From the Hill: "No American troop will go without … just so the most liberal activists in the country can be quieted," said a senior House Democratic aide. "If it means Democrats in Congress get tea bags and hate mail, so be it — we will not be irresponsible with the lives of our troops." I have to call a spade a spade here- that reasoning is a total cop-out and disingenous. This CRS report- distributed to every single congressional office, and presumably read by the ever-so-responsible aide who's quoted here, shows that further delays would not have put soldiers in danger. CRS found that the Army had many options to stretch their funding well into the summer, including invoking the Feed and Forage act, which has been used in the past to finance operations while Congress worked on supplemental appropriations bills. I've pasted below the fold the section of the report that's most important, and added some bolding.

Weary war opponents in Congress will get to go back home soon, get some rest, and then face what might be a bigger headache than George Bush: the majority of Americans that disapproves of President Bush's decision to veto the first supplemental, which called for complete withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq by March 31, 2008. The new $120 billion supplemental war spending bill -- stripped of all references to troop withdrawal -- is expected to pass the House this evening after lawmakers made last-minute changes dictated by the White House.

A pared-down version of the war funding supplemental is currently scheduled to hit the House floor on Thursday, May 24, with Senate action expected later that day or early the next. The bill appears likely to include the federal minimum wage increase and and extension of about $4.8 billion in small-business tax cuts. Whether domestic emergency appropiations will remain is yet to be determined.