House Iraq War Vote

AP reports that Nancy Pelosi expects a House vote on Friday for a $50 billion Iraqi war funding measure that would set a goal of war's end by December 2008, require troop withdrawal to begin immediately, and require troops spend as much time at home as in combat. Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) says the measure sets, "goals instead of guarantees and that makes it a little soft for me."

Rep John Boehner (R-OH) has the expected Republican reaction:

"It's a proposal so backward and irresponsible that it can only be explained as political stunt."

"Our troops need all of the resources Congress can provide to seize upon the tactical momentum they've achieved and eliminate al-Qaida from Iraq's communities once and for all."

The measure is expected to narrowly get through the House and either die in the Senate or be vetoed by George II and sustained in the House. The likelihood of Senate passage is small due simply to procedural processes which will keep it from a vote - cloture. This will, of course, toss the mess right back into the Congress' lap. Push will once again come to shove and by previous behavior a cave in will promptly occur and BushCo will continue to behave as it has and prosecute the war in the face of public opinion. There is an alternative, unlikely but effective, Congress can continue to pass bills slowly tightening the screws on funding each time it is vetoed or not passed in the Senate leaving BushCo with the conundrum of no funding or funding that reflects US public desires.

Congress is afraid of fallout from such a course, memories of Viet Nam and the push back following the de-funding. This is nonsense, the Democrats never paid one cent of political cost for that action, the offended parties would never vote Democratic no matter what course was taken. There is no evidence of any political blow-back from that vote. The noise will come from George II's 28% dead-enders, Christ, himself, couldn't sway them away from their "dear leader." If the Democratic leadership would take a look at the blogs, magazines, newspapers, and TV outfits that back BushCo and the Iraqi war they would see from their other content that there is not a single vote available to them under any circumstances from this bunch. This information is available to anyone who wants to look for it, I guarantee that most left bloggers know where to find it.

So what faces Congress is the choice of whether to insult a group who will not not support Democratic candidates in the 2008 election or 2010 or any other one - not if they behave remotely like Democrats. I have no idea how something this simple and easy to discover if there is any doubt misses the Democrats in Congress. I have repeatedly run the scenario through my mind trying to discover the source of fear in these public servants and cannot get there. No political solution is on even a distant horizon and the only slow down in violence occurs where ethnic cleansing has already occurred. These people have not sorted out their differences and will not sort them out until they are either dead or tired of it and that is not something we can bring about without wholesale slaughter in the first case and not at all in the second. In the second case we provide an additional irritant and target and tamp down the very actions that would finally achieve the first or second cases.

If we "broke it" we have paid sufficiently to consider it "bought." If you want to hold your breath until Congress figures that out, you're going to get very blue in the face; and that may be the only Blue result.