Playing games with the Iraq war: Democrats supported troop surge before they were against it

I swear, just when you think the Democrats couldn’t get anymore pathetic, they outdo themselves.

As you’ve already read and heard, the President’s speech tonight will outline a new course for Iraq, which will include what’s being commonly referred to as a troop ‘surge.’ The President wants to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq as part of his overall plan to turn things around and eventually turn things over to the Iraqi people. Naturally, the Democrats in both the House and Senate have come out in strong opposition to the President’s plan for a surge, with some even calling for Congress not to approve funding for any new troops that the President wants to send to Iraq, and some thinking they can sneak around the Constitution and dictate war policy (scroll down on that post) to the President. The NYT reports on other ways Democrats are plan to show their opposition to the President’s ‘surge’ plan (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 β€” Democratic leaders said Tuesday that they intended to hold symbolic votes in the House and Senate on President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Baghdad, forcing Republicans to take a stand on the proposal and seeking to isolate the president politically over his handling of the war.

Senate Democrats decided to schedule a vote on the resolution after a closed-door meeting on a day when Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts introduced legislation to require Mr. Bush to gain Congressional approval before sending more troops to Iraq.

The Senate vote is expected as early as next week, after an initial round of committee hearings on the plan Mr. Bush will lay out for the nation Wednesday night in a televised address delivered from the White House library, a setting chosen because it will provide a fresh backdrop for a presidential message.

The office of Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, followed with an announcement that the House would also take up a resolution in opposition to a troop increase. House Democrats were scheduled to meet Wednesday morning to consider whether to interrupt their carefully choreographed 100-hour, two-week-long rollout of their domestic agenda this month to address the Iraq war.

In both chambers, Democrats made clear that the resolutions β€” which would do nothing in practical terms to block Mr. Bush’s intention to increase the United States military presence in Iraq β€” would be the minimum steps they would pursue. They did not rule out eventually considering more muscular responses, like seeking to cap the number of troops being deployed to Iraq or limiting financing for the war β€” steps that could provoke a Constitutional and political showdown over the president’s power to wage war.

They want you to think that they were against a troop surge all along. But they weren’t. Remember in early December when the ISG’s report and recommendations were released? Democrats at that time were saying that the ISG’s findings were “consistent” with their proposals to change course in Iraq:

House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement that the study group’s recommendations are consistent with Democratic proposals “to change the primary mission of U.S. troops in Iraq from combat to training and support, which would enable the redeployment of U.S. forces to begin.”

“Now that the study group has endorsed this proposal, I hope that the president will recognize that he must take our policy in Iraq in a new direction,” Pelosi said.

Just a few days later, Democrats expressed “frustration” over the fact that the President didn’t seem too keen on some of the ISG reports’ “major recommendations”:

WASHINGTON – Top Democrats in Congress left a White House meeting with President Bush on Friday frustrated over what they perceived as his reluctance to embrace major recommendations from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

Democrats stressed to Bush in separate meetings the dire need for the administration to revamp its Iraq policy, but they don’t expect him to embrace all 79 recommendations made this week by the panel, which was chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind.

[…]

But some Democrats came away unconvinced that major changes were coming.

“I just didn’t feel there today, the president in his words or his demeanor, that he is going to do anything right away to change things drastically,” Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid, D-Nev., said following the Oval Office meeting. “He is tepid in what he talks about doing. Someone has to get the message to this man that there have to be significant changes.”

Clearly, they wanted the President to go along with the ISG’s recommendations without a fight. Well, did you know that the ISG noted in their report that they would support a ‘short term surge’? Yep, they did and along with it rejected an immediate withdrawal of US troops, which some Democrats like Murtha and Dennis Kucinich have already called for. From page 50 of the ISG report:

We could, however, support a shortterm redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the training and equipping mission, if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective.

We also rejected the immediate withdrawal of our troops, because we believe that so much is at stake.

My goodness! Looks like the President actually did take some of the ISG’s recommendations to heart after all. After all the whining, b!tching, moaning and groaning from Democrats about how the report was “consistent” with their proposals and that they were “frustrated” with the President’s lukewarm reaction to some of their recommendations, the President incorporated some of their suggestions into his plan – including support for a surge.

Top military commanders in Iraq also came out in late December in support of a troop surge in Iraq, and we all know how important it is to Democrats for Bush to “listen to the commanders on the ground.”

But, what are Democrats doing now? They’re playing games with the Iraq war and any attempts at stabilizing the situation on the ground there by strongly opposing a troop surge, as I noted earlier in this post. And they aren’t listening to those “commanders on the ground” regarding a troop surge and too-soon withdrawal. In other words, this whole time, they were full of *edited* on Bush listening to what the “commanders on the ground” wanted and wanting Bush to comply with ISG’s recommendations. Not surprising, but outrageous nevertheless, and more proof that Congressional Dems don’t mind donning masks to cover up who they are what they’re really all about.

This is what happens when you have a bunch of anti-war uber-liberal hate Bush Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Ted Kennedy in positions of power: they will look you directly in the eye and lie to you about what their objectives are on national security (among other things). Why? To get elected, so they can stick it to the President, of course. It’s all about the power. And now that they’re in the driver’s seat, they’re going to stick it to the voters who elected Democrats who promised this mysterious, unexplained ‘change’ prior to the 2006 elections. One change voters did NOT want, however, was a too-soon withdrawal from Iraq.

These latest actions by Congressional Democrats are definitive proof that you absolutely, positively cannot take any of them seriously on anything they say regarding their positions on the war on terror. I said it before and I’ll say it again: they do not want us to win in Iraq.

They simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth, nor can they be trusted to be in the driver’s seat in a time of war. That these shameless, dishonest, disingenuous, anti-war, cut and run, stuck-in-Vietnam clowns are going to be micromanaging the President’s every move over the next two years on the war on terror is a travesty of epic proportions, and is already proving to be disastrous.

Second Hand Conjecture and Anchoress have must-read posts on this subject which contain additional links on the Dems flip flopping stances on troop surges and listening to the “commanders on the ground.”

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