The reality is that the Democrats can't stop this war unilaterally. Their only chit they have to negotiate with is the appropriations bill, which is a minefield. Even if the parallel universe where Dems had the backbone to cut off funding, this would not facilitate the kind of withdrawal anyone would be willing to endorse, especially in the face of a irrational, humiliated and vengeful Pentagon and administration, and the resulting meltdown would call into question the ability of this country to govern itself. It is also clear that Republicans are unserious enough to feign outrage even as they allow the issue to come to that rather than attempt to negotiate a middle course. After all, they believe their party could profit by it politically, and that is the only metric that matters to them.

What is most pressing is not the when of our ignominious Iraq withdrawal, but the when of the national dialogue or accounting for the travesty of policy that put us there. Only last week, Sidney Blumenthal reported here that the President was briefed with high quality intelligence that suggested the Hussein regime possessed no WMD. We also know that there was zero credible evidence that the regime had links to terrorist organizations, which means that we knew Iraq of 2002 posed zero threat to the US or its interests (actually, as a counterweight to Iran was beneficial in that regard). We know that the incalculably incompetent handling of the war's aftermath was no accident of bad luck- with all those giving reasonable plans and resource requirements ignored or retired, and with pre-war intelligence reports, (to say nothing of elementary common sense), accurately predicting the fallout. We know about the corruption, and we know about the cost in lives American and Iraqi, treasure and opportunity cost. In effect, we know that, not only did the administration lie repeatedly to get us into this war, but that a large part of the reason for how poorly it has gone is directly attributable to those lies, i.e. the war had to be a costless cakewalk or the electorate might question it, so we didn't have enough troops or plan to stay long enough. It had to be about a non-existent threat or the electorate might ask what's in it for them, so that our credibility with Iraqis and the world community would be decimated at the precise moment when we most needed their cooperation, and hence trust- guarding the oil ministry alone during the looting didn't help much either- etc.

Yet all this knowledge, with the exception of American military dead, remains mostly under the radar screens of the public at large and thus even GOPers with a political future can continue to attest to the benefits of removing the Hussein regime*. Yes Bush is deeply unpopular, yes Iraq is deeply unpopular, but if the public really knew all there was to know, unpopular wouldn't be the half of it. Resignation/impeachment more like it.

This is not to say the Democrats shouldn't go after Petraeus' fictions. This is rather to say they should not to be distracted, as the administration no doubt wants, into focusing on what will in the end be largely punchless and ineffectual rhetoric, but to focus instead on the barely if-at-all begun process of holding people to account for the criminal and criminally negligent fictions that got us here in the first place. Trying to end the war is a dead end and a trap really for the fledgling Democratic majority. The winning and responsible move is to instead and with a vigor decidedly lacking to date go after the administration head on with respect to these grave violations. It is only through that process and through the utter repudiation of these charlatans that Democrats will gain the political power to affect policy.

* When John Bolton was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman he banged on about the paramount importance of American interests, especially when emphasizing that it's up to Iraqis to pull themselves up from their bootstraps in their wrecked country, up until he was asked why it was a good thing to invade Iraq. Then of course the answer is always that he was a meanie to his own people. Indeed, clearly Bolton and his ilk are tremendously concerned with the injustices of Hussein regime, but hey, assuming we don't own stock options on Halliburton, what's in it for us?