Yesterday I received this email from Democrats.com:

On Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will force the House to approve $163 billion more of our tax dollars  for the occupation of Iraq - nearly $100 billion for 2008 plus nearly $70 billion more for 2009.

We are outraged. This Democratic Congress was elected to end the occupation, not fund it forever.

At first blush, I was outraged too.  Why must we constantly concede to our lame-duck President and the congressional minority?  This is a rhetorical question, of course, because I remembered the familiar excuses by heart:

  • It's an election year in 2008.
  • We are in an election year.
  • The mean Republicans might unfairly paint us as being soft on the War on Terror. 

Then I had second thoughts.  I might be wrong, but I think there is a strategy at work here.  Pelosi has added a poison pill to the war funding bill that will almost certainly earn a Bush veto:

Democrats plan to attach several of their domestic priorities to the legislation, including expanded funding for veterans' education benefits and an extension of unemployment benefits estimated to cost about $16 billion over two years. They also will include a one-year delay in Bush-backed cost-cutting regulations for the Medicaid health-care program for the poor. -- Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121004054337669687.html

Democrats also tacked onto the bill a plan to block new Bush administration regulations that would cut federal spending on Medicaid health care for the poor by $13 billion over the next five years. The House last month passed that measure by a veto-proof 349-62 margin. -- Associated Press

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-us-iraq,0,6219882.story

Looks like this a way to make it difficult to blame the Dems for not supporting the troops (a bogus charge, since getting the troops out of harm's way is a pretty solid way of supporting them), and a way to toss that blame back on the man who vetoes the funding.

By the way, the charge of not supporting the troops is rich indeed when it comes the likes of Bush and McCain, who amazingly oppose Sen. Jim Webb's new GI bill:

The Bush administration opposes the new G.I. bill primarily on the grounds that it is too generous, would be difficult to administer and would adversely affect retention. -- New York Times

OMG, if we actually gave back something to these men and woman risking their lives for us in the service of their country, they might not want to re-up and put their lives on the line again and again again!!!  Seems there is nothing too small to deny our soldiers in uniform.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/opinion/06herbert.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print