Get Smart.

The continuing adventures of Maxwell Smart (as played by George W. Bush) and Agent 99 (starring Nancy Pelosi): 

  

From Sunday's Washington Post:

By month's end, House Democrats plan to produce a major supplemental spending bill -- totaling as much as $170 billion -- to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into the next presidency, channel more federal money to the ailing domestic economy and set policies that they hope will begin to move U.S. troops out of the Middle East.

"I think it's important for the government of Iraq to know that they're going to have to take responsibility for the security of their own country, and soon," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. "And that's why the message in a supplemental or something else about redeployment is essential to this, or else they will never move."

Democratic leaders have repeatedly said that, in the end, U.S. troops in the field will be funded. But expectations are high that finally Congress will be able to extract a significant policy concession for that money.

Win Without War, a coalition of 42 groups, is circulating a letter declaring that "it is past time to bring the Iraq war to an end" and that "the best course of action in the upcoming defense supplemental appropriations bill is to provide funding only for the safe and timely redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq."

Antiwar Democrats are girding for a two-front battle. First, they want to beat back efforts to add popular domestic spending to any war funding, which would bolster support for the underlying bill. Then they want to stop any funding for the continuation of combat in Iraq.

Democrats -- and many Republicans -- have made clear in recent days that Bush cannot expect to get what he has demanded: a $108 billion war funding bill that hews to the letter of his request -- no added domestic spending, no curtailment of his war-making authority.