They Won't Quit. They CAN'T Quit.

So the Senate's going to pull an all nighter; it seems the least they can do, considering the sleepless nights imposed on Iraquis and the untenable position of our troops. The Democrats proposed a pull out starting in 120 days. The Republicans threatened a filibuster. The Democrats, in a bit of jiu jitu, said, fine,let’s sit up all night and talk about it.

The Texans think this is silly, a "slumber party": aid and comfort to the enemy, support our troops, wait until September, you know the drill. Does anyone else feel that the Arabs and the Texans truly deserve each other? The odious Lieberman, standing tall with Mitch McConnell and McCain, thinks this is a terrible idea, all this fussin', 'sides, all this commotion might upset Marse' George. At least one of the soldiers thinks the members of Congress ought to serve a rotation: "they don't have to do anything, they just come hang out with me and go home at the times I go home, and come stay here 15 months with me." Update: The timetable didn't get the 60 votes needed to pass, but it did win 52 votes, up from 39 votes a non-binding withdrawl resolution got last year.

John Mc Cain, bless his heart, keeps talkin’ ‘bout the "chaos": “Failure will lead to chaos, withdrawal will lead to chaos.... I believe that a withdrawal, or a date for withdrawal, will lead to chaos in the region.” The chaos is already here, John. They've already followed us home: George Bush's invasion of Iraq was a recruiting bonanza for al-Qaeda. Sigh... always the last to know.

Carl Levin, one of our senators from Michigan since forever, just wants this open-ended commitment to end: "What we have is a glass called Iraq that has a hole in the bottom, and whatever we put into Iraq, goes right through that hole." I've been puzzled by the dead enders like William Kristol or the mad monk Norman Podhoretz . I'm infuriated by the administration's willingness to keep throwing good lives after bad.

But they will not, they cannot, stop the war in Iraq. All the twenty-years olds in the world will not be enough to feed that maw. To quit would be to admit that everything they've done, and the dollars and the lives they spent, were a waste. We will be in this war until the grownups take the wheel away from the crazies, and then for the next thirty years, Bush and Kristol and the rest will blame the grownups for "losing" Iraq, because we weren't willing to spend a thousand lives more.