that is absurd. The point of the Democratic strategy was to build up a case, using the public disgust with the war, to negotiate a bill with their GOP counterparts in Congress to give Bush a strong bill with, at the very least, binding benchmarks. Agreement to weaken some provisions of the bill should - if the Dems had actually not tried to play this game behind closed doors, but used their resources in the press and gone out talking every day - have made it harder for the GOP to seem reasonable. They didn't do that, the strategy collapsed, they caved, and they are now in a much worse position than they were in in January. Meanwhile, the war is going on unchecked. Moral and political defeat on that order, while they held a winning hand, takes a rare kind of incompetence. Tom Daschleism lives!

As a couple of people have pointed out, Bush could carve the needed funding out of other parts of the budget: environment, eduction, human services, transportation, etc. This vote was only one battle in a war that is just getting going.

Actually, in technical budget language, this is called reprogramming.  And the federal budget receives its appropriation in 13 different acts of congress. (Actually, it is a little different this year as some of them were balled up in a single massive bill because last year's congress never passed all its appropriations)  It is difficult in law to reprogram money across different appropriations bills.  If (as I think might be true) last year the military appropriation bill got passed in time, it is "locked" out to its own money.  The President would be making MAJOR constitutional violations to reprogram against the will of Congress.

~

Think?

I think in the face of all your rhetorical conjectural considerations ...

I like pie ...

~OGD~

So let me get this straight, the pet waited patiently for a green light, then you came along and ran the red light, killing the pet. It wasn’t a cat, was it? 'Cause you know how cats are...:)

The Democrats continue funding a disastrous war so they cannot be blamed for it. Yes, that is so very courageous. And they are protecting our troops by keeping them there? Brilliant. That is “exquisitely crafted.”

but if your goal is to end the war and you're upset with those democrats who were swept into office to do that job, then why are we focussing on obama and clinton?

why is golis focussing on obama and clinton?

why hasn't golis focussed his three little questions on webb, tester, casey and mcgaskill?

because those are the people who voted yes

and those are the people who were voted into office to end the war.

right?

ok.

i think i know the answer why.

it's cause golis is being hypocritical and is more interested in taking shots at the establishment candidates who voted correctly than making an assessment of the statements made by those candidates who voted incorrectly.

Just do me one big favor and don't try to make it seem like we agree with each other.  We DON'T

BIG TIME.  Believe whomever you want to because they said so.  Believe this:  You are not making any sense at all! 

Jan

The situation in DC is: If the Dems push Bush any other way, i.e., the veto-veto-veto-veto thing, the Dems will still have no control over the process of drawdown or withdrawal during this time. That has consequences.

As I mentioned before, the Bush administration has proven itself, beyond any doubt, that, with Democratic imposed timetables and benchmarks (or continuous Presidential vetoes), it is vicious enough to effect drawdown and withdrawal in an incompetent way, yet assign all blame for the subsequent losses on the Dems. Then lots of our troops get hurt, killed or maimed, and in November of 08, the Dems will have no means to win any election and stop any losses at all.

Is this what you want? Do not underestimate the viciousness of Bush & the Torture Party. Our troops are stuck there, for the time.

If you read my links in my above post, you will see that Bush is going to have to pull back and withdraw. The Republicans, themselves, are pushing for that. What the Dems have on their plate is to make sure Bush doesn't redirect the troops into yet another adventure. I trust the funding bill, as passed, will not allow for that.

The situation in DC is that the Dems, who do not have enough leverage to veto the veto, certainly do not have enough leverage to staunch the damages that will occur when they withhold funds.

The veto-veto-veto thing also moves the attention and resources of a fractious bare majority away from that which requires urgent action NOW, and that is the stuff that will prevent Bush and the Torture Party from running all future elections, controlling all aspects of government, plundering the Treasury and depleting the eekonomy. These guys don't do small government. They do autocracy.

With such a slim majority, many of them novices, it is taking the Dems a bit long to collate the material and get the smarts to get things done in time and done well.

Again, read the NYT articles. Here is one passage from one of them: "While Democrats in Congress relented this week and dropped demands to attach a schedule for withdrawal to a bill to finance military efforts in Iraq, White House officials concede that they have bought a few months, at best."

As you can see, it would be suicidal for the troops to hope that the Dems will push the vetoes when the desired action is going to be happening in their favor anyway, in the same time frame. If the Dems did not do as they did, the troops would have no hope of ever getting out of there, over the longer run.

And surely you don't think our troops can be withdrawn, starting now, in a few months! If you think that, you better call up all the generals, because they know otherwise. Just as for a battlefield, the withdrawal from action requires 'shaping.' And, again, that takes strategy.

The Dems deployed a working, workable strategy, and that they did so, despite the squawks of a base that cannot or does not understand this, shows great courage. You bet. They did the right thing. With courage.

Focus is on HRC and Obama because they are the frontrunners.

Duh.

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

This is the whole reason the staff of the administration are professionals.  The President can "order" reprogramming that is illegal, but it requires the cooperation of a cadre of professionals in Treasury.  In this case they would be looking at the CPA status and their potential for going to jail.  They might make it a bit tougher than pushing a button.

The Dems have shown conclusively that they forced Bush's game of chicken, with people's lives, right off the stage & out of the theater. The DC Dems will never treat the troops as pawns. They have done their ever-lovin' to cut the losses, from probable Torture-Party 'legal' murder and bloody carnage to normal (for Iraq). The DC Dems won the scuffle & protected our troops. The DC Dems have enabled more, not less, Democratic leverage to ensure that the entire spectrum of governance is cleaned up before 08. The troops are wholly reliant on the Dems, and the Dems have done them well: They are getting out sooner, not later.

The Dems in DC are not bothered by a 3-percent increase in Bush's popularity so soon betwixt elections. A 3-percent shift in the polls, from lynch-mob abysmal to abysmal, is hardly the thing of fretting concern. I doubt a single DC Dem blinked.

I have never known any autocrat anywhere, domestic or foreign, who has ever had any respect for Americans, and DC Democrats are Americans. The Torture Party is certainly not.

Thanks for the replies. It also seems that it would take the cooperation of the Generals, and here is where I think they (like their comrades that have left service) would finally part company with their CIC. My feeling is that it would never get that far, especially if Congress was also seriously investigating other deliberate abuses of power by the “unitary executive.”

if you believe conjecture and guessing at the motivations of candidates is cool, then fine.

just don't start whining someone starts doing that about edwards.