Over the last couple days I’ve been talking about how the President should sign the Iraq appropriations bill the Dems in Congress have put together even though it contains a pullout date for Iraq.  Last night the House has passed the bill in question, and I still think the President should sign it.

Why?

First the vague, milquetoast language the Democrats have used to “demand” a withdrawal from Iraq (a firm date to start the withdrawal, a “non binding” date for completing it) is eminently ignorable.

Second, the Democrats don’t have the proper Constitutional foundation to mandate a troop withdrawal.  Congress isn’t in charge of deploying our troops, the commander-in-chief is.  If the Democrats want to end the war let them deauthorize it, which is something they do have the Constitutional authority to do.  Congress authorizes/deauthorizes wars, the President assigns troops to those wars.  That’s how it’s always been done.  Bush should sign this law, get the funding for the troops, ignore the withdrawal language and then dare the Democrats to take him to court over it.

Third, Bush should sign this because our troops really do need this funding.  As I’ve pointed out previously, on April 15th the military had to start taking money from training/equipment/maintenance missions and dedicate it to the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Which means that even as you read this our troops are doing without the training, equipment and repairs they need.

The Democrats are hell-bent on playing games with this funding for Iraq, because all these delays are a win-win situation for them.  If the President vetoes their bill the troops continue to do without and the war gets choked off (while the troops die in a war the Dems have no intention of winning).  If the President signs it and follows their (lame) edict for a withdrawal they get a big political victory.  So we need a third option.

And that option is to sign the bill, get the appropriations and tell the Dems to stick their withdrawal dates right up their nose.