House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Saturday that Democrats will hold firm in the increasingly tense stalemate with President George Bush over the funding of the Iraq War.

"The (Bush administration) wants no accountability. ... They keep saying no. They say they don't want a goal. But time is running out. Conditions are not getting better in Iraq."

Comment<: So does that mean all a supplemental funding will have is a goal or goals? No, 'goals' are not antiwar.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said they offered to grant Bush the authority to waive the deadlines. They said they also suggested they would drop billions of dollars in proposed domestic spending that Bush opposed, in exchange for his acceptance of identifying a withdrawal date.

The offer marked the Democrats' first major concessions in a weekslong battle with the White House on war funding.

"To say I was disappointed in the meeting is an understatement," Reid, D-Nev., told reporters. "I really did expect that the president would accept some accountability for what we're trying to accomplish here."

Comment: No, Harry (and Nancy), accountability is not what antiwar people are after, we want U.S. troops out of harm's way, out of Iraq. And granting Bush authority to waive deadlines -- whatever those deadlines refer to -- is not the way to deal with a criminally irresponsible bully. If they're waivable, they're meaningless. But hey, now you're talking: identifying a withdrawal date is what I'm talking about. If the President accepts that, the war is over at a certain date, presumably in 2008 sometime. Oh, but wait, is this a deadline for when a withdrawal is supposed to start, like it was in one of the previous Senate bills, or for when it suppposed to be completed?

Also not ruled out is that Democrats will send Bush next week another bill he might reject.

"I was a little surprised that (the) Democratic leaders, at least so far, seem so dug in on that position" of setting a timetable, Bolten said. "Because it's a position that ... the president vetoed and which was sustained in" both chambers.

Comment: Yeah, that's more like it. Bolten unhappy, and the chance Bush gets a second troop-funding bill he will veto! What can we do, maybe we'll just have to leave Iraq to its citizens to govern. More seriously, the Democrats if they are antiwar must spin such a result as "We supported the troops by sending two funding bills to the President that he has vetoed, because unlike *57% of Americans (41% back the President's position), he didn't want a withdrawal deadline."

*And a far higher percentage of the Democratic Party (which pollsters rarely break down), of course .

By the way, here is what the Republicans want and Bush would accept:

Republicans and the White House essentially embraced language included in an amendment that Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., offered May 16 to an unrelated water resources bill that commanded a 52-44 majority but fell short of the 60 votes necessary to invoke cloture. Warner's amendment would require the president to produce reports in July and September on the Iraqi government's progress toward certain benchmarks, and unless he certified that they were moving forward, reconstruction aid would be withheld. But the president could waive that sanction.

Comment: Two more unacceptable words to look for, 'waivable benchmarks', but know also that non-waivable benchmarks that force Iraq to pass laws that our corporations, especially our oil giants, want has nothing to do with 'antiwar'. Non-waivable benchmarks that get us out of Iraq is what antiwar is about.

Keeping our eyes on the prize, we may succeed. 'Troops out by Christmas, 2007' makes a decent slogan, doesn't it?