And have been recently been equating some opinion polls showing high percentages of opposition to the War in Iraq with an electoral mandate.

Let’s see how they like this poll by Public Opinion Strategies (POS).

reported by New Media Journal:

57% of those polled agreed with the statement, “I support finishing the job in Iraq, that is, keeping the troops there until the Iraqi government can maintain control and provide security for their people.”..

57% of those polled believed that Iraq was central to the War on Terrorism and our struggle against global Islamofascist aggression…

53% believe the Democrats are going too far in pressing the president to withdraw troops.

56% believe that even if they harbor concerns about the president’s policies that Americans should stand behind the president in Iraq because we are at war.

59% believe that it would hurt American prestige more to pull out of Iraq immediately than it would to stay there for the long term, until the job was finished successfully.

and the New York Post:

53 percent to 43 percent… believe victory in Iraq over the insurgents is still possible…

Only 25 percent of those surveyed agreed with the statement, “I don’t really care what happens in Iraq after the U.S. leaves, I just want the troops brought home.” Seventy-four percent disagreed…

When given a choice of four policies, an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops was the least popular (17 percent).

says Virginia blogger SWAC Girl:

America is not at war.
The Marine Corps is at war;
America is at the mall.”

Hat tip to F22Strike.

AP reports: House votes to “support troops,” but opposes sending additional troops to complete the mission.

Hat tip to Roger de Hauteville at Maggie’s Farm.

Too cowardly to take an open stand insisting upon American defeat and withdrawal, which might have political consequences, the democrat leadership in the House of Representatives has devised a strategy in which John Murtha, now Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee, will bring to bear the same low cunning which served him so well during theAbscam investigation, when he declined to accept a bribe (while being taped) “at this point.”

At this point, Murtha will not try to defund the US military effort in Iraq, he will simply attach a variety of restrictions on spending and troop deployments, threatening Republicans with a complete cutoff of funds if they try to oppose such restrictions.

The Politico reports:

new restrictions on how the president can deploy combat forces from the United States to Iraq, allow combat veterans to have at least one year stateside before returning to the frontlines and prevent the Pentagon from keeping soldiers and Marines already in Iraq in uniform after their enlistments expire.

“This vote will limit the options of the president and should stop the surge,” Murtha predicted of next month’s floor fight over the wartime supplemental appropriation. “We’re trying to force redeployment [of troops outside Iraq], not by taking money away but by redirecting it.”

Murtha is not pushing a total cutoff of funds for the war in Iraq…

The strategy being employed by Murtha and other House Democratic leaders would force Bush and Republican congressional leaders to accept the new troop restrictions, or face the possibility the supplemental spending bill would falter, thus cutting off all funding for the war.

Democrats are betting that Bush and the Republicans won’t take that risk and will go along with the Democratic proposals. And Republican leaders are not taking Murtha’s threats lightly.

.cnI redruM has fun mocking the brave Shiite militia commander’s prudential border-crossing in the face of the imminent American offensive.

What a guy! What a leader of men. Muqtada Al Sadr has pointed tens of thousands of brave Islamic warriors down the road to paradise. He’s hooked them up with the 72 virgins. Presumably, he even provided them each a heart-shape bed.

But when the going got tough, and the tough got surging, Muqtada wasn’t musically inclined towards Teddy Pendergrass and Barry White. No 72 virgins for the Mighty Mook.

He left town so fast that an enterprising squad of MI types followed a residual trail of tire rubber all way to the Iranian border. Yep, he went straight to the Iranian border. That country bordering Iraq, whose president swears up and down isn’t helping Iraqi insurgents.

No wonder Saddam Hussein derisively snorted “Muqtada al Sadr?” in response to the crowd’s chanting that name just before the trapdoor dropped.

The Telegraph reports more definitive proof that Iran is arming insurgents with another weapon producing a serious toll of Allied and American lives.

More than 100 of the.50 calibre weapons, capable of penetrating body armour, have been discovered by American troops during raids.

The guns were part of a shipment of 800 rifles that the Austrian company, Steyr-Mannlicher, exported legally to Iran last year.

The sale was condemned in Washington and London because officials were worried that the weapons would be used by insurgents against British and American troops.

Within 45 days of the first HS50 Steyr Mannlicher rifles arriving in Iran, an American officer in an armoured vehicle was shot dead by an Iraqi insurgent using the weapon.

Over the last six months American forces have found small caches of the £10,000 rifles but in the last 24 hours a raid in Baghdad brought the total to more than 100, US defence sources reported.

The find is the latest in a series of discoveries that indicate that Teheran is providing support to Iraq’s Shia insurgents.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, yesterday denied that Iran had supplied weapons to Iraqi insurgents. But on Sunday US officials in Baghdad displayed a range of weapons they claimed had originated in Iran.

They said 170 American and British soldiers had been killed by such weapons.

Steyr Mannlicher went ahead with this sale, despite the decades-old Iranian Arms embargo. That decision really deserves to impact their sales in the US.

Strategy Page on Steyr’s rifle sale to Iran.

Six US helicopters have been shot down in Iraq during the last three weeks causing some of us to wonder what is producing this recent string of successes for our adversaries.

The not-necessarily-reliable Mossad-mouthpiece Depkafile claims to know the answer.

DEBKAfile’s sources in Tehran and Kurdistan disclose that, last month, two Iranian QW-1 and SA-7 missile consignments reached Iraqi insurgents allied with al Qaeda and one, radical Shiite Moqtada Sadr’s Shiite militia, the Mehdi Army. Israeli sources report the same anti-air weapons were delivered at about the same time to Hizballah units in Lebanon including the south.

Our military sources add that Iran’s arms industry has succeeded in replicating a quality version of the Chinese QW-1 and improved its electronics. It is 1.447meters long and packs 16.5 kilos of explosives. The IDF estimates that the first of these missiles used experimentally by Hizballah caused an Israeli helicopter to explode during take-off near the Litani River in the Lebanon War last summer.

Iranian markings have been erased from the equipment going into Iraq and Lebanon to suggest they were bought on the black market. Dated Soviet-era models of the SA-7 were indeed bought by Iran on Far East black markets and supplied to Iraqi insurgents and also pro-Tehran governors in western Afghanistan. Iran is preparing the ground for a Shiite insurgency against NATO forces there.

According to our sources, all three consignments to Iraq went through the North Iraqi Kurdistani town of Suleimaniya not far from the Iranian border. An Iranian clandestine center operates there like “the liaison center” the Americans raided in another Kurdish town, Irbil, last month. The Suleimaniya center operates with permission from Iraqi’s Kurdish president Jalal Talabani.

They weapons were smuggled in concealed compartments of trucks transporting building materials and iron from Iran for a Kurdish building company. After unloading their legitimate freight, the trucks drove on south up to the regional border where Iraqi insurgents off-loaded the missiles to their vehicles and distributed them to their networks in Baqouba, Ramadi and Tikrit — north of Baghdad and Hilla to the south.

In January, two-man teams of Iraqi insurgents and Hizballah operatives were trained in the use of the new weapons against American and Israeli helicopters as instructors for missile crews in Iraq and Lebanon. One crewman was taught to locate the target and help the second to aim. The training facilities were set up in Kermanshah and Qasr-e Shirin close to the Iraqi border.

Tehran is stepping up its provocations in reprisal for the US president George W. Bush’s directive to US forces to capture or kill Iranian agents, America’s refusal to release the Revolutionary Guards officers captured in Irbil and finally by the seizure last week of an Iranian diplomat in Baghdad.

Depkafile could be tellling the truth.

John Hinderaker, at Power Line, comments on the latest attack by Pouting Spooks upon this Administration.

During the halcyon early years of the Bush administration, it still seemed possible that the President and his appointees could prevail over the inertia and, often, outright hostility of the almost-entirely-Democratic federal bureaucracy. One instance of the administration’s effort to get beyond the bureaucracy’s stale thinking was the Defense Department’s Office of Special Plans, which was overseen by Douglas Feith, who was then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

Feith’s group became known for challenging the CIA’s dogmatic belief that Iraq’s “secular” dictatorship couldn’t possibly collaborate with radical Islamic groups like al Qaeda. The Office of Special Plans argued that the CIA consistently played down its own raw evidence of relationships between Iraq and al Qaeda because such evidence didn’t fit the agency’s theoretical framework. That act of lese majesty must naturally be punished.

So tomorrow, the Pentagon’s own Inspector General will present a report to the Senate Armed Services Committee on whether–I’m not kidding–it was illegal for the Defense Department to independently analyze the data gathered by the intelligence agencies.

You can breathe a sigh of relief, though; the Inspector General concluded that disagreeing with the CIA is not a crime.

Says Steve Schippert. Everybody except our Pouting Spook-dominated Intelligence Community and Pacifist State Department, that is.

Some in the US Intelligence Community seem to operate in another realm and in a world with significantly different realities, dangers and potential outcomes. How else can it be explained that United States political leadership has been persuaded to withhold releasing intelligence regarding Iranian actions in Iraq, including arming, funding and training both Sunni and Shi’a groups killing US soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, let alone the mind-boggling toll upon Iraq’s civilian population?

In question is the same Iran that even Hassan Nasrallah openly ceded feeds the Hizballah terrorist organization responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese through its terrorist attacks, “And the help is funneled through Syria, and everybody knows it.”

“Everybody knows” a lot of things. One of them is an American fear of international and internal criticism that prevents her from doing what is necessary — or anything much beyond rhetoric, for that matter – to openly confront the Iranian regime that has been at war with the United States since its 1979 Islamic revolution…

In just two operations, one in Baghdad and one in Irbil, more than a handful of Qods Force operators from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were captured. A man described as “Chizari” was among the Iranian operators nabbed from the offices of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq and a key political figure in Iraq. “Chizari” was reported by the Washington Post as “the third-highest-ranking official of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ al-Quds Brigade.”

“Chizari” and another “equally significant” Qods Force commander were quickly released by the United States because the Iranian government saw fit to provide the commanders of terror-exporting Qods Force with deceptive diplomatic papers. They are not diplomats, “…and everybody knows it.”

Iran has a history of using diplomatic cover for terrorist operations. It was an Iranian that played a key role in directing terrorist operations against Americans in Lebanon, including the bombings of the US embassy (twice) and the Marine Barracks in Beirut – which combined killed 320 in 1983 and 1984. Like “Chizari” today, that Iranian was also quite complete with diplomatic papers, for it was Iran’s ambassador to Syria from 1982 to 1985, Ali Akbar Mohtashemipour, one of the founders of Hizballah in Lebanon, “…and everybody knows it.”

The recent Karbala executions are seen by most in the Pentagon and military intelligence as a revenge strike by Iran’s Qods Force for American captures of its commanders in Iraq. It is believed that Qods Force operators abducted four US soldiers, killing another US soldier in the process, and then summarily executed the four on the side of the road after escaping from Karbala in five SUV’s. Two Iraqi generals are in custody for suspicions of collusion with the attackers, while four others arrested shortly after the executions remain in US custody.

That we know the Iraqi general’s nationalities but not those of the ‘mysterious four’ suggests that they are most likely Iranians whose interrogations may have directly lead to the arrest of the Iraqi generals in question. The Karbala executions operation was far too professional to be carried out by Iraqi militias, “…and everybody knows it.”

Chronologically, there was the capture of Iranians, the discovery of evidence illustrating the depths of their lethal warfare upon us in Iraq, the Karbala executions and then the planned public release of evidentiary intelligence damning to Iran. Yet, the Bush Administration appears now mortally fearful of disclosing any intelligence on Iran’s lethal activities not absolutely bullet-proof, “…and everybody knows it.”

The argument once was whether or not the Iranians were involved in killing American troops. That argument is now openly ceded. Iran is killing Americans now just as it has since the ‘diplomat’-directed 1983 bombings in Beirut, “…and everybody knows it.”

In place of the ceded argument of Iranian guilt in Iraq, relentless intelligence officials now pose the argument that the intelligence in question does not prove that the Iranian regime is directly responsible, suggesting openly that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Qods Force is some sort of ‘rogue’ operation, arming, funding and training terrorist organizations with the assets of the state without the knowledge or permission of that same state. Qods Force is no simple ‘rogue operation,’ “…and everybody knows it.”

While it may hold some measure of its own power, it by no means should be considered detached from the regime as Qods Force, by doctrine and order, is responsible for extra-territorial operations and part of a Guards Corps that is charged with exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution “…and everybody knows it.”

This export, whether in Iraq, Lebanon or in the Palestinian Territories, is not undertaken through diplomatic means but through arming and feeding terrorist organizations like Hizballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even al-Qaeda in Iraq “…and everybody knows it.”

The notion has been forwarded and the debate already shaped as one in which the Bush Administration is doing nothing more than repeating 2003 “exaggerated or false claims” in order to justify action. The cancelled intelligence releases on Iran are already criticized as ‘shades of 2003’ in the lead up to the Iraq invasion without any foreknowledge of what that intelligence might be. Canceling the intelligence exposure has proven at least as damaging as releasing incomplete information, putting the administration once again on the defensive. This avoidable and regrettable position is the cumulative result of its own poor communication with the American people regarding the threats before us. It is a foregone conclusion that any intelligence release by the current administration will be roundly criticized in certain intelligence circles and thus the media regardless of content, “…and everybody knows it.”

This administration had better get out in front of the line and generate public understanding of the situation. Such an understanding will translate into the public support the White House is constantly warned it will not see through intelligence releases on Iran, for they will be tirelessly questioned and politicized. The greatest failure of the White House since this open conflict began has been the failure to sufficiently and effectively communicate with the American public it serves, consistently ceding the initiative to its detractors, “…and everybody knows it.”

Meanwhile, the enemy benefits from such presidential timidity in reaction to internal American debate. Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah certainly has no fears of US action, nor with each passing day does Iran. “Iran assists the organization with money, weapons, and training, motivated by a religious fraternity and ethnic solidarity. And the help is funneled through Syria, and everybody knows it.”

Because we failed to persuade the locals that they were really defeated in a war, before we empowered them and allowed them to form their own government. We now have a terrorist convicted of bombing US and French embassies sitting in Iraq’s parliament as a member of the governing coalition, while operating as an Iranian agent.

CNN.

A man sentenced to death in Kuwait for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies now sits in Iraq’s parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s ruling coalition, according to U.S. military intelligence.

Jamal Jafaar Mohammed’s seat in parliament gives him immunity from prosecution. Washington says he supports Shiite insurgents and acts as an Iranian agent in Iraq.

U.S. military intelligence in Iraq has approached al-Maliki’s government with the allegations against Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, whom it says assists Iranian special forces in Iraq as “a conduit for weapons and political influence.”

The Telegraph explains why the Bush Administration’s promised news conference of Iranian activities in Iraq has been delayed. It’s the State Department and the CIA footdragging again.

America’s military chiefs are at loggerheads with the country’s diplomats and spies over tactics for confronting Iranian agents in Iraq over their role in lethal attacks on US forces.

The rift has spilled over into a dispute about how and when to publish alleged evidence of Iranian backing for Iraqi militias and Iran’s provision of supplies and technology for roadside bombs, the biggest killer of American soldiers in Iraq, a White House adviser revealed…

Angered by the mounting toll of troops killed by ever-more sophisticated devices, US commanders insisted last month that the White House give them authority to target and kill Iranian operatives in Iraq as part of the new 21,500-troop “surge” strategy ordered by Mr Bush.

But the State Department, headed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and the CIA had argued against openly targeting Iranian agents, most of whom claim to be diplomats based at Teheran’s network of consulates, liaison offices and cultural offices in Iraq.

They contended that this approach could escalate into direct armed conflict with Iran, which is under intense international pressure to give up its nuclear programme.

The State Department and the CIA, which both objected to the way the Bush administration used pre-war intelligence on Iraq, also wanted to publicise clear evidence of Iranian interference in Iraq as a way of justifying the US stance.

“The military’s highest echelons really do not want the release of details of what Iran is up to as they don’t want the Iranians to know what’s working and what’s not,” the administration adviser said.

“The military and the State Department and CIA are coming at this from very different approaches. State and the CIA believe we should respect the supposed diplomatic immunity of these Iranians. But the military has had enough and they say ‘to hell with their fake diplomatic immunity’.”

The splits within the administration come as reports emerge of new variants of “explosively formed projectiles” allegedly made with Iranian help.

The Pentagon said the first soldier was killed by one of the devices on Jan 22, but it is refusing to give further details of their use because it wants to limit the information available to its enemies.

The US has also suggested that Iranian operatives may have been involved in the abduction and killing of five soldiers in Kerbala (reported here), a potentially explosive accusation. But Stephen Hadley, Mr Bush’s national security adviser, acknowledged on Friday that the intelligence briefing on Iranian interference in Iraq – publication of which has been delayed twice – was still being refined.

Clearly we need to vanquish America’s adversaries in Langley and Foggy Bottom before we have any hope of successfully taking on Teheran.

From Dr. Sanity:

All politicians are guilty of trying to hedge their bets when they can get away with it. But the rhetoric employed by the Dems has consistently rested on US failure and defeat because it plays well to their leftist base, who have bet their entire ideology on America’s defeat and humilitation.

The Democrat’s dilemma is that they can’t possibly win an election with only that base, so they have to pander to the patriotic Americans just enough not to alienate them completely. Clearly, from their perspective, it would be best if America surrendered and admitted defeat. That would be the best possible outcome. They could keep their lunatic anti-American, anti-Bush, base; and win over those disgusted that the Republicans and Bush managed to lose a war and sacrifice American lives for nothing. But, oh dear. What if things turn around. People will remember any definitive action they implemented to impede success…. So, best to not actually do anything and just talk about doing something and see how things play out. If they took simultaneously committed to both the rhetoric and obvious behavior to ensure a path to surrender– and then that nincompoop Bush managed yet again to pull things out of the fire, they would be DOA in 2008.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Maggies Farm.