Reply #1: I'll skip past the denunciations and just get to the point: Obama's right.

[Kagemusha]

The votes aren't there, Reid isn't going to get them, the Republicans have rallied around Petraeus and Bush, and they will not be supporting a timetable for withdrawing US troops, especially since Bush would veto a funded withdrawal, leaving only what I call the Anabasis option, making the US Army fight its way out of Iraq with no funding or support. That's silly, we're not going to have that, and nor should we have to.

The President's veto pen forces this upon us. A united Congress could force the war to end, but a divided Congress cannot. That's how the system was set up 200+ years ago.