Next step: String-funding the war.

[meldroc]

Pelosi Backs War Funds Only With Conditions

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) yesterday linked her support for President Bush's war-funding request to strict standards of resting, training and equipping combat forces, a move that could curtail troop deployments and alter the course of U.S. involvement in Iraq.

The pledge came as Congress appears ready to assert its authority in matters of war and diplomacy, down to decisions that the White House believes to be the domain solely of the president as commander in chief: the deployment and training of military forces.

...

Congressional Democrats signaled a willingness to directly challenge and curtail Bush's warmaking powers, a move that will almost certainly spark a legal or constitutional confrontation. Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), a Pelosi ally, is rewriting the president's spending request to limit Bush's options in prosecuting the war, and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he will seek to repeal the 2002 congressional authorization for Bush to wage war in Iraq and substitute legislation that would narrow the mission of troops there and begin to bring some home.

"If we are going to support our troops, we should respect what is considered reasonable for them: their training, their equipment and their time at home," Pelosi said in an interview with a small group of reporters. "What we're trying to say to the president is, you can't send people in who are not trained for urban warfare ... who are not prepared to contend with an insurgency."

This is what's next now that the anti-war resolution has passed, what I'm calling "string-funding" the war. Obviously, we'd all love to see * and Darth Cheney impeached, and we'd love to see the war defunded to force the admin to bring the troops home. Making that happen will be very difficult, but this is the next best thing. We can support the troops by sending them money, but using the House's power of the purse, we put restrictions on how the President is allowed to spend the money. Lots and lots and lots of restrictions. This is feasible in that it will be very easy to slip these conditions into appropriations bills and get them through Congress, then when Bush is confronted with them on his desk, tell him "Take it or leave it." This is our best quick way to hamstring Bush and force him to change direction.