Up today on The Western Word are comments about the Iraq War Funding bill:

Here comes the spin…
Look for Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, D-Nev., to put pressure on his democrats in the senate to go on the attack with speeches and press releases since the President vetoed the Iraq war funding bill yesterday.
You can bet there will be pre-recorded sound bites and massive press releases sent to home state media. Already, Montana’s Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., has posted a couple of press releases on his website about the veto, so he’s falling in line behind his majority leader, as expected.
It looks like Reid’s plan is when they start the process for a new bill, they may get more moderate Republicans to sign on and make the next bill veto-proof or at least hammer out a compromise.
Of course, the other side of the aisle is spinning the veto, too.
The good news is that the leaders in the House and Senate will meet with the President this afternoon to try and make a deal.

The House tries to override the veto…
Since they only passed the bill 218-208 on April 25 is was dead on arrival. It was the classic spin machine in action. It was a waste of time. They needed 2/3 of the 435 members to vote to override it. They received 220 votes for the override and 203 against it.

Benchmarks-Yes. Timelines-No.
There will need to be concessions on both sides. I think some consequences for Iraq for not meeting certain benchmarks is where it will end up. This is good.

But, who really supports the troops…
One debate is who is really supporting the troops. The Western Word (TWW) believes that by saying, “I believe … that this war is lost” as Sen. Reid did, did harm to the troops and gave the enemy hope. I think he realized he said the wrong thing. As one who served in the military, hearing crap like what is going on in Washington D.C., always made me angry. Most of those folks back there never served. Many even got out of the draft by getting help from mommy or daddy or friends in high places. Some were just born with silver spoons and it was beneath them to join the armed forces.

In regards to earmarks…
TWW would have liked to have seen a clean Iraq War funding bill (one without earmarks attached). But, that was the cost to get some people to come on board.
Readers might well remember that during the 2006 elections, many democrats ran on “earmark” reform. They made earmarks seem dirty and nasty. I heard some candidates say they did not support earmarks and others said there should not be earmarks attached to bills that had nothing to do with the basic bill.
The war funding bill was a classic example of one of those bills as it contained money for disaster assistance for agriculture, which is needed, but not attached to a war-funding bill. There was funding for the senate gift shop, small business administration, Katrina, etc. Most of this funding is needed, but they should be in an appropriations bill that deals with that agency. The bill that was passed and vetoed was 93 pages.