NP: Family Guy

So my congressman was on Bill Maher's show again, and got heckled by the audience when he tried to start threading the needle on war funding bills. I think he may have missed an opportunity, because the root of the Democratic response to this notion of simply turning off the spigot of cash may not be as misguided as the anti-war left really thinks.

Put simply, Congress has no say in actual military policy. So cutting off funding is no guarantee that troops will actually have to leave Iraq if President Bush doesn't want them to leave Iraq. If the Democrats want to frame this the right way, don't get into this whole "I have constituents with kids over there who need the best body armor" game. Say that, if we've learned anything about George W. Bush, we should not be surprised if he were to leave troops in harm's way and underprotected, either so he could pin their eventual and inevitable deaths on the Democrats, or because he so deeply believes that he's right about Iraq, and that everything there is peachy. Or because he's an abject moron, but we'll save that angle for Kos and MoveOn.org. We simply cannot trust him to do the right thing when the money stops, and cannot allow him to have to make that decision, given the tragically disastrous decisions he's made to date.

It's a bit of an unfortunate truth, but I don't know how speaking it out loud hurts the Democrats, and I've sent an e-mail to Congressman Emmanuel raising that exact point. I haven't asked for a response, but if I get one, I may share.