...the Republican Party is firmly for indefinitely continuing the Iraq War and at odds with the vast majority of the American people who want an end to the war.

It is the Blank Check Democrats, however, that raise the tough questions.
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We will see today just how far these Blank Check Democrats are willing to go in undermining their own party and the will of the American public.
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Whether Pelosi uses these levers - and whether rank-and-file Democrats demand she uses these levers - will tell us a lot not only about the Democratic Party's commitment to ending the war, but about it's commitment to all the other promises America was given in exchange for its votes in 2006.

...for our ruling elites, the suffering and death of innocent people, American, Iraqi or of any other nationality, are not of primary importance. In the perverse scheme of their priorities, such matters appear well down on the list. Their major and often sole concern is political power: its acquisition, its maintenance and its expansion. Tactics of only one kind are their concern: the means by which their own power is maintained and enhanced.

It is deeply regrettable, and also inevitable - since the world of political blogs cannot be other than a reflection of the larger culture - that this same indifference to human pain and suffering infects the approach of the great majority of political bloggers. For all their ferocious opposition to the Bush administration and to Republicans generally, [some] liberal and progressive bloggers act as if they are largely indifferent to bringing about a quick end to the incomprehensibly deadly Iraq occupation. They certainly demonstrate no sustained, serious effort to pressure Congressional Democrats into defunding the war - or into acting to oppose an attack on Iran in every way possible.  The concerns of these bloggers and the Washington Democrats are perfectly coextensive: they will condemn the Iraq war and act to block an attack on Iran only to the degree such actions will not endanger their perceived political opportunities in 2008.

When Bush vetoed the bill, and the Democrats failed to override it, they immediately began talking about concessions: giving Bush the money he wanted and removing any timetables for troop withdrawals. Simply refusing to fund the war (including by filibustering) wasn't considered.
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This whole dynamic of riding the anti-war vote to power, then voting to fund an ongoing war while claiming to be ending it, reflect the conflicting necessities the Democrats face. As representatives of U.S. imperialism, they are committed to maintaining U.S. global dominance.

Shank: So why has Congress been so timid in exercising its authority to fund or not fund the war?

Kucinich: I think that's a question that requires a deeper understanding of the primary process that produced candidates that may not have been so strongly in favor of ending the war. But the surge that happened in the November elections was a profoundly anti-war surge that carried in all the Democrats, whatever their positions were. And now we find ourselves in this paradox: the American people demanding an end to the war and the Democratic Congress saying "hey, not so fast, here's a Democratic version of the war that we want you to look at as opposed to a Republican version of the war."

I think that as the American people realize what's happened here they're going to be outraged and they're going to lose faith in the Democratic Party.

This appears to be the last remaining, barely-breathing argument of that vanishing species who still support the god-awful war. The argument implies a deeply-felt concern about the welfare and safety of the Iraqi people. What else could it mean? That the US military can't leave because it's needed to protect the oil bonanza awaiting American oil companies as soon as the Iraqi parliament approves the new written-in-Washington oil law? No, the Bush administration loves the people of Iraq. How much more destruction, killing and torturing do you need to be convinced of that? We can't leave because of the violence. We can't leave until we have assured that peace returns to our dear comrades in Iraq.

To better understand this argument, it helps to keep in mind the following about the daily horror that is life in Iraq:    

• It did not exist before the US occupation.

Has there ever been an empire that didn't tell itself and the world that it was unlike all other empires, that its mission was not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate? And that it had God on its side?

Will America's immune system be able to rid itself of its raw-meat conservatives?