Rep. John Murtha (D-PA): "If he's able to try to increase the number of troops, he won't be able to send the 20,000 in altogether. And even then, he'll have to extend people who are there and he'll have to send people back before their year is up at home. And that means they won't have completed their cycle of training that they need and their families, of course, are suffering. And so a piecemeal approach is not the answer to this. And I think it's a real mistake for him to increase the number of troops. It's more targets. It's people without a mission" ("Hardball," MNSBC, 1/8).

Obviously, by sending 21,500 troops to Iraq Bush is far exceeding what Murtha says is reasonable in terms of their training and readiness levels.

"In Iraq, his new plan is a plan for more door-to-door fighting, more civil war, more civilian casualties, more troop deaths, more wasted money, more destabilization in the region and more separation from the world community. The President wants to send more troops to Baghdad, where they will work to quell a civil war. Only a small portion - less than 20 percent - of the new effort will be spent in al Anbar, to fight al-Qaeda. Does anyone in this Administration have any sense left at all? They are sending more US troops into the middle of a civil war!

They are the worst enablers of the worst president in American history.

We will be lucky if America, as we know it, survives bush/cheney.

Give the dems some time. they have already started digging through the records to find examples of rethugs, like Mitch McConnell, sponsoring and helping to pass legislation to limit Clinton's use of war powers - successfully.

Big Tent finished his post with:

The Congress' power here seems clear to me. IT can END the Iraq war. But it can not dictate how it is conducted on military questions. That power belongs to the President.

The only thing missing in the equation, it seems to me, is the political will to get off their a$$es and do it.

Of course, from my point of view I'd like to see the political will to impeach the bums, charge them with war crimes, and get rid of them entirely.

As far as what to do about and for Iraq now that it has been utterly destroyed by Bush and is barely a functioning state, I have yet to see any better ideas than what I thought were some insightful evaluations and some of the best suggestions I've seen from Squeaky here, and here.

To save everyone the effort of clicking links, here they are:

Our soldiers cannot tell the difference between the resistance and the population at large, what does that tell you. That is a big problem and it is not going to change. Since the middle class and intelligencia have fled Iraq there is no one to 'liberate'. Not that we were able to distinguish them from the insurgents either. By now our motives are transparently clear to all Iraqi's:  occupation, oil, Iran and Israel, not to mention the ringing cash registers for the US military industrial complex. Liberation was a smokescreen as is any argument to stay the course.

Pay the Iraqi's 10 billion dollars (minimum) reparation, as a token gesture for the destruction and havoc we have wreaked on their country,  wish them well, and leave immediately. No more blood needs to be on our hands. Enough already.

-----

OK. Ten billion is too little to repair the emotional and physical damage that we have delivered to Iraq. Population of, let's say, 20,000,000....if every Iraqi gets $1000. that equals 20 billion. Throw in another 20 billion for infrastructure, no US companies allowed, and I think that the Iraqis will have hope and feel that there is goodwill toward them from the US. That is as long as we apologize, admit defeat and our mistakes and, leave.

That kind of goodwill can be matched by other countries and philanthropists. It is true that you can not buy off a people that you have humiliated, tortured and oppressed, but $$$ can turn things around.