We'll Get Back to You on That Iraq Thing

As James Taranto commented, this article reads like something out of a satire magazine:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday that Democrats should not seek a unified position on an exit strategy in Iraq, calling the war a matter of individual conscience and saying differing positions within the caucus are a source of strength for the party.

Pelosi said Democrats will produce an issue agenda for the 2006 elections but it will not include a position on Iraq. There is consensus within the party that President Bush has mismanaged the war and that a new course is needed, but House Democrats should be free to take individual positions, she sad.

"There is no one Democratic voice . . . and there is no one Democratic position," Pelosi said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors.

Pelosi recently endorsed the proposal by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) for a swift redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq over a period of six months, but no other party leader followed, and House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) publicly opposed her.

She said her support for Murtha was not intended to forge a Democratic position on the war, adding that she blocked an effort by some of her colleagues to put the Democrats on record backing Murtha.

Her comments ruling out a caucus position appeared to put Pelosi at odds with some other party officials. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean recently said Democrats were beginning to coalesce around a strategy that would pull out all troops over the next two years. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said on the day Murtha offered his plan, "As for Iraq policy, at the right time, we'll have a position."

You just can't make this stuff up.

We do know, however, that the Dems do have one plan involving Iraq - the recruiting of Iraq war veterans to run for Congress (from Political Diary):

George Stephanopoulous may have just been named chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, but he's traveling to Illinois this week to give a priceless platform to an unusual Congressional candidate. Tammy Duckworth, a Black Hawk helicopter pilot who lost both of her legs in the Iraq war, will be using an interview on ABC's "This Week" to announce her candidacy as a Democrat for the Illinois House seat being vacated by GOP veteran Henry Hyde. Ms. Duckworth is expected to resign her active-duty commission in the military today.

Ms. Duckworth will be running in a district she has no real ties to and where there is already a strong Democratic contender--technology consultant Christine Cegelis, who won 44% of the vote against Mr. Hyde in 2004. But Ms. Duckworth is part of a comprehensive plan by Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to recruit military veterans for key House races. Paul Hackett, another Iraq war veteran, kindled interest in combat-hardened candidates among Democrats earlier this year when he won 48% of the vote in a special election for a solidly GOP House seat in Ohio.

Mr. Emanuel's recruitment efforts seem to be going well. Retired Marine Lt. Colonel Andrew Horne announced this week that he plans to challenge GOP Rep. Anne Northup, who since 1996 has held a Kentucky district that consistently votes for Democratic presidential candidates. Party strategists tell me that such candidates take the edge off of their party's image of being weak on national security issues. Perhaps, but all it will take is one more defeatist speech by Howard Dean, or flip comment by John Kerry about U.S. troops "terrorizing" Iraqi civilians, to bring back that perception with crystal clarity.

I'm just glad to see the Dems have some use for our troops.