Joel (Sun Tzu) adds to Chris's thoughts in a subsequent post:

Hello! We just birthed ourselves a big, fat, healthy wedge issue. The right-wingers and the middle buy into Murtha's plan big time. IF our side promotes it properly. The progressives/TTI High are split, but that's because they want the U.S. out entirely, I think. In short, they likely can be brought in IF Murtha's plan is defined as a major step forward in Iraq and, in particular, of protecting our troops and getting the U.S. out of the business of terrorist recruitment.

Capisce? Of course you do. It makes total sense. Obviously (at least from what I've seen), those Beltway Bums, a.k.a., political consultants, supposedly on our side don't get it. Ah, and that points to the real problem, as discussed thoroughly and eloquently in Jerome's and Markos' book, Crashing The Gate: the current political structure, which oh so unfortunately includes The Beltway Bums. For the MyDD Poll, `nothing but net' on this one.

Well, it seems that maybe someone is listening. Here's a story in the Boston Globe headlined Democrats may unite on plan to pull troops:

After months of trying unsuccessfully to develop a common message on the war in Iraq, Democratic Party leaders are beginning to coalesce around a broad plan to begin a quick withdrawal of US troops and install them elsewhere in the region, where they could respond to emergencies in Iraq and help fight terrorism in other countries.

The concept, dubbed ''strategic redeployment," is outlined in a slim, nine-page report coauthored by a former Reagan administration assistant Defense secretary, Lawrence J. Korb, in the fall. It sets a goal of a phased troop withdrawal that would take nearly all US troops out of Iraq by the end of 2007, although many Democrats disagree on whether troop draw-downs should be tied to a timeline.

The article goes on to explain the lobbying Howard Dean is doing to push this plan, as well as the support of Jack Reed, the Senator tasked with building consensus on the issue among his causus.

As the MyDD poll showed, this is a very popular idea across the political spectrum. I don't even think it's all that hard a message to make now that Jack Murtha has absorbed a lot of the "cut-n-run" rhetoric. He moved the issue down the field and took a lot of fire from the Republicans for doing it. But he put the idea of troop withdrawal out into the mainstream so that now a plan like this (which is essentially Murtha's plan only repackaged as coming from the Kolb report) can be portrayed as a reasonable "redeployment," and the media won't necessarily focus exclusively on the withdrawal aspects as they did with Murtha.

It makes so much sense, it's gotta happen.

Right?