If the Bush administration is under any illusions about the sorry political state of the Iraq war, recent action in the Senate should dispel them.

If the Bush administration is under any illusions about the sorry political state of the Iraq war, recent action in the Senate should dispel them. A Democratic proposal for a timetable for withdrawal was beaten back 5840, but Republicans passed their own version to force the administration to make quarterly progress reports to Congress and express its sense that 2006 should be the year when Iraqi security forces take the lead. Substantively, this wasn't particularly objectionable (Congress already gets updates all the time), but politically it was calamitous. It continued the narrative of Bush losing even his own party on Iraq--which is how the headlines played the vote--and showed that Republicans are afraid to have a fight with Democrats even on ground that should favor them. Most Republicans figure they are helping themselves when they "rebuke" Bush on the war. They are really undermining a president and a war that they are, like it or not, tremendously invested in, and hastening their own exit strategy as a majority.