TODAY WE SEE HOW MANY HOUSE DEMOCRATS REALLY WANT TO END THE U.S. OCCUPATION OF IRAQ AND BRING OUR TROOPS HOME SAFELY

Tony Blair has finally looked reality-- his already huge and growing unpopularity-- in the eye and decided to resign. His political epithet: Bush's poodle. Now that that epithet is up for grabs, quite a few Democrats seem to be, rather bizarrely, vying for it. Both John Arovosis and David Sirota wrote a good posts on the subject today. Sirota's is called Blank
Check Democrats & The Dangers of Becoming A Blank Check Movement.

The House, you may know, is prepared to vote today
on a new short-term Iraq War supplemental bill that includes so-called "benchmark" requirements. After roughly 60 days, the President would be required to submit reports to Congress measuring Iraqi progress in meeting basic benchmarks, and the Congress would then have to vote on whether to approve more war spending based on those reports. This solid proposal, which follows the solid proposal that Bush recently vetoed, is the most basic form of constitutional oversight, yet Republicans and a faction of Democrats are considering voting to strip these requirements out of the bill and thus making it into the literal definition of a blank check.

Sirota isn't surprised that the rubber stamp Republicans learned nothing from the voters last November and continue, lemming-like, to follow Bush and Cheney over the Iraqi cliff. "It is the Blank Check Democrats, however, that raise the tough questions. Here we are six months after an election that delivered the Congress to the Democrats based on the American public's desire to end the war. Here we are at a moment when polls show the public firmly supports the Democratic leadership's effort to enforce accountability on the White House when it comes to the war. And yet here we are, once again at the mercy of a small faction of Blank Check Democrats threatening to essentially overturn the 2006 election's mandate and give the big middle finger to the majority of the American people on the most important national security issue in a generation."

Apparently progressives and others who actually want to end the madness and mayhem in Iraq cut a deal with Pelosi to support this tepid bill if-- and only if-- the leadership would also allow a vote on H.R. 2237, the fully funded bill that would end U.S. occupation of Iraq introduced by Jim McGovern. That bill would only allocate funding towards a military withdrawal, which would begin within 90 days of passage, and would last no longer than 6-months. This is the bill that unites almost all progressives and all Americans who want to see the war end now. This bill isn't going to win. Voting against it, though, should show progressives which incumbents are worth actively supporting-- with energy and resources-- and which incumbents... aren't the real deal. I'll have the votes for you as soon as they're cast.


UPDATE: A MAJORITY OF LEGISLATORS DO SUPPORT U.S. TROOP WITHDRAWAL-- IRAQI LEGISLATORS

The Associated Press just reported that "A majority of Iraqi lawmakers have endorsed a bill calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops and demanding a freeze on the number of foreign troops already in the country, lawmakers said Thursday." The Iraqi bill, introduced into Parliament by a member of Muqtada al-Sadr's party, has 144 co-sponsors. There are 275 members of Parliament. I guess McCain didn't meet these guys when he was out for his shopping stroll/photo op with Lindsey Graham, Mike Pence and Rick Renzi.