Wolf’s compound question linked the Bush troop surge to “nonbinding, symbolic” Congressional resolutions, pressing for a rationale to support such ineffectual measures rather than voting to cut off funds for the Iraq war. Senator Jay responded in kind, saying he wasn’t happy about it, but he’d keep such options open for the future “because maybe this is the first of several.”

Several what? Surges? Resolutions? Both?

Dick Cheney of course frames the whole question from the outset just as Karl Rove would have the media and the voter/viewers frame it: real men would exercise Congress’ unquestioned right to cut the purse strings, if those Democratic critics really do oppose Bush’s Iraq policy like they say. All else is meaningless partisan political posturing, whining that the White House intends rightfully to ignore.

Heads I win. Tails you lose, and you betray our troops in the field by stabbing them in the back. OK, now let’s have the debate.

Along with nonbinding resolutions (several, if needed), the new Congress should target funding cutoffs for such things as construction of the enduring military bases, completing the Green Zone embassy complex, and operatinge detainee prisoner interrogation centers. You know, like the Boland Amendment prohibited funding for overt and covert efforts to bring about Nicaraguan regime change, but did not defund CIA or US military special forces activities elsewhere in the world.

The Democrats, independents and coscientious Republicans like Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snow should be talking about cutting off funds for the continued occupation of Iraq, rather than tomorrow’s hostilities against whichever faction snipes at our soldiers first (which is the field commanders’ responsibility).

As has been suggested elsewhere, a parallel project should be to flat out repeal the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. Knowing now what we all wish we’d known then, it is shameful and inexcusabale for the United States to retain publicly upon its statute books solemn legislative pronouncements containing outright lies about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, sanctimony over the sanctity of UN security counsel directives, and fairy tales about Saddam Hussein’s fictional kinship with al Queda.

With the passage of even so little time, the “whereas” clauses of the fateful 2002 AUMF drafted by the Bush White House stand exposed to all the world for the hypocrisy they always were. A bipartisan Congress with spine should repeal and replace the existing resolution with language expressly mandating that the goal of the US military presence within Iraq is to secure those troops’ safe and complete withdrawal – mission over, oil contracts or no oil contracts, great big fat embassy in Baghdad or none at all, sooner rather than later.

If George Bush were to veto the repeal/replacement AUMF statute, then maybe impeachment for the torture, the fraud, and the warrantless domestic NSA wiretapping goes back on the table.