Right Wing Nut House

It appears that the “slow bleed the troops” plan of Representative John Murtha (D-Okinawa) has been withdrawn thanks to the Pennsylvania Congressman’s big mouth. If only Murtha had kept quiet about his cowardly plans to make it impossible for the Pentagon to deploy the troops General Petraeus feels are necessary to the mission’s success by throwing a monkey wrench into readiness and rotation requirements, the Democrats would probably have been able to sneak the amendment through in the middle of the night while no one was watching. Once exposed to the light of publicity, many of his fellow Democrats evidently got cold feet, however.

House Democrats have pulled back from efforts to link additional funding for the war to strict troop-readiness standards after the proposal came under withering fire from Republicans and from their party’s own moderates. That strategy was championed by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) and endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

“If you strictly limit a commander’s ability to rotate troops in and out of Iraq, that kind of inflexibility could put some missions and some troops at risk,” said Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.), who personally lodged his concerns with Murtha.

So what’s a cheese eating surrender monkey to do? Too chicken to vote on defunding the war directly and up front. Too stupid to finesse a comatose President by trying to backdoor a withdrawal through fiddling with deployments and readiness. And actually waiting to see what happens in Iraq as a result of the new strategy is just plain unacceptable.

How about jumping in Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine and pretending that the vote you cast for military action actually said no such thing?

“I’ve had enough of ‘nonbinding,’ ” said Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who is helping to draft the new Democratic proposal. The 2002 war resolution, he said, is an obvious target.

“The authorization that we gave the president back in 2002 is completely, completely outdated, inappropriate to what we’re engaged in today,” he said.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) began calling for a reauthorization of the war early last month and raised it again last week, during a gathering in the office of Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). Participants included Kerry, Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (Mich.), Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), Jack Reed (R.I.) and Russell Feingold (Wis.). Those Democratic senators have emerged as an unofficial war council representing the caucus’s wide range of views.

An “unofficial war council…?” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Try “The Official Surrender to the Terrorists Caucus.” That would be more accurate.

As far as the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), just what, pray tell, would you replace this “completely, completely” legal resolution with?

While these officials said the precise wording of the measure remains unsettled, one draft would restrict American troops in Iraq to combating al-Qaida, training Iraqi army and police forces, maintaining Iraq’s territorial integrity and otherwise proceeding with the withdrawal of combat forces.

The decision to try to limit the military mission marks the next move in what Reid and other Senate war critics have said will be a multistep effort to force a change in Bush’s strategy and eventually force an end to U.S. participation in the nearly four-year-old war.

Hinderaker:

That sounds like a really great idea. If someone plants an IED or shoots at our troops, they can’t fire back until they determine whether the attackers are al Qaeda or garden-variety insurgents.

I have a feeling this trial balloon is not going to get airborne. One good thing, though: the Dems’ Senate leadership is floating this concept in part because they are unhappy with Mad Jack Murtha’s “slow bleed” strategy. Not, of course, because they object to his objective of bringing about defeat; rather, because they think Murtha’s plan could create political liabilities.

In other words, rather than cut our troops off at the knees by defunding the war why not aim the knife slightly higher and castrate the military by saying who they should be fighting and who they should allow to kill them. If a non-authorized enemy fires upon our guys, maybe one of them can call their Representative and get an amendment passed to grant an exception to the new policy.

Yes, yes it’s an exaggeration and wouldn’t really work that way. But can you see our boys landing on Omaha Beach in 1944 and having to get permission to fight Poles, North Koreans, Hungarians, and the other foreign troops the Nazis put into the front lines just because the Declaration of War didn’t mention any of those nationalities?

I agree with John that this is a trial balloon and not a serious proposal. Unless the Dems want to spark a full scale Constitutional crisis, they won’t do it. Ed Morrissey has them pretty well pegged:

Nor are they opting for an honest method of floating this unconstitutional nonsense. The Democrats plan to attach the reworked AUMF as an amendment to a Homeland Security funding bill rather than allow an up-or-down vote on it in the Senate. They want to dare the Republicans to filibuster the spending bill or Bush to veto it if it passes with the new AUMF intact. They’re playing games with the funds necessary to secure the nation during a time of war — and they expect to be taken seriously on how to conduct one?

In the House, the Democrats plan to offer a different plan after the collapse of the Murtha strategy, but it will be just as transparently partisan. They will propose a more straightforward funding bill for the war, but will include a waiver on any deployment readiness restrictions by allowing the Secretary of Defense or the President to certify that unprepared troops will be deployed into battle. It’s a silly and blatantly partisan mechanism, but that matches the Democratic Congress perfectly.

Their entire strategy consists of sneaking around like criminals instead of standing up forcefully and proudly for what they believe. It truly is nauseating.

Fear not, however. Eventually, through the process of elimination, the Democrats will hit upon a strategy that will stop the war, make Bush and the Republicans look even worse than they do now (if that is even possible), while celebrating their “speaking truth to power” by dancing a jig on the Chamber floor…

At the same time that al-Qaeda is dancing a jig in the streets of Baghdad.