Democrats plan more hard work on defeat in Iraq

Noam Levey:

Democratic congressional leaders, whose efforts to force a withdrawal from Iraq were stymied last month, plan a summer of repeated Iraq-related votes designed to force Republican lawmakers to abandon the White House before the fall.

At the same time, antiwar groups are expanding their campaign to pressure GOP incumbents in their home states.

Both efforts seek to ensure that anxious Republican lawmakers — many of whom have said they want to wait until September to assess President Bush's Iraq strategy — get no break from the war over the summer.

"The debate on Iraq will continue," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said last week. Pelosi, who in March helped push Democrats to embrace a withdrawal of American combat forces, has pledged that the House will vote on numerous measures aimed at ending the war.

Tom Matzzie, campaign manager for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, the leading coalition against the war, promised an equally unpleasant summer for Republicans whenever they return home.

"Our job is to go into the congressional districts of members and create a political environment that is toxic," he said. "The public is there already. It is really about focusing their anger."

...

Seeking political advantage from the defeat of our military effort in Iraq is a despicable act, but it is evidently at the forefront of the modern Copperheads of the Democrat Party. They should be ashamed. What they are doing is sowing the seeds of their own defeat. They are trying to win for al Qaeda in Washington what al Qaeda could not win on the battlefield in Iraq and they will be giving al Qaeda greater resources for their next attack on US interest. Their passion is based on emotion and not reality as they claim.