Let's see if we can bottom-line this whole "How can we get congress to bring our troops home?" thing.
Congress has the following perogatives/powers that can be used to try to achieve this goal:
Deny Funding
This would require that the Dem leadership only allow funding bills that fund the war (occupation) with a phased redeployment with a date-certain timeline attached. Of course this will be filibusted by the senate, and even if the filibuster is over-ridden (or the Dems take the "nuclear option" and revise the senate rules to elinminate the filibuster, as the Repubs threatened to do a couple of years ago), this will still face certain veto by the President. We can continue this process over and over.
This will effectively defund the war when the currently authorized funding runs out. Of course that assumes that Bush can not or will not "appropriate" funds from other government programs. If he can, he will. Then the only option would be to not pass ANY funding bills, which would shutdown the government (the Repubs did this twice in the 90's). Not a good way to get in the public's good graces, and would provide a wonderful election year talking point for the Repubs. Kos has suggested incremental, one month funding bills, but in my view this would just keep kicking the can down the road and not accomplish much other than more talk. My analysis: Aint gonna happen.
Impeach
This has been discussed ad naseum. My analysis: Aint gonna happen.
Other Bills to Restrict the Availablity of Troops
See "Dwell Time Amendment - Webb". Aint gonna happen.
Let's see, deny/restrict funding, impeachment, bills to restrict troop availability...
As far as I am aware that is the extent of the Dems arsenal. All of which have been attempted (multiple times) and failed. So what's a good progressive Dem to do? Well some agrue that the congressional Dems can at least position themselves to place blame at the Repubs feet next year. O.K., valid talking point, but isn't that patently obvious already to anyone paying attention? I think we have reached the point of diminishing returns on educating the public on this. Most polls I have seen show that the folks who have shifted to the Dem camp have already done so. The numbers have not changed in some time. The 25-30% that still support this war are dead-enders.
The war/occupation will continue until 2009. Even if we could "force" the start of a troop redeployment today, the Department of Defense has admitted they don't have a plan to accomplish that. We need to have a plan ready to go on 1/20/09. Our Dem leaders should start focusing on a detailed plan for redeployment and make that part of their talking points now (not just "bring the troops home", or "redeploy to surrounding areas"). I want to know where the troops will be, how many, and how will we be engaging other countries and allies to achieve a diplomatic solution. Lets be ready to actually accomplish something and hit the ground running in 2009.
More and better Dems in 2009!