The Congress is sending a military spending bill for the Iraq war to the President. The President has said he will veto it because 1. there's too much pork (this, by the way, has never caused him to veto any spending bill in the past) and 2. it sets a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq (this the President terms as trying to constrain the military's ability to wage war). And, if you notice, when he talks about it, it's the pork he mentions first--not the timeline. Hmmm. So the President is going to veto this thing. He says this. Everyone says this. It's pretty much a given.

Now, if the President vetoes and the Congress doesn't send him a revised bill, does it mean the troops get to come home?

In effect, the President is the one who is cutting the funding to the troops because he vetoes the spending bill.

It seems to me most people are missing this point. They all assume the Congress will have to redo the bill if it gets the big red X. But maybe they don't have to. Maybe they can take the President at his veto pen word. And the troops can come home this summer because Congress did its job (made up the bill to send to the Prez), and the Prez said no.

Maybe I'm missing something in this equation. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part.

The Sunday color Doonesbury talks about the situation in Iraq in another interesting paradox. From the perspective of men in the field, they ponder the two sides of "supporting the troops." Those who want to stay at war are supporting the troops, but those who want to bring the troops home--take them out of harms way--are not supporting the troops. So if everything falls on the side of supporting the troops, then the troops will have to keep fighting and their risk for getting blown up randomly will remain, if not increase. But if you don't support the troops, they get to return to their families and, for the most part, probably not get randomly blown up.

I hear from people who are in the military (and not necessarily opposed to the whole war thing, although these days, it's hard to find people who are rah rah war) that since the troops are trained to fight, they want to be there. They want to do their jobs.

And I can respect that. It's not a job I'd want, but hey, I don't really like working for other people much. Especially big headed little men who skipped out of actually fighting when they were young and a war was going on. Now, I didn't fight in the first Gulf War (when I was 18-19), but then again, I'm also not in charge of sending troops into war.

But back to this whole paradox of the Prez chiding Congress and promising to veto the military bill for the wars. Because if the situations were reversed, and a Democrat was talking about vetoing the military spending bill--because this Prez wanted to get out of Iraq and the bill didn't have this language in it--wouldn't the net result be a withdrawal of troops? Hey, the President refuses the spending bill, there's no more money, we gotta bring 'em home.

No one says this. It is expected that Congress will have to revisit the spending bill. They will have to water down their legislation and take out the withdrawal language. Interestingly, they will probably leave the pork in, because the President wouldn't veto the bill a second time just because of excessive spending by the Congress. Everyone gets something, everyone rubs each others back. And everyone has something to bitch about in next year's election.

But I'd love for the leaders in Congress to do this: when the President vetoes, they explain that this action must mean the President wants to bring the troops home. He vetoed the spending. And then, well, then we'll see an interesting standoff about this fucked up war.

Matt Worley thinks tricking the President into withdrawing from Iraq would be rather funny.