It is normally the president who provides the leadership for American foreign policy and decides when there needs to be a change of course.  But Mr. Bush stubbornly refuses to do either, and the country cannot afford to wait out the rest of his term.  Given Mr. Bush's failure, Caongress has a responsibility to do all it can to use Washington's remaining leverage to try to lessen the chaos that will likely follow an American withdrawal--no matter when it happens--and to ensure that the credibility and readiness of the United States military is preserved.

...The Pentagon and Mr. Bush have clearly failed to protect America's ground forces from the ever more costly effects of extended, accelerated, and repeated deployments.

If Iraq's leaders were truly committed to national reconciliation and reining in their civil war, there would be no need for benchmarks or deadlines.  But they are not.  If Mr. Bush were willing to grasp Iraq's horrifying reality, he would be the one imposing benchmarks, timetables, and readiness rules.  He will not, so Congress must.  American troops should not be trapped in the middle of a blood bath that neither Mr. Bush nor Iraq's leaders have the vision or the will to halt.
--"Congress's Challenge on Iraq," New York Times editorial, March 22, 2007

I hope the Democrats, under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, keep pushing to set a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq, because they are providing two patriotic services that the Republicans failed to offer in the previous four years:  The first is policy discipline.  Had Republicans spent the previous four years regularly questioning Don Rumsfeld's ignorant bromides and demanding that the White House account for failures in Iraq, we might have had the surge in 2003--when it was obvious we did not have enough troops on the ground--rather than in 2007, when the chances of success are much diminished.

Because the Republicans controlled the House and Senate, and because many conservatives sat in mute silence the last four years, the administration could too easily ignore its critics and drag out policies in Iraq that were not working.  With the Democrats back in Congressional control, that is no longer possible.
--"The Troika and the Surge," Thomas Friedman, New York Times, March 21, 2007


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has damn near worked a miracle of diplomacy, negotiation, and old-fashioned, hard-ball politics, pushing through a major, binding resolution in the House of Representatives that sets benchmarks on the Iraqi government and deadlines for compliance, as well as accountability from the White House.

It's a good bill, and it doesn't matter if Bush vetoes it--the point is that the Democrats have taken a stand on reasonable, common-sense measures designed to bring this war to an end, but in a way that is not precipitous. 

In other words, nobody is saying that we'll put the troops on supersonic jets and fly them home tomorrow.  In fact, the 18-month timeframe laid out by the Democrats actually dovetails with what top generals at the Pentagon have been saying plaintively for months now, and that is that the American military cannot sustain two major war fronts for very much longer than that anyway.  They don't have the troops--especially combat-ready--they don't have the equipment, and they no longer have the will.

The Republicans can blather all they want about "retreat and defeat," but the truth is that the U.S. Army and Marine Corps are stretched so ridiculously thin right now that they no longer have any strategic reserve forces--they're all in Iraq.  If a hotspot flared up anywhere in the world, we would have to pull troops out of Iraq in order to deal with it, and we have never, ever been in this bad of a bind.

So what the Dems propose makes sense, and that's why all the conservative Democrats, all the moderates, and a majority of even the far-lefties voted for this plan, along with two very brave Republicans:  Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland and Walter Jones of North Carolina, God bless 'em.

(By the way, before I say more, I would like to make it perfectly clear that MoveOn.org was NOT "bitterly divided" on this issue, as has been repeatedly reported in the press.  The truth is that the organization polled its membership, and found that EIGHTY-SIX PERCENT were in favor of voting FOR the resolution.  ONLY SIX PERCENT WERE OPPOSED, and the rest were undecided.  How, exactly, is that "divided"????)

Anyway.  Here are the key provisions of the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veteran's Health, and Iraq Accountability Act:

1.  More than six months ago, Bush set "benchmarks" for the progress of the Iraqi government.  Nothing happened.  Nothing likely will happen.  In the Democratic resolution, THOSE SAME BENCHMARKS have been set up, only this time, the Iraqi government has to begin to show some progress toward meeting those benchmarks over the next six months, and if they do not, then they must understand that we will begin withdrawing our troops whether they're ready for us to leave or not.  Such benchmarks include:
            a.  requiring that the Iraqi govt. stop shielding and encouraging the Shiite militias that are helping drive the killing.  U.S. and Iraqi security forces must be allowed to pursue all extremists of all sects and disarm sectarian militias.
           b.  insisting that the Iraqi govt. take measurable steps toward such promises as equitably distributing oil revenues (to include the mostly-Sunni Anbar province), opening up more political and economic opportunities to the Sunni minority and amending the constitution to discourage more fragmentation--all of which the Iraqis promised to do MORE THAN A YEAR AGO.

2.  Bush will be held accountable, by providing to Congress, by July 1, a detailed report on Iraq's efforts to meet those benchmarks.  By October, if Iraq has not completed specific legislative and Constitutional steps, we will begin withdrawing our combat troops.  If the benchmarks are met, our troops will remain until the fall of 2008.

3.  Bush has to answer for sending troops who have not had proper time to train and arm themselves.  Units sent to Iraq have to be certified combat ready, and if they are not, Bush is to publicly declare that troops are being deployed who don't meet readiness standards.  Furthermore, the deployments will be limited to 365 days for Army and 210 days for combat tours for the Marines.

4.  The Democratic plan allows for enough troops to remain in Iraq to continue training Iraqi forces and to conduct counter-terrorism missions--NOBODY IS SAYING ANYTHING ABOUT BRINGING THEM ALL HOME WILLY-NILLY.  

5.  Included:  $1 billion for mental health services and brain injury care for Iraq soldiers and veterans, $2.5 billion for training and equipment for military reserves, $123 million more than Bush requested to armor vehicles and upgrade other equipment headed to Iraq.


I think Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn) put it best when he said, "What we're trying to do with this legislation is force the Iraqis to fight their own war."

Although the violence in Baghdad has shown some reduction due to the surge, the truth is that, as Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del) put it, "It's the water balloon effect.  You squeeze one end of the balloon, and the water's just going to be redistributed to the other end." 

In other words, the Diyala Province has been the site of horrendous bombings in recent weeks--including three using chlorine gas that sickened hundreds and killed even some American troops--the town of Basra, recently vacated by the British troops, has degenerated into a state of tribal warfare between rival Shiite sheiks and their followers, and the Sunni Province of Anbar--always the bloodiest area of the whole war--has exploded with pitched battles between moderate Sunni sects and Al-Qaeda sympathizers who want to take over the province.

And all is not as it seems in Baghdad.

For one thing, although the Iraqi Army troops that were promised did actually show up, they simply don't fight.  Some of them, Americans say, have never even fired their weapons. 

"It's because the Iraqi Army is so scared that we have to come here to die," said one frustrated American soldier on his third deployment to a reporter.  "Bush should send all the Death Row prisoners here and they can be killed fighting the terrorists.  We've had enough," said another soldier.  "Bush can come fight here.  He can take my $1,252 a month and I'll go home."  (reported by Bryan Pearson.)

For another, the numbers are not what they seem.  The claims by Iraqi and American forces that the body count is going down in Baghdad are true...but only to a point.  In fact, the Baghdad Morgue has been instructed to COUNT ONLY THE UNIDENTIFIED BODIES.  The truth is that MANY MORE ARE ID'ed AND PICKED UP BY THEIR FAMILIES, BUT NOT INCLUDED IN THE OFFICIAL BODY COUNT.

As one NPR reporter on the ground put it, "Reality often gets in the way of rhetoric here."

I would flip that, when referring to the White House, and say that, when it comes to the White House war-addicts and their Republican enablers, rhetoric often gets in the way of reality.

Already, the howling is already underway.

Bush is claiming that, by setting conditions on the war-appropriations bill--WHICH IS ADDED TO THE HALF-TRILLION ALREADY SPENT IN IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN BY THIS ADMINISTRATION, NONE OF WHICH HAD ANY ACCOUNTABILITY WHATSOEVER--we will put the troops on the ground in dire jeopardy.  They won't have the equipment they need and the military will be in desperate straits by April 15.

Bullshit.

Has this White House MADE ONE SINGLE SOLITARY CLAIM ABOUT THIS WAR THAT HAS NOT BEEN A MANIPULATIVE LIE?

Second, they're screaming about pork-barrel projects added to the budget.  Well, if you want to call disaster relief that the congresspeople in those districts have been begging for for months--drought relief in Colorado, saltwater-flood relief on the Gulf left over from Katrina, and so on, then yeah, I guess you could call it "pork."  These are not, however, bridges to nowhere.

What they are is sweeteners, designed to bring over those who were wavering.  Hard-ball politics, Tom Delay style.  It just shows Pelosi has brass ones too.

But the bottom line is that this is a sensible bill, designed to restore desperately needed accountability to a White House run amok by a cowtowing Republican Congress and an easily-manipulated media.

Back when the Constitution was framed, the early Americans had seen all they cared to of out-of-control royal families taking the peasants to war over trifles and land, waging endless bloody campaigns to conquer yet more territory and riches for the crown. 

The men who shaped this government set up a system by which the United States congress had a legal, constitutional right to restrict a president from waging war whenever, wherever, and however long he wanted to.

What the Democrats are doing, as my active-duty Iraq veteran Marine son said, "Should have been done four years ago.  If it had been, we wouldn't be in this mess."

And I think that just about sums it up.