Webb defends Iran, House caves on Iraq

According to Christina Bellatoni of the Washington Times, freshman Senator Jim “Snippy” Webb is about to introduce legislation to prevent the President from defending us against Iran;

Freshman Sen. James H. Webb Jr. yesterday introduced legislation to force President Bush to seek congressional authorization before using force against Iran.
    Democratic leaders, who indicated general support for the Virginia Democrat’s plan last week, are still deciding whether they will attach it to an upcoming spending bill.
    “This presidency has shot from the hip too many times for us to be able to trust it to act on its own,” said Mr. Webb, a decorated Vietnam veteran who won a hotly contested Senate race last fall in part because of his opposition to the Iraq war. “We need the Congress to be involved in any decision to commence military activities absent an attack from the other side or a direct threat.”

Yeah, the Democrats have proven themselves so valuable in this war against terror that we need them to distinguish the events in Iraq from the events in Iran. Like I’ve said, it’s the same war – just like Cambodia was the same as the war in Vietnam. The Left kept us from cutting off the NVA from their supplies in Cambodia with their incessant chatter about “illegal war” and so on. Are they planning to get more US troops killed by preventing us from ending the threat from Iran, just so we can see this;

 

While Webb is busy shielding his allies in Iran, the cut-and-run Democrats in Congress are busy working on another half-wit scheme to hamstring the president in Iraq. Since they can’t summon the testicular fortitude to come right out and defund our efforts, the Washington Post reports that;

Senior House Democrats, seeking to placate members of their party from Republican-leaning districts, are pushing a plan that would place restrictions on President Bush’s ability to wage the war in Iraq but would allow him to waive them if he publicly justifies his position.

Under the proposal, Bush would also have to set a date to begin troop withdrawals if the Iraqi government fails to meet benchmarks aimed at stabilizing the country that the president laid out in January.

The plan is an attempt to bridge the differences between anti-war Democrats, led by Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), who have wanted to devise standards of troop readiness strict enough to force Bush to delay some deployments and bring some troops home, and Democrats wary of seeming to place restrictions on the president’s role as commander in chief.

So what kind of magic bullet do they craft?

The new plan would demand that Bush certify that combat troops meet the military’s own standards of readiness, which are routinely ignored. The president could then waive such certifications if doing so is in “the national interest.”

Democrats hope the waiver and benchmark proposals, whose details were confirmed by aides and senior Democrats close to the House Appropriations Committee and leadership, will keep the policymaking responsibilities on Bush. That should allow the committee to move forward next week with a $100 billion war spending bill.

Since the Democrats can’t even agree on the single issue that they believe got them in office, they’re punting. Probably because they’re coming to realize that it wasn’t their opposition to the war and the president that got them into office at all. Or maybe it’s because they never had a plan to end the war until the last three plans since January.

They were too busy gloating, partying and attacking the President’s every word to actually put a moment’s thought into what their policy would look like. Now they have to cobble together SOMETHING…ANYTHING to save their stupid faces.

Category: John Murtha, Politics