HARRY REID HAS SOMETHING TO SAY TO THE BUSH REGIME'S NEWEST GOP CRITICS: PUT UP OR SHUT UP

With half the country thinking Bush and Cheney should be impeached and with 77% of the country telling pollsters that the occupation of Iraq is going poorly, it didn't take long for cowardly rubber stamp Republicans-- who have supported every single move Bush has made in Iraq from day one-- to start trying to break with him and his policies. The other day we had the spectacle of New Mexico's senile senior senator and former Iraq enthusiast, Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici, telling Bush he could no longer go along with his agenda of endless war. Sneaky Pete was following in the footsteps of craven dogs like Lugar, Voinovich, and Warner. Even Maine's desperately imperiled Susan Collins, who has tied herself to the repulsive pro-war policies of her chief political benefactor, Joe Lieberman, is now starting to make noises that maybe someone ought to take a look at what's been going on over there. (Bad news for Ms. Collins: her opponent Rep. Tom Allen has been looking-- and voting against the Bush-Cheney agenda as consistently as she has been supporting it.)

Tomorrow's NY Times claims that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will see if the purported changes of heart in the GOP senatorial caucus will yield any votes in helping Democrats shut down Bush's catastrophic occupation of Iraq. In other words, is it all talk from Republicans suddenly awake enough to notice that they have virtually no support left in the country-- or will they change deeply-rooted habits and stop the GOP rubber stamp shuffle?

Sensing momentum from the new Republican defections, Mr. Reid and other leading Democrats intend to force a series of votes over the next two weeks on proposals to withdraw troops and limit spending. Democrats are increasingly confident they can assemble majority opposition to administration policies.

“It is going to be harder for Republicans to not sign on to something with bite in it, a clear Congressional assessment that change is needed,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “I think it is more likely there will be a majority around here that say we should begin to redeploy some forces by a certain date, and I hope it would be a larger majority.”

The coming debate will provide a showcase for senators from both parties to debate Iraq war strategy. The four Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate are expected to push their own antiwar proposals and views, and contrast their stances with those of Republicans, notably Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has been among the strongest supporters of the war.

McCain and his Mini-Me (R-SC) have just gotten back from a propaganda trip to the Greed Zone and Lindsey was just gushing all over everyone today about how well the surge is working beyond her wildest expectations. "The military part of the surge is working beyond my expectations," he babbled senselessly. “We literally have the enemy on the run." Did they run here?

Suicide bombings across Iraq killed nearly 150 and injured scores, including a massive truck assault in a northern Shiite village that ripped through a crowded market, officials said Saturday.

The violence came as the U.S. military on Saturday reported the deaths of eight American soldiers over the past two days, all killed in combat or by roadside bombs in Baghdad and the western province of Anbar. A British soldier was reported killed in fighting in southern Iraq.

The worst carnage unfolded in the Shiite Turkoman village of Amarly, 50 miles south of Kirkuk, when a suicide bomber rammed a truck laden with explosives into the central market, which is near a police station, officials said. The attack killed at least 115 people and wounded at least 210, according to district and hospital officials, adding that they expected the death toll to rise.

What a shame McCain, Lieberman and Mini-Me missed the fireworks-- and how fitting it would have been for these 3 lying sacks to suffer the fate of the people whose lives they consistently vote to so blithely destroy!

On Iraq, Mr. Reid has led a 49-to-50 minority as Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who caucuses with Democrats, has sided with Republicans on that issue.

As a result, when Mr. Bush refused to sign an Iraq war spending bill that included a timetable for withdrawal, Mr. Reid, with his counterpart in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saw no alternative in May but to back down rather than open Democrats to charges of cutting off money to troops in the field. The outcome left many Democrats disenchanted.

“Some folks may have anticipated that the war would be stopped the Wednesday after the Tuesday election,” said Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana. “But this is a complex situation that we’ve got in Iraq right now, and I think most of the people understand that we’re going to do the best we can do with what we have to work with.”

Activist groups aligned with the party said they recognized that reality as they put new pressure on wavering Republicans to join with Democrats on the war legislation.

“Senator Reid was not able to get it done, but ultimately it is the Republicans who are obstructing passage,” said Moira Mack, a spokeswoman for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq.

Democrats hoped to drive home that point in the renewed fight, with the annual Pentagon policy measure as the battleground. The leadership has put much of its muscle behind a plan by Mr. Levin and Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, that would order a troop pullout within 120 days of becoming law and require most combat troops out by next spring.

Mr. Reid has also joined Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, in pushing a more confrontational approach that would end spending on most of the combat and significantly limit the role of American forces by early next year.

Another coalition of Democrats led by Senators Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who seeks the party’s presidential nomination, is pushing a plan to rescind the original authorization for the war, though it troubles some Democrats that aspects of that bill could be interpreted as providing new authority for troops in Iraq.

...Though senior Republicans like Senators Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, George V. Voinovich of Ohio and Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico have called for a change in Iraq policy, they have indicated they are not ready to go as far as the Democrats. Two other Republican senators, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, told The Los Angeles Times in interviews published on Saturday that they were disappointed with the administration’s approach in Iraq and that a new strategy was needed.

"Disappointed?" With the administration's approach? Check out Lamar Alexander's approach and check out Judd Gregg's approach. Please-- I beg you-- tell me if there is a better phrase to describe Lamar Alexander's or Judd Gregg's-- or any of the freshly-minted Peacenik Republicans'-- last 5 years of considering the situation in Iraq as "pure rubber stampism." It's as though they all told Dick Cheney that he could vote for them whenever Iraq came up on the Senate floor. And now they're... "disappointed?" How about their constituents? How about the families of the men and women who were killed in Iraq? How about the men and women whose lives are utterly devastated, who are missing limbs and eyes and have incurable brain damage?

No one is going to arrest any of these Republicans or try them or imprison them for what they've done. None will get a fine. The only accountability is at the ballot boxes. And that's why the ones you will see abandoning Bush most publicly will be the ones who have to face voters next year, like Domenici (NM), Sununu (NH), Coleman (MN), Collins (ME), Smith (OR), Warner (VA), and, of course, the disappointed Alexander (TN). If things keep going along this path we'll soon see craven flip floppers like Mitt Romney, Freddy Thompson and Rudy Giuliani looking back through past "rah rah Iraq" speeches for a little wiggle room.