Pelosi's victory: Anti-war vote won't bring Iraq resolution

LAST week's U.S. House vote to require the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq before September 2008 was heralded as a personal triumph for Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Indeed, as the vote neared it looked like the Democratic leadership lacked enough support to pass the $124 billion spending bill and its troop-withdrawing language. Ultra-liberal Democrats wanted to end war funding immediately; more conservative members, including Oklahoma's Dan Boren, opposed a specific withdrawal timetable. Virtually all Republicans opposed the measure. Yet Pelosi won.

She did it with the help of $20 billion in domestic spending above what President Bush requested — aid to spinach growers, money for peanut storage and other pork. That (and some old-fashioned skull cracking, we suspect) reeled in enough Democrats to pass the bill with a bare, 218-vote majority.

But there were other costs.

There's the impact on the mission of the Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus, which has shown early promise. The troops know while they're knocking on the front doors of bad guys in Baghdad, the Democratic Congress is looking for the back door out of Iraq.

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