The Political Chase

Dems solution: use a knife in a gun fight

More evidence of the Democrat’s inability to defy a president with a 33% overall approval rating (less when Iraq is the only factor).

Now that President Bush and Gen. David H. Petraeus have charted their course for the Iraq war, Democrats in the Senate say one of their proposals aimed at shifting the president’s strategy is finally close to winning enough Republican support for a real chance at being approved. It would require that troops spend as much time at home as on their most recent tours overseas before being redeployed.

The proposal, by Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, has strong support from top Democrats, who say that the practical effect would be to add time between deployments and force General Petraeus to withdraw troops on a substantially swifter timeline than the one he laid out before Congress this week, and that it would protect troops from serving protracted and debilitating deployments.

The Democrats proposal is appropriate and warranted for length of tours, but with respect to forcing Bush to end the war it is just more cat and mouse games. Bush will laugh the proposed amendment right out of the Oval Office.