Bush Daring Dems on Iraq

"'The Congress has control over the purse strings,' said Cheney, who on most other occasions insists upon the executive's supremacy over Congress. In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer last month, Cheney added: 'They have the right, obviously, if they want to cut off funding, but in terms of this effort the president has made his decision. . . . We'll continue to consult with the Congress. But the fact of the matter is, we need to get the job done.'"

Bush himself has also endorsed this view. In an interview with members of the Wall Street Journal editorial board last week, Bush for once actually championed Congress's constitutional authority to flout him in matters of war.

"WSJ: There's a lot of discussion in Congress about putting caps on troop levels or defunding or saying you can't deploy, as commander in chief, troops in Baghdad. Do you think Congress has the constitutional authority. . . .

"GWB: I think they have the authority to defund, use their funding power. . . .

"WSJ: You do?

"GWB: Oh yeah, they can say 'We won't fund.' That is a constitutional authority of Congress."

And while many Democrats seem skittish about challenging the president on funding, fearing it would play into his hands, one exception is Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russell Feingold, who had this to say on MSNBC last night: "[M]y concern on the Democratic side is, we're being too timid. We've got to take on this war directly."

Feingold says the public wants "legislation that says that here's a time frame during which this war needs to end, let's say six months from the enactment of the bill, and that the Congress is going to cut off the funding for the war.

"If we, as Democrats, don't start talking like that, and respond to what the public really thinks, then we're only going to have ourselves to blame for the Republican ability to sort of finesse this and massage it. . . .

"[T]his idea that somehow we're going to take away something from the troops that are there already, that's just not true," Feingold said. "Our proposal is that the troops will be out of there. That's the safest thing for the troops is to not be there.

"And that's what our proposal would do. It wouldn't take away their equipment. That's just one of the red herrings or phony arguments that the Republicans use, and usually effectively scare the Democrats into not standing up for what is right, and that is to end this mistaken war and get back to fighting the real issue, which is those that attacked us on 9/11."

First Benchmark Missed?

Here's a story that has gotten almost no attention whatsoever: The Iraqi government appears to have failed to achieve the very first concrete benchmark that White House officials announced as part of the new combined US-Iraqi security push in Baghdad.