I Think I'm Gonna Puke

WaPo has a story today detailing the impending cave-in of Democrats on Iraq:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 — With a mixed picture emerging about progress in Iraq, Senate Democratic leaders are showing a new openness to compromise as they try to attract Republican support for forcing at least modest troop withdrawals in the coming months.

After short-circuiting consideration of votes on some bipartisan proposals on Iraq before the August break, senior Democrats now say they are willing to rethink their push to establish a withdrawal deadline of next spring if doing so will attract the 60 Senate votes needed to prevail.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said, “If we have to make the spring part a goal, rather than something that is binding, and if that is able to produce some additional votes to get us over the filibuster, my own inclination would be to consider that.”

Yack.

Look at how the media has eaten the "mixed results" meme floated by the administration. By every reliable measure, the results of the escalation in Iraq are anything but "mixed".

Where have Democrats been lately in shooting down this nonsense? Many in the media have actually done a reasonable job in covering the plethora of reports showing that Iraq is a bigger mess than before. Yet where is Pelosi or Reid or any leading Democrats (other than John Edwards) when it comes to amplifying the message?

MIA.

I'm not really surprised. Legislators legislate. And to do so in this case requires the sixty votes and ass-kissing some Republicans. Yet politically this is an awful move. And from a policy perspective they're simply going to take a few bones thrown their way (we'll have 5,000 troops home for Christmas!!!!) that they would have gotten no matter what they did. The war will continue indefinately and the Bush administrations contempt for Congress will be validated.