Funding request will be new test for anti war Dems

Thomas Ricks:

President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, a White House official said yesterday, a move that appears to reflect increasing administration confidence that it can fend off congressional calls for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces.

The request -- which would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- is expected to be announced after congressional hearings scheduled for mid-September featuring the two top U.S. officials in Iraq. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker will assess the state of the war and the effect of the new strategy the U.S. military has pursued this year.

The request is being prepared now in the belief that Congress will be unlikely to balk so soon after hearing the two officials argue that there are promising developments in Iraq but that they need more time to solidify the progress they have made, a congressional aide said.

Most of the additional funding in a revised supplemental bill would pay for the current counteroffensive in Iraq, which has expanded the U.S. force there by about 28,000 troops, to about 160,000. The cost of the buildup was not included in the proposed 2008 budget because Pentagon officials said they did not know how long the troop increase would last. The decision to seek about $50 billion more appears to reflect the view in the administration that the counteroffensive will last into the spring of 2008 and will not be shortened by Congress.

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This request will be a terrible political dilemma for Democrat leaders. They cannot deny that the surge is working anymore, but their base is determined to lose in Iraq and will insist that they vote against anymore funding. They put themselves in this box by creating a big lie about the 2006 election being about stopping the war. They compounded the lie by trying to force a retreat in the face of victory. This request will only cause them more heart burn and cause more divisions in their ranks. Politically, the Democrats must be thinking that Karl Rove thought this up to torture them. The fact is they did it to themselves. If they had been patriotic rather than political over the last few months they would not be in this box.