SENATE FIGURING OUT HOW TO LOOK LIKE THEY'RE ENDING THE WAR WITHOUT ACTUALLY DOING ANYTHING TO END THE WAR OR GET CHENEY TOO MAD AT THEM

It's no longer a matter of if American troops are leaving Iraq but when. And it will probably be sooner than any Neocon war criminals ever imagined. But even the Bush Regime can't be impervious to the clear will of 70% of the population of the country. How long can senators and congressmen who have now publicly denounced the Iraq disaster keep voting to sustain it? We'll see later in the week.

Meanwhile almost everyone in Iraq is ecstatic. Almost everyone? Yeah, the collaborators are frantic. It's all over for them. I'm sure Bush will find a place for the top few hundred Quislings but there were thousands of Iraqis collaborating against their country who will be left to face the consequences. Those are the ones-- the only Iraqi voices we hear in America-- who are caterwauling about the pullout.

Politicians from Iraq's major parties and ethnic groups said Monday that Iraq's government could collapse, plunging the nation into full-blown civil war and sparking regional conflict, if the United States were to begin withdrawing troops too quickly.

The Bush Regime puppet playing the role of Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who is freaking out because Turkey could take matters into its own hands in northern Iraq (Kurdistan), is warning that when the U.S. pulls out there "could be civil war, dividing the country, regional wars and the collapse of the state." I think he's referring to the Green Zone, because the rest of Iraq already is all that. Iraqi politicians, eager to save their own necks, are claiming the U.S. must stay for the sake of the Iraqi people. And, of course, the Bush Regime is encouraging them.

This morning's Washington Post outlines how Senate Democrats will try to move Republicans who have denounced Bush's Iraq policies to actually vote against them, no easy matter. "In a new series of votes on Iraq expected to begin today, Democrats will attempt to break the united Republican front that has sustained Bush and make their toughest push yet to enact firm dates for bringing the war to an end. So far, antiwar Democratic leaders appear unwilling to look for much compromise."

They are even skeptical of a proposal that just months ago would have seemed a daring challenge to Bush: to turn the Iraq Study Group's recommendations into official policy and call for removing troops from combat in 2008. The plan, sponsored by Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), has attracted support from several GOP senators. But Democratic leaders are reluctant to allow it into the mix because it does not include specific terms for a withdrawal of U.S. forces.

"We have an opportunity in the next couple of weeks to truly change our Iraq strategy," said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "For those Senate Republicans who are saying the right things on Iraq, they must put their words into action by voting with us to change course and responsibly end this war."

Last night, after conferring with Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) said that she would consider voting for binding troop-withdrawal legislation -- the third Republican to do so, after Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Gordon Smith (Ore.).

But most Senate Republicans, even those under intense political pressure in their home states, indicated last night that they are not prepared to embrace such binding time restrictions.

The most cowardly and craven of the Republicans, the Sununus and Colemans and Collinses-- who have been consistent rubber stamps but are in states with humongous majorities opposed to the occupation-- are afraid that if they vote against Bush, rather than just run their mouths, the Republican base will desert them. Coleman is already facing a challenge from a most extreme right winger than he is. "Three long-serving Senate Republicans have publicly repudiated Bush's Iraq strategy: Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), George V. Voinovich (Ohio) and Pete V. Domenici (N.M.). But like other Senate GOP war critics, including John W. Warner (Va.), none is endorsing a stipulated troop withdrawal." As Brent Budowsky wrote this morning in the Hills' "Pundit's Blog," Bush is obsessed with his insane policies in Iraq and he's "poised to humiliate Senate Republicans yet again-- and Senate Republicans, with only a few exceptions, are poised to accept this new humiliation and say, yet again: Yes, boss."

From the minute George Bush planned to let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora by diverting our military to his obsessive hunger for the Iraq war, the conduct of Republicans in the Senate has been one of the most morally shameful abdications of conscience and duty in the history of the American Congress.

On Iraq, George Bush is trapped in his own private Guantanamo, a detainee of his personal and uncontrollable obsession about this war, no matter what the truth, no matter what the cost, no matter what the consequences.

At every single step of the way towards this catastrophe, the Senate Republicans marched in lockstep, at first blinded by their power in controlling the Senate, and then blinded by their fear of standing up to the man most of them know is deadly wrong, about this deadly war.

On Iraq, George Bush’s vision is that America should be held hostage to whatever darkness governs his spirit on this war that should never have been fought.

Democrats never mattered in the war world of George W. Bush. He is the only American president in our history who used war itself as a partisan political weapon rather than an effort behind which our country could rally.

In George Bush’s world of war, he was never the president of the United States, he was the decider, the commander guy, the child who said bring ‘em on.

Budowsky ends with a warning: "If the Senate Republicans submit yet again to what they know is deadly wrong, they will be standing alone, with George W. Bush, against the entire free world, against their own private conscience, and they will suffer an epic landslide defeat in 2008 and will be convicted forever in the high court of history." They are looking for a middle way, not a real solution but one that looks like a solution, especially to low-info voters back home. Meet the Salazar "plan." Salazar's proposal suggests Bush pay more heed to the Iraq Study and doesn't do much to really end the war or occupation. But it's the only one Republicans are willing to get behind. It has 6 rubber stamp Republican co-sponsors. It's something that, in a pinch, even war-mongers like Lieberman, McCain, Graham, maybe even Cheney, could support. Reid is insisting Salazar "put some teeth in it." Basically, it will be another delaying tactic.