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Wow: Iraq is a “Hot Button” Political Issue if We’re doing Poorly; If We’re doing well, Iraq “fades” as a Political Issue
A remarkable piece from MSNBC: “Iraq fades as a hot political issue.”
Turns out it’s not a hot issue because we’re doing well. “But,” the article says, “a well-placed bomb in Baghdad’s Green Zone could change all that.”
Disgusting.
So we have been making “well-placed” raids on al Qaeda, killing, capturing, and routing them, and Iraq “fades” as a political issue. But a bomb killing Americans in the Green Zone would ramp it back up.
Hmmmmm.
Iraq fades as a hot political issue
A well-placed bomb in Baghdad’s Green Zone could change everything but, for the time being, the war in Iraq has ceased to be the US’s hot political issue.
The sharp fall in the number of US troops killed over the past three months has brought about a corresponding reduction in the political temperature back home. Rising concerns about Iran’s apparently hardening stance over its uranium enrichment programme have supplanted Iraq as the US’s chief foreign policy question.
. . . The fading of Iraq as a lightning rod is most evident on Capitol Hill, where Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, has all but abandoned Democratic attempts to force Mr Bush’s hand by attaching conditions to White House war-funding requests.
Mr Bush on Monday asked Congress for another $54bn (€38bn, £26bn) in supplemental war funding - bringing the total for this financial year to $194bn, or roughly $400m a day. Instead of promising new conditions, the Democrats announced they would merely delay Mr Bush’s request to authorise the money in coming weeks.
“Because casualties have fallen so far, it is futile to try to persuade moderate Republicans to vote with us to compel a withdrawal of US troops,” said a Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill.