Liberals Relent on Iraq War Funding
House Likely to Pass Bill With Pullout Date
By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post Staff Writer

Liberal opposition to a $124 billion war spending bill broke last night, when leaders of the antiwar Out of Iraq Caucus pledged to Democratic leaders that they will not block the measure, which sets timelines for bringing U.S. troops home.

The acquiescence of the liberals probably means that the House will pass a binding measure today that, for the first time, would establish tough readiness standards for the deployment of combat forces and an Aug. 31, 2008, deadline for their removal from Iraq.

A Senate committee also passed a spending bill yesterday setting a goal of bringing troops home within a year. The developments mark congressional Democrats' first real progress in putting legislative pressure on President Bush to withdraw U.S. forces. ...

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Video: Coalition forces mobbed in Sadr City
Greyhawk

...which is what happens when you set up a medical clinic in such a location.

As part of my own preparation for deployment, I've re-qualified on the various weapons I'll have at my side, but also completed Combat Lifesaver training - something our enemy has little use for:

Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations on the Joint Staff, told reporters that a vehicle was waved through a U.S. military checkpoint because two children were visible in the back seat.

“Children in the back seat lowered suspicion, (so) we let it move through, they parked the vehicle, the adults run out and detonate it with the children in the back,” Barbero said.

More here.

Should Democrats succeed in congress today such violence in Iraq will continue, but medical aid will be just a memory - for those who survive.

Meanwhile, elements of the second of the five American "surge brigades" are now on duty in the Baghdad area. ...

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Video: Michelle talks Democratic disarray on Cavuto;
Update: House Dems have votes to pass Iraq bill
Allahpundit

Perfect timing considering what’s riding high at Drudge right now. Rahm Emanuel insists they’re going to get the votes in the House to push the Iraq spending/timetable bill through but they’re still one or two away with a floor vote expected within 24 hours. The nutroots all-stars who are dug in are really dug in, including a certain atheist hearthrob who sounds like he’s ready to throw down: ...

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A Walk in the Shade
Greyhawk

Soldier's Dad coins a brilliant phrase in a brief essay at MilBlogs:

Some families have long histories of tending to the tree of liberty, others have a long history of living in its shade.

He's referencing the pork-laden "Iraq and Afghanistan funding" bill designed to defeat US military efforts in Iraq currently oozing through the House of Representatives (and Senate) but the quote has other applications.

Sadly, so many of those who enjoy it most would have us believe that shade is a darkness that needs eliminating ...

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Capitol Police protect Pelosi
Michelle Malkin

The Capitol Police couldn't or wouldn't stop anti-war thugs from vandalizing government property in January.

But they made sure to protect Nancy Pelosi's office from anti-war protesters who wanted to embarrass her today:

Four members of the anti-war group Code Pink were arrested outside the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Thursday afternoon, following an announcement that they would seek to take over the office. ...

The Victory Caucus asks: Where's Nancy? ...

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Pelosi Amends Pull-Out Bill to Win Democrat Approval
by Scott Ott

(2007-03-23) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in an 11th-hour effort to get enough Democrat votes to pass the omnibus Iraq war pull-out bill, last night amended the measure to include funding for the following…

–More comprehensive sex education, complimentary condoms and discount abortion clinics in public middle schools

– A government-run universal health care system that includes prescription drugs for household pets and a new mandatory euthanasia benefit for the aged, comatose, crippled, diseased, depressed and mentally retarded

– A ready supply of government-issued affordable, combustible American flags for anti-war protesters. ...

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WaPo Slams Democrats For
Devotion To Pork Over National Security 
Ed Morrissey

On the eve of a critical House vote on supplemental funding for the Iraq war, the Washington Post scolds the Democrats who attached billions in pork spending to bribe its members to vote for a withdrawal timetable. The editors take apart the legislation, stating that its sponsors care more for a handful of peanut farmers than for the 24 million Iraqis who depend on the US for their security:

TODAY THE House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill that would grant $25 million to spinach farmers in California. The legislation would also appropriate $75 million for peanut storage in Georgia and $15 million to protect Louisiana rice fields from saltwater. More substantially, there is $120 million for shrimp and menhaden fishermen, $250 million for milk subsidies, $500 million for wildfire suppression and $1.3 billion to build levees in New Orleans. ...

The pork shows that the Democrats have no mandate for a cut-and-run strategy. Had that mandate existed, they would have simply voted to explicitly defund the war and force a withdrawal, a move well within Congressional authority. Instead, they have played at half-measures for the last two months, attempting to force George Bush to order the withdrawal by handicapping the Pentagon with an impressive array of red tape -- and shoving the responsibility for surrender onto the White House instead of on the Democrats who demand it. ...

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Michelle Malkin: Pork & the war spending bill: Dogging the Blue Dogs...and serving up defeat; Update: Pork and retreat passes

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Selling Out The Troops
Dan Riehl

That's precisely what the liberal and Blue Dog Democrats have done in one of the most disgraceful moves ever taken by an American Congress. Plenty from Michelle at link.

[...]

There will be hell to pay for Blue Dog Dems over this. Their previous positions and the pork it took for them to sell out our fighting men and women are a matter of public record. If they think they can escape being held accountable, I'd wager they don't understand their districts well enough and are buying into Pelosi's rhetoric, as well as our taking our tax dollars in a bribing scheme designed to damage the morale of our troops while at war.

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Paul Mirengoff: Pork and defeat

John Hinderaker: Democrats Eke Out Pork/Defeat Bill

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Allahpundit: House passes Iraq timetable; Update: Bush rips Dems over bill;
Update: Video added

Jules Crittenden: Pork with a Side of Surrender

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CBS: IED Attacks Decrease Dramatically
Ed Morrissey

CBS News published a report on Wednesday that escaped my attention, but it should get wide play in the blogosphere. According to their sources in the military, the surge has resulted in a stark dropoff of roadside bomb attacks, a reversal of the pre-surge trend:

After warning that the threat of deadly EFPs, or Explosively Formed Penetrators, was growing at an alarming rate, the U.S. military now says there's been a "dramatic" decrease in the use of the powerful roadside bombs.

EFPs "can punch through most of the armor out on the battlefield today," Army Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman said of the devices, which U.S. officials have said come from Iran. ...

It hardly seems coincidental that the attacks have dropped so dramatically at the same time that the US has implemented tough new strategies for securing Baghdad and addressing Iran. The Pentagon had insisted that many of the EFPs came from Iran, and the warning that George Bush gave Iran specifically referenced these weapons.  ...

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Iranian Vessels Seize 15 British Navy Personnel in Iraqi Waters 

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  —  Naval forces of Iran's hardline Revolutionary Guards seized 15 British sailors and marines at gunpoint Friday in Iraqi waters of the Persian Gulf, U.S. and British officials said. The provocative move comes during heightened tensions between the West and Iran.

Iran insisted the British service members were seized because they had entered Iranian territory and were held "for further investigation," according to Iranian state television.

U.S. and British officials said [the incident] occurred during a routine inspection of a merchant ship near the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway, which flows between the two countries and empties into the Gulf.

A U.S. Navy official in Bahrain, Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl, said Iran's Revolutionary Guard naval forces were responsible and had broadcast a brief radio message saying the British had not been harmed.

In London, the British government summoned the Iranian ambassador to the Foreign Office and afterward, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said he "was left in no doubt that we want them back."

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Iran seizes 15 British sailors in Iraqi waters;
Update: Ahmadinejad will not address UNSC?
Allahpundit

Doin’ what Iran does best: taking hostages. The media I’ve looked at all have the same details thus far: 15 sailors in two inflatable boats from the HMS Cornwall were inspecting merchant ships when they were surrounded by Iranian ships and detained — at gunpoint. An Iraqi fisherman says he saw it all go down. The Royal Navy insists the craft were in Iraqi waters at the time. Britain’s FM has summoned the Iranian ambassador; the sailors are believed to be at an Iranian navy base.

I love this from the Beeb article. They can’t kidnap our sailors — we have a resolution from the UN! ...

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The House, The Bill, And The Veto
Ed Morrissey

Nancy Pelosi barely managed to eke out a victory on the supplemental spending bill for the Iraq war. The pork-laden bill passed with the bare minimum number of votes, and only after two Republicans crossed the aisle:

The House of Representatives today passed a $124 billion emergency spending bill that sets binding benchmarks for progress in Iraq, establishes tough readiness standards for deploying U.S. troops abroad and requires the withdrawal of American combat forces from Iraq by the end of August 2008.

The bill promptly drew a veto threat from President Bush. ...

This bill has absolutely no chance of passing into law. Pelosi could barely get it passed, having to bribe her caucus with pork and threaten some with committee assignment changes. Barbara Lee, who openly opposed the bill, reportedly had to find another ride home to California after Pelosi bumped Lee off her flight. George Bush made it clear that he would not waste much time before vetoing the bill if it reached his desk:

The purpose of the emergency war spending bill I requested was to provide our troops with vital funding. Instead, Democrats in the House, in an act of political theater, voted to substitute their judgment for that of our military commanders on the ground in Iraq. They set rigid restrictions that will require an army of lawyers to interpret. They set an arbitrary date for withdrawal without regard for conditions on the ground. And they tacked on billions for pet projects that have nothing to do with winning the war on terror. This bill has too much pork, too many conditions and an artificial timetable for withdrawal.

As I have made clear for weeks, I will veto it if it comes to my desk. And because the vote in the House was so close, it is clear that my veto would be sustained. Today's action in the House does only one thing: it delays the delivering of vital resources for our troops. A narrow majority has decided to take this course, just as General Petraeus and his troops are carrying out a new strategy to help the Iraqis secure their capital city.

Amid the real challenges in Iraq, we're beginning to see some signs of progress. Yet, to score political points, the Democratic majority in the House has shown it is willing to undermine the gains our troops are making on the ground.

Tough stuff. Bush sounded like a man itching for a fight, but he may not have to throw any punches. It's likely that the bill will never make it out of the Senate. The GOP will almost certainly filibuster the bill, and they might just defeat it without a filbuster if Joe Lieberman does the expected thing. Regardless, the bill will not make it to Bush's desk unless the sky falls in Iraq, and right now it looks like the Coalition has the momentum there. ...

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EFP attacks on U.S. troops down “dramatically” since December 
Allahpundit

After warning that the threat of deadly EFPs, or Explosively Formed Penetrators, was growing at an alarming rate, the U.S. military now says there’s been a “dramatic” decrease in the use of the powerful roadside bombs…

[Army Lt. Col. Christopher] Garver says EFP attacks have dropped significantly since December.

“In February, we noticed a 47 percent decrease in explosively formed penetrators being detonated against our troops, a 53 percent decrease in the number of troops wounded and a 51 percent decrease in the number of troops killed” by the devices, he said…

That makes sense. According to WaPo, those Iranians were caught with “detailed weapons lists, documents pertaining to shipments of weapons into Iraq, organizational charts, telephone records and maps, among other sensitive intelligence information,” including and especially information about importing EFPs. The problem is … we let them go. They were sent back to Iran before New Year’s. Maybe the arrest put the fear of God into them, or maybe it was that raid in Irbil in January where we captured five members of the Quds Force that really cut the flow of EFPs. We do seem to have made this a priority lately — that not-so-rogue “rogue” Mahdi Army network that we busted earlier this week was also targeted for trafficking in EFPs.

As we crack down in Baghdad, Iran is stepping it up in Basra:

The Counterterrorism Blog has an interesting post up theorizing that the capture of the British sailors might be Iran’s attempt to drive a wedge between the U.S. and UK. Same M.O. as Al Qaeda: support for the war on terror is softer in Britain than it is here so bomb the Brits until they decide to leave America’s fight to America. I don’t buy it, though. AQ can get away with that tactic because it isn’t a nation-state and thus its attacks aren’t an affront to national pride. The left prefers to regard terrorism as almost “atmospheric,” a condition that can be managed but not eliminated because you can never directly confront it. It operates in the shadows. Not so with a nation-state like Iran. It operates in the shadows too, of course, but Blair or Gordon Brown would have no trouble finding Tehran on their map if need be. ...

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Could Diyala be Al-Qaeda's Waterloo? 
By Erick Stakelbeck, CBN News Terror Analyst

CBNNews.com - WASHINGTON - The U.S. military has developed battle plans designed to clear al-Qaeda out of Iraq.

High level military intelligence sources have told CBN News the offensive would target the Iraqi province of Diyala.

The province is located just northeast of Baghdad, along the Iranian border.

Many of al-Qaeda's forces in Baghdad moved there when the new troop surge was announced in January. Diyala is now a major launching pad for al-Qaeda suicide bombing attacks.

"If you want to diminish the amount of car bombers and suicide bombers, you have to take the fight right to the source. And in this case, the source is Diyala," said CBN News consultant Daveed Gartenstein-Ross.

Gartenstein-Ross says the Diyala offensive will be even bigger than the major U.S. operation in Fallujah back in 2004-which cleared out a city that had been a major insurgent stronghold.

Military sources say the Fallujah operation directly led to the success of the 2005 Iraqi elections.

Gartenstein-Ross said, "Here, the goal is going to be to drive these guys out of the country entirely."

Sources say the initial plans involve three distinct strikes from three different directions. The goal is to destroy enemy training facilities and prevent al-Qaeda forces from escaping.

"The insurgents are left with two choices--either to stand and fight or to retreat into Iran--at which point, they're Iran's problem," said Gartenstein-Ross. ...