Pirate's Cove

I reckon Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are learning that being the Majority leaders and satisfying the Kook Fringe base (which is really almost running the party) is not so easy.

Senate and House Democrats yesterday announced competing legislation that for the first time would set deadlines to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq — by fall 2008 — provoking a veto threat from the White House.

The House bill calls for U.S. troops to start pulling out of Iraq by March 2008 and complete the withdrawal within 180 days, or by September — less than two months before the elections for president, the House and a third of the Senate. 

The Senate bill requires a "phased redeployment" of forces from Iraq with the goal of a complete withdrawal of combat troops by March 2008.

Now, there is plenty more to read in that Washington Times article, such as General Petraeus being the commander on the ground in Iraq, not Nancy Pelosi, and these pieces of legislation being pure political fodder, but, let's skip ahead to another Washington Times story

For all the fanfare surrounding the announcement of the House Democrats' Iraq war plan, few members seem to understand the specifics in the bill or when it would actually bring troops home. 

The confusion added a layer of comic relief to a tense debate between factions of the Democratic Party as groups held dueling press conferences yesterday. 

Rep. Maxine Waters, California Democrat, of the Out of Iraq Caucus could hardly keep the details straight as she attempted to excoriate the plan proposed by her Democratic leaders. 

"What they say is, if in fact there is no progress that we will pull out, if they can't certify by October, by December, but if there is progress, if they are doing well, we will stay," she said. "This would eventually get us out perhaps by March. The latest we would get out I guess with another progress report, or certification, by August of 1980." 

Come again?

While the story continues on in that vein, with confusion from the Democrats and reports, undercutting the "humorous" tenor, we see that Democrats do not even know what is being proposed by the leaders, which is just more legislation designed to hopefully satisfy the kook fringe base, Blue Dog Democrats, and wishy washy Republicans, without seeming to call for surrender in Iraq to the American people. Democrats seem to miss the point that yes, Americans want the Iraq operations done. They want our troops home. They also want them home from Germany, but, that is a different story. If the polls were take to break it down into "leave immediately" and "leave with victory," I'm betting that the latter would win out.

Which leads to an Opinion Journal commentary

The meltdown among House Democrats over Iraq is rightly being described as the first big test of Nancy Pelosi's leadership. It's also an early example of just how much political damage the antiwar left is capable of inflicting on their new speaker. (much more discussion, worth the read, which leads to)

The message to Ms. Pelosi is that she'll have to cobble together a victory from within her own party. Toward that end, she and appropriations chief David Obey have already turned to good-old-fashioned bribery. There is talk that the $100 billion "war" supplemental will include an extra $20 billion in goodies. At least $4 billion would be emergency agriculture spending aimed at Blue Dog southerners for their struggling farmers back home. A huge dollop would go to children's heath care, Katrina and homeland security. And to provide further coverage against accusations that Democrats don't support the troops, there's billions more for veterans and troop health care. So much for Ms. Pelosi's promise of fiscal discipline.

The joke is that even if Ms. Pelosi can buy the moderate wing to her side, her proposal still might go . . . poof. And why? Her liberal wing, of course. After all the speaker's concessions, antiwar critics were still griping yesterday that the withdrawal proposal left Mr. Bush too much flexibility over the timing. Reps. Lynn Woolsey and Ms. Lee introduced their own amendment to the legislation that would demand a complete withdrawal by year-end. Ms. Pelosi is loath to give them a vote, since the amendment would surely fail and allow Mr. Bush to note that even Congress is against withdrawal. The question is if her liberals will give her any choice. They certainly haven't up to now.

The kook fringe, which, again, is really driving the Party leaders (witness the fiasco in Nevada), will stand for nothing less the immediate pull out. And, if you think they really want to redeploy to Afghanistan, think again. In Liberal World, it is America that is the bad guy when it comes to terrorism. If we would just leave those people alone, all would be well. In Liberal World, putting more troops into Afghanistan would create more terrorists.

As a sidebar, the cake that Fox News did for Bin Laden's 50th birthday, with a picture of his face with a target on it is sure to enrage the Left.

Meanwhile, Rep. Obey, mentioned in the Opinion Journal excerpt, went off the reservation (very un-PC, eh?) on the kook fringe. See Michelle Malkin for the video.

Carolina blogger (always good!) Sister Toldjah writes: Wonder if he’ll be the next target (after Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher, D-CA) of the Nutroots now?

Target is a good way to put it. Of course, they only target Americans. They don't want to annoy people around the world that want to destroy the USA now, do they?

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