Via Allahpundit, Spencer Ackerman – as vociferous and intemperate a left-wing war opponent as you could hope to meet – reports from Iraq that yes, the troops want to stay and finish the job: The truth of the matter, however,……

A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention….

And here it is. Murtha is just one of many Democrats attempting to regain the support of a Democratic base that feels betrayed by the Congressional Democrats surrender on their, uh, bid to surrender. I suppose I should be amused……

Time for the lefties to load the Birkenstocks into the Subaru and drive to France.

Sven on May 25, 2007 at 2:07 AM

I’ll drink to that: once they arrive in Fwance, it’ll be a matter of days before their Subaru gets torched by nondescript “youths” that just happen to be adherents of Islam.

Chirac’s legacy (average of 100 cars every night torched by Islamic radicals, OFF scandal, and pandering to Ahmadinejad and Saddam) almost rivals Bill “sorry, missed that, was too busy with Monica” Clinton.

As for the rest of it, I remain convinced that the multinational political Left hates the West so deeply that it will whore off to anyone that will make the West – and in particular, the United States – crumble. The only problem for them is, I suspect they have no idea that when Stalin referred to “useful idiots”, he was looking right at them.

By sheer dint of numbers and resources, though, the only winner in their madness, in the long term, is China.

That’s not the trendline you get from the Associated Press, however.

The WaPo is picking different time periods for each — as well as mixing Baghdad numbers with Baghdad+selected provinces numbers with nationwide numbers — to get maximum antiwar spin.

Meaning: you have to kill as many jihadists as possible before you hand the mess back to the mostly useless, sectarian-poisoned, anti-democratic Iraqis, then move most of the Coalition Forces to the Kurdish area, protect the oilfields, and prepare to take out the Iranian nuke program.

Merely “leaving” (redeploy to Okinawa, etc.) would give the enemy (jihadists of all stripes) irrational encouragement.

We need to be killing our way out of this war zone.

And preparing for the next battlefront.

Since the Jihad will come at us from other members of this violent “faith”.

Because recruiting new militant suckers of Allah, via “Muslim Warrior” web sites, goes on everywhere, daily.

The propaganda war against the homicidal dogmas of Islam hasn’t even begun yet.

Which is the more important part of this conflict.

We need to know two things:

Paper Tigers get burned.

And the Jihad is the heart of Islam.

I think the republicans who voted no were because of pork in the bill

NAYs —14
Boxer (D-CA)
Burr (R-NC)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coburn (R-OK)
Dodd (D-CT)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Obama (D-IL)
Sanders (I-VT)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)

And this

“Though I loathe this decision to fund the war, I will not take out my feelings against the troops in the field,” said Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who voted against authorizing use of force in Iraq in October 2002. “Our soldiers should never be bargaining chips in this debate.”

Durbin was joined by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chair of the Armed Services Committee, who also voted against going to war nearly five years ago.

“I cannot vote to stop funding our troops who are in harm’s way,” Levin said. “It is not the proper way that we can bring this was to an end. It is not the proper way that we can put pressure on Iraqi leaders.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=3210851&page=3

The next spending battle may come in July or in September at the very latest, after Petraeus gives his progress report.

It’s all a moot point. Pelosi may not even attend the meetings, and the drive-by’s will NOT report anything good from Iraq, no matter what Petraeus says. They just won’t…the democrat party will not allow it.

You can bet your house on it!!

Iran and Al Qaeda are using this to bleed us dry. Soon we will be at that point where even if we win, we lose.

If the Democrats could show me realistically how withdrawling from Iraq would be part of a “shift” of assets to allow us to “counterattack” and take the fight to the enemy elsewhere (Iran, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Somalia, Dearborn Michigan) then I’d consider supporting the idea. Instead they just whine about how “we lost” and things are hopeless…

(Heck. I have trouble with moonbat-ese.)

For soldiers like Lieutenant Wellman, [withdrawing from Iraq] will be hard to accept. As he told me of war doubters back home, “I don’t want them to just support the troops. I want them to support the mission.” This matters, because pretending that in ending the war they’re doing the troops a favor hurts Democrats politically. They risk looking condescending, and, worse, oblivious—which has the broader effect of undermining public trust in the Democrats to handle national security. More basically, it does a disservice to those who serve. For soldiers who are optimistic, being told that the war can’t be won is bad enough. But to be told that politicians are doing them a favor by extricating them from a mission they believe in is downright insulting.

But the Dems don’t care about insulting their “inferiors.” After all, someone who takes that “duty, honor, country” nonsense cannot be anything but mentally handicapped. We must protect the retards troops! /leftist

For many of the liberals, an entirely-different maxim applies, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and their main enemy is not in the Middle East.

Well, that does explain why the journalist from CNN (Ware, I think) said this whole debate about Iraq seems surreal knowing the consequences of a withdrawal.

My mom told me today that one of my nephews–a fourteen-year-old–says that if the war is still going on when he becomes of age, he will enlist and expressed very adult reasoning for the decision. Young Julian has occasionally had discipline problems, but is very intelligent.

There is hope for the younger generation.