I’m sorry, but I have to laugh here. Where? Very first line.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) is working with a key appropriator on a strategy to halve the White House’s war-funding request to pressure President Bush into changing course in Iraq.

WTF does that mean? “(C)hanging course in Iraq”? We should change from the path we’re on now? Violence down by 70%? Troop morale high? Even the media seeing the surge working? Both Sunnis and Shiites wanting to fight al Qaeda? AQI losing ground even in their hot spots? We should change course from that?

Anyway…

Levin said Wednesday that giving Bush a six-month installment plan on the nearly $200 billion fiscal 2008 war-funding request would serve a dual purpose: It would intensify pressure on the president to change course after next June, while avoiding “sending a negative message to the troops,” because war funding would continue until next may or June, when the president would have to request a second funding bill.

Allow me to translate: They’ll be able to push their defeatist agenda while avoiding being accused of not supporting the troops.

Levin says his approach would allow Democrats to blunt those attacks.

“We ought to … put that kind of pressure on the administration by taking a positive act, which is providing funding for the troops, and doing it for a period which requires revisiting this issue after the president reports to us next spring,” Levin told reporters at a breakfast on Wednesday hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. Next March, Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, will report to Congress on the status of the war.

I’ve heard this crap before. Democrats wanted Petraeus to testify this past September, but when the time they accused him of just presenting something written by the President. That despite the fact the President received it the same time Congress did.

“Anything we can do to constrain this president from pursuing his continued failed course is worth looking at,” Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) said of Levin’s proposal.

“Failed”? Does Obama own a television? Internet access, maybe? Perhaps he can subscribe to a newspaper. Violence is down, Iraqis are working on political reconciliation, troops morale is high, al Qaeda being driven out, Iraqis are abandoning the Mahdi Army…yeah. I can see how that’d be “failed”.

This is another case of 535 stuffed suits in Washington attempting to control a war and limit funds for troops while in harms way, thousands of miles away. Here’s an idea, Democrats: How about giving our troops the resources needed to win? Yeah, I know, victory could damage your electoral chances, but how about it?