It appears that the anticipated de-funding of the Iraq War by the Democrats is currently underway. But they're not taking the direct approach as was predicted by analysts.
Instead, they're guaranteeing that their legislation on war funding either doesn't make it to the President's desk, or if it does that he is certain to veto it. All the Democrats have to do is insert a clause that calls for withdrawal from Iraq to doom the legislation.
They have effectively de-funded the war, without drawing attention to the fact that this is/was their goal. They can publicly claim that they won't de-fund the Iraq War and will continue to put forth bills with terms and conditions that the Republicans find indigestible and will move to block.
The other tactic being employed is that the Democrats are ignoring the President's war funding requests for months at a time. Congress has already passed the Pentagon's $471 billion budget but stripped war funding from that bill. President Bush asked for $192 billion more in supplemental spending for the wars since mid-February; Congress is getting around to that request now, in mid-November.
The war bill passed by the House and rejected by the Senate would have provided $50 billion for the wars, and set the end of 2008 as a withdrawal date of troops from Iraq.
There's a time-crunch in play here; the current war funding will run out in February, and the military will have to divert money out of it's new $471 billion budget--money needed for repairing battle-damaged equipment or replacing it, beefing up V.A. hospitals, building mine-resistant vehicles, providing care for our wounded warriors, and purchasing new weapons platforms--to pay for the wars.
They've already signaled that they're diverting $4 billion immediately.
And the military is planning to make deep cuts when the designated war-fighting funding runs out in February. And it probably will; the only war funding bill on the table and on the horizon has been KO'ed.
Another mess.
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