Over the last few weeks, I’ve written several times on the political games Congressional Democrats are playing with Iraq funding. They quietly worked to ensure that the Department of Defense would be able to continue the Iraq effort for several months, so that they could flaunt their defiance of the president on the Iraq supplemental appropriations. By giving the Pentagon the flexibility needed to fund the war, Democrats felt confident that they could not be blamed for cutting off funds needed by the troops in the field. It was surprising to me that none of the liberal, antiwar blogs wrote about this. None of them pushed back against this move to continue the war. Was it because they were not aware of it, or because they didn’t care? We got the proof yesterday, when several liberal blogs commented on this political game. Ironically, they approved of the move. First came ThinkProgress:
At a press conference this morning, Reps. John Murtha (D-PA) and David Obey (D-WI) rebutted the administration’s scare-mongering by noting that, just last week, Bush signed a $471 billion defense spending bill. That bill “contains enough money to continue military operations through mid-February, because of a provision that lets the administration shift money to the war from other Pentagon accounts.”
Where’s the criticism of Congressional Democrats for voting to keep the war going, without the slightest pressure from the administration? ThinkProgress approves of the move. In a case of extraordinary cognitive dissonance, the Huffington Post looks at the pre-emptive surrender by the Democrats in Congress and reports: “Dems Draw Line in the Sand on Iraq:”
As reported by the Huffington Post, the Democrat war supplement proposal is the party’s most aggressive funding measure since taking over Congress. In addition to insisting on a full withdrawal plan the bill would also require that troops be fully trained and equipped before being sent into the field and that the government abide by the Army Field Manual with respect to prohibiting torture.
Right. Congress provided 4-5 months of war funding, without debate, conditions, or any questions asked. Way to be tough, boys.
Jane Hamsher at FireDogLake takes note of the story and uses it to bash the Bush administration–but offers no comment about the Democratic cave:
There’s absolutely no reason for companies with huge assets like the studios to break faith with people who have done nothing and engage in this highly selective, petty form of belt-tightening. It reminds one of a certain other temper tantrum-throwing, Scrooge-like executive threatening 150,000 families with unemployment right at the holiday season if he can’t extort all the money he wants from Congress
American Street:
Just as I predicted, they’re going to pressure hundreds of thousands of employees, their families and friends, just to try and pressure Congress to provide a funding bill without troop withdrawal requirements. Fortunately, the Democrats are fighting back, since it’s the Republicans who shot down the funding.
The Carpetbagger Report:
Asked about the billions already allocated to the Pentagon in the current budget, Perino responded, “The Defense Department says that they need this funding in order to keep the war running.” She added that lawmakers, by not passing the supplemental funding package, are “pull[ing] the rug out from under” the troops… Second, as some leading House Dems explained this morning, the Pentagon is not out of money, and these furlough notices are a cheap stunt.
These are some of the the most influential antiwar voices in the Democratic blogosphere. And not one of them cares in the least that Democrats voted to fund the war for months. Rather, they criticize the White House for arguing (as Democrat Joe Sestak does) that the Democrats didn’t fund the war as they intended. Where’s the outrage? This episode makes it plain that the lefty blogosphere doesn’t care so much about the Iraq war as it does opposing Bush.
