I don’t know, but like some spellbinder straight out of a Tolkien book, President Bush has worked his magic again.

Democrats were failing to muster the required votes in the House to override Bush’s veto of a war-spending bill last week, and given the sad state of anti-war assertiveness within Democratics on the Hill, it seems Bush’s desired no-strings-attached funding may not be beyond hope.

Despite polls vastly supporting the Democratic positions in the war-torn nation — polls like the April 26 Gallup questionnaire indicating 57 percent of Americans support setting a timetable for removing troops from Iraq, whereas only 39 percent supported Bush’s proposal to keep troops in as long as necessary to achieve victory — the Democratic leadership still appears weary to stake a stand against the administration policy of indefinite deployment.

As Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin told The New York Times, "There is virtually no one in our caucus who does not want to be associated with trying to get us out of this war. The only thing that is slowing some of them is the fear that somehow they will be accused of doing something that will put the troops at risk. The desire for political comfort is still overwhelming the best judgment even of some Democrats."

Translation: The Democrats are so afraid of making any politically exploitable misstep on Iraq or looking soft on national security that they are failing the American people and the troops.

Nothing “supports the troops,” to use the inane slogan the administration PR geniuses coined so effectively, more than getting them out of harm's way in an endless, goal-less conflict which has catastrophically increased instability in the region and continues to aid terrorist recruiters in finding new members.

I am with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. The Democrats should revoke the war powers granted to the president and send Bush a memo straight from the majority of Americans: The game is up. Add an end to this open-ended debacle and do what is truly best for the troops. Stop making their enlistments and tours of duty in Iraq longer.

The only thing Democrats would surrender by setting a withdrawal date from Iraq, after all, is another failed policy by what history will surely remember as one of our worst administrations.

In The Fray Contributor