DIMS will Cut funding of Iraq. BUSH will stay there until 2008 with the least amount of troops and money and hand it off to some GOP standard bearer to deal with. The 2008 election will be about IRAQ because the DIMS believe it is a winner for them and they will milk it for whatever it is worth.
Barnes is right in one key respect, and in this case there are TWO different underlying factors at work . . . 1) Democrats who never really supported the war in the first place, and 2) Republicans who are utterly p!ssed off at how poorly it has been managed.
The Bush administration is going to "cut & run" in Iraq because it will never accommodate Group #1 no matter what it does, and it simply doesn't have the will (or the resources) to execute the war in a manner that will satisfy Group #2.
Yesterday's election results made it eminently important for Iraq to be off the table completely by 2008, or the Republican Party will lose the 2008 presidential election in a historic landslide even if the Democrats nominate Osama bin Laden.
The Defense Appropriations bill won't be passed until late summer 2007 at the earliest, and won't be implemented until Oct 2007, which is the beginning of FY 2008. I would hope that if the Dims manage to pass any lesser bills before then that cut funding for Iraq, President Bush would veto them. If not, then the WOT wasn't so important to him all along, and I don't believe that's true, so he would veto.
If the appropriations are cut effective Oct 2007, the Bush administration will probably have already begun to 'redeploy' by then. IOW, the point might be moot by then. Or not.