I had hoped there might be some sort of rethink going on, but apparently,
the leadership's war strategy is still geared to the next election: they're waiting for 2008.
Let's ignore for a moment what that means in terms of more dollars and lives. Let's just look at the reasoning behind it. It's still based the solely idea of letting the Republicans "own the war" by continuing to fund it.
Having a problem swallowing that logic? So, apparently, was Wolf Blitzer. A hat tip to BTD, who flagged this interview on
CNN yesterday.
BLITZER: Let's talk about the war in Iraq. When you became speaker, you said, "Bringing the war to an end is my highest priority as speaker."
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER: It is.
. . . BLITZER: The war, if anything, is not only continuing, but it's expanding. There's more troops now in Iraq than there were when you became the speaker. What are you going to do about that?
PELOSI: Well, we did, when we took office, we took the majority here. We changed the debate on the war. We put a bill on the president's desk that said that we wanted the redeployment of troops out of Iraq to begin in a timely fashion and to end within a year. The president vetoed that bill.
He got quite a response to that veto, and the Republicans in the Senate then decided he was never going to get a bill on his desk again. So we have a barrier and it's important for the American people to know that while I can bring a bill to the floor in the House, it cannot be brought up in the Senate unless there's a 60 vote, now 60 votes.
Okay, so if you know you don't have the votes in the Senate, then why send any funding bills over there? It's the power of the purse... Good Lord, even Wolf gets it:
BLITZER: So, are you telling your angry base out there in the Democratic Party that wants to see this war over with, wants to see the U.S. troops home, that you, as speaker, there's nothing you can do, you have to just throw your hands up and say...
PELOSI: No. I didn't say that at all.
BLITZER: ... given the legislative problems in the Senate and the president's stubborn refusal to back down, that there's nothing that you can do?
PELOSI: How could you have ever gotten that impression?
BLITZER: All right, well, tell us...
PELOSI: What I have said, for those who pay attention, is that we will hold this administration accountable time and time again for the conduct of this war in Iraq. I have to discuss how we went in on a false premise. That's well-known to the American people. What we do have to do is to show them every step of the way how the president is taking us farther down a path in which it is going to be harder to redeploy out of Iraq, and so whether it is...
The question isn't about how we got here, Madame Speaker. The question is, how are we getting out? Is your entire strategy to wait for 2008?
Who is Speaker Pelosi speaking for? How are Democrats who play politics with soldier's lives any better than what we already have?