It's Time To Cut Bushie's Allowance

Completely cutting off funding for the war, as Congress did toward the end of Vietnam, seems to be a politically impossible move at this point (but give the public six more months of this shit and I'll bet it becomes less difficult)... but could Congress stop funding in a targeted way to stop escalation, as Rep. Murtha (D-PA) has discussed doing? It seems the obvious move to me, but I'm not optimistic about Democratic leaders all signing on, as they won't want to rock the boat this early on in their term (even though doing so was, ya know, partially what they were elected for).

This latest talk from Speaker Pelosi is encouraging, however-

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said newly empowered Democrats will not give President Bush a blank check to wage war in Iraq, hinting they could deny funding if he seeks additional troops.

"If the president chooses to escalate the war, in his budget request, we want to see a distinction between what is there to support the troops who are there now," she said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

"The American people and the Congress support those troops. We will not abandon them. But if the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it and this is new for him because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions," said Pelosi, D-Calif...

....Pelosi and Reid told Bush in a letter last week that Democrats oppose additional U.S. forces in Iraq and want him to begin withdrawing in four months to six months American troops already there....

..."So when the bill comes ... it will receive the harshest scrutiny. What do we really need to protect our troops? What is there for an escalation? What is the justification for that?"...

Video- here. More of this, please.

Salon's Tim Grieve has thoughts on the madness that allowed all this 'surge' talk to get this far: "One could argue that the American people have shown a good deal of patience with the president and his war already. As the war began, Dick Cheney was telling folks that he expected it to last 'weeks rather than months.' Nearly four years and what seems like a lifetime of 'critical next six months' later, it's a lot to ask anyone for another two or three years -- particularly when that could mean that a few thousand more American troops will join the more than 3,000 who have been killed in the war already... [And] can the president really keep sending more troops to Iraq without support from the American people or their elected representatives? And how can he possibly get that support unless the 'way forward' he's about to unveil is more clearly the 'way out' than it's shaping up to be now?"

He also looks at Bush's BS rhetoric about 'benchmarks' in Iraq (which is, like, totally different from timetables), just another changed, made-up policy borne out of a President with his back to the wall, desperate not to have the war lost on his watch, and willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to delay that.

The end of his blank check can't come soon enough.

[UPDATE: Atrios reminds us of the good ol' days-- aka, last month-- when the politicians and media pundits were obsessed with the Baker-Hamilton group and actually believed that the President would listen to a word they had to say. Their optimistic naivetivity about Bush never ceases to disgust amaze me. And it is because they keep giving him the benefit of the doubt that he has been allowed to keep making these disastrous decisions.

UPDATE #2: Prime Minister Blair on the surge: No, thank you.]