Thats our Congress who once again, in the face of tremendous progress in Iraq and changing opinion about the war in general, will once again try and fail to attach time lines for troop withdrawals to the latest war funding bills.
Democrats controlling the House of Representatives will try again to bring American combat in Iraq to an end when it debates legislation this week tying new war funds to troop withdrawals, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday.
The legislation, similar to a bill President George W. Bush vetoed earlier this year, "gives voice to the concerns of the American people" over a war that is now in its fifth year and "with no light at the end of the tunnel," Pelosi, a California Democrat, said.
As early as Friday, the House will debate the plan that would give Bush only $50 billion of the $196 billion in new funds he has asked for to continue fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of the money would go to Iraq.
The House repeatedly this year has passed legislation aimed at ending the Iraq war, only to see it die in the Senate or killed by Bush.
Like the emergency supplemental this will make it through Congress and be killed in the senate or vetoed and then it will go back and be passed without the troop withdrawal language.
Deja vu? Or just a congress that will play that game, with our troops lives, so they can claim, to their far left extreme faction of their party, "we tried" but we failed.
They tried it in March-May, they tried it in July and both times they failed miserably and got embarrassed publicly.
From July:
Haven't we been here before?
Yes. We have. Back in March.
The House and the Senate fought very hard for the emergency supplemental bill to have time lines as well as a ton of pork stuffed into it to buy and bribe votes. The whole time, keeping our soldiers waiting, the house also rejected outright the Out of Iraq Bill with 59 Democrats voting against that one.
So, after being told that if time lines and all that pork stayed in the bill it would be vetoed, the President did just that, VETOED IT.
In a stroke of genius, he even used a pen, for that veto, that a gold star father asked him to use.George Bush vetoed the surrender bill today with a pen given to him by the father of Marine Cpl. Dustin Derga, killed in Anbar May 8, 2005. Robert Derga wanted him to use the pen to sign that bill, and called to make sure he was going to do it.
Then the house, after admitting publicly that they knew they didn't have the votes to override the veto, tried to override it anyway and got spanked because they did not have the two thirds majority of votes, the final vote was 222-203.
The Democrats pitched a fit for a while then sent through a cleaner bill without time lines which the President signed.
So, you see what I mean when I say, we have been here before and the Democratically controlled Senate and Congress have learned nothing because they are going to repeat the same thing over again and we will see the same result again also.
Even the few Republican wobbling defections are not enough to obtain the TWO THIRD MAJORITY that is needed to override the next veto.
Obviously they do NOT learn by repetition and they also are having some simple math problems.
For the record Dems: 2+2=4 and it always will.
Once again, our soldiers wait while the Democratic politicians, like gerbils on the wheel, going round and round, knowing they will get nowhere, just to play political games with our troops funds.
Pollster.com has some interesting graphs showing the change from the decreasing support for our actions in Iraq and showing over the last 10 months an increase in support.
From 2004 to 2007 we saw a continuing decrease in support, a 3 year downward spiral that has not only stopped but in just months has started trending in a upward spiral.
While I've been doing back room work the last two months, some interesting changes have taken place in opinion about the war, the president, congress and the country. It is too early, and the changes too modest, to declare this a "turning point" in opinion, but the changes are consistent enough to take a hard look and ponder if there is still potential for significant shifts over the next 52 weeks until Election Day 2008.
The single most striking shift is the change in opinion about how the war in Iraq is going. After four and a half years of steady downward trends, there has been a reversal of direction since July.
CBS, CNN and Pew have asked "How well is the military effort in Iraq going?" since the war started (with some minor variation in wording. See the details here.) The virtue of this question is its consistent use over time and its summary evaluation of the war.
President Bush's change of policy in Iraq in January, coupling a change of command with a surge of troop levels did not produce immediately positive responses from the public. Likewise the rise in U.S. casualties in the spring following the change in deployment strategy certainly might have been expected to further erode support for the war and for Bush.
But in retrospect the actions have been accompanied by two phases of changing opinion on "how the war is going". From January through June, the long running collapse in positive evaluation of the war (especially in the second half of 2006) halted. The flattening now appears to have clearly coincided with the change in command and troop levels.
This flattening didn't signal rising opinion on the war-- but after dropping over 13 percentage points in six months, simply arresting the collapse was a major plus for the administration. And this is a particularly striking thing given that the spring of 2007 was a focal point for critiques of the war in Congress, with Democratic leadership repeatedly pushing votes that would have required changes in Iraq policy of various kinds. And this flattening came at the same time that casualties rose.
The second phase of opinion change started in early July, when positive evaluations of the war took their first upturn since late 2003 (around the time of the capture of Saddam Husein). The trend estimate has turned up some 8 percentage points since July 1, still not back to early 2006 levels, but remarkable this late in an unpopular war and with a weak leader and determined opposition.
It is also worth noting that this is not just a shift due to "undecided" citizens shifting. The percentage saying the war is going badly also stabilized through the spring and has turned down to about 58%, from a high of 69% at the end of 2006.
The American public are seeing what the Democratic politicians are trying their hardest to ignore.
Progress. Success. The routing of al-Qaeda.
Pelosi herself sidestepped the question when presented to her of whether she thought they had more support for demanding troop withdrawals.... she side stepped because she knows she doesn't, in fact, she has even less support now than the last time she tried this, but making the "attempt", knowing it will fail, is her pathetic way of trying to keep her far left, liberal base happy.
Pelosi sidestepped a reporter's question on whether congressional support for the idea has grown enough to overturn an inevitable veto by Bush.
The fact that she has the lowest approval ratings ever, in her own home state, and that Congress has the lowest approval ratings over all, seems to escape her notice.
I wonder if Reid will give us the spectacle of another all nighter?
We all know how well THAT worked out for him:
The headlines tell us exactly how the Democratic leadership is being and will be portrayed in the MSM, in the weeks to come, or maybe for the years to come.
The NYT- "Democrats Fail to Force Vote on Iraq Pullout"
Another NYT Article headline- "Democrats Lack Support to Force Vote on Pullout"
Wapo Headline- "Senate Rejects Troop Withdrawal Measure"
Those are just a few and make a good example. The Democrats are known as "failures" that stage "political stunts" while ignoring our Veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
So, while our soldiers wait, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will play political games with their funds, trying to force withdrawal while things are looking so promising in Iraq, that they couldn't even force when things were going badly in Iraq.
Pelosi understands that progress in Iraq is bad news for the party of defeat that have bet everything on America's failure and she is doing nothing more trying to rip the rug from under our troops feet for no other reason that they are doing the unthinkable in her eyes... they are winning.
The Definition of insanity is when you do the same thing, over and over and over and over again and expect a different result.
I guess they really are insane.
Linked by Weekly Standard...Thanks!!! Welcome WS readers.
[Update] Speaking of Weekly Standard, they point to recent comments showing Steny Hoyer, Democrat, has admitted to great success in Iraq.
I wonder how that is going over with the Pelosi portion of the party?
.