Bush Will Veto New Iraq Bill

You have to hand it to the guy, when he wants something, he'll push for it. It doesn't help Democrats when Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a Senate committee that such short-term funding would be very disruptive and "have a huge impact" on contracts to repair and replace equipment. The Defense Department, he said, just doesn't "have the agility to manage a two month appropriation."

The problem is that Democrats are between a rock and a hard place. They want the Iraq war to fail (don't even bother telling me that they don't because they show it in their actions), they want to appease their constituents, but they don't want to appear to not support the troops on the ground. Sooner or later, someone's going to have to give and I don't think Bush is going to be the one to blink first. However, if Democrats said "we'll give you the funds in full, but we want benchmarks" that didn't include a time line, I think that would be a fair enough compromise. You can't set a time line and expect things to automatically calm down. However, if you said "violence must go down say 10% in 6 months" or whatever then start withholding aid to Baghdad, but NOT to the troops on the ground, then you'll start seeing more results.

Put people to work, get basic services up and running, get air conditioning running. These are key to getting people to calm down and report more insurgents. If you threaten to withhold funds from troops, you rightfully earn the title "traitor".

Travis
travis@rightwinglunatic.com