Democratic leaders have decided to side with the president rather than the people of Iraq or the American public which voted them into office. The Democrats have dropped any timetable for the withdrawal of troops and agreed instead to include 18 benchmarks for the Iraqi government in a bill which continues to fund the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The benchmarks seemingly require a drop in Baghdad violence in exchange for reconstruction money, yet Bush has the authority to waive these benchmarks entirely.

Like most top Democrats, Speaker Pelosi proved to be a major disappointment, saying she opposed the Iraq portion of the plan after she had already signed off on it. Pelosi plans to but the pro-war measure to a vote this week, obviously gaining more support from Republicans.

With 3,420 US soldiers dead, over 1 million Iraqis dead, and 34,000 US troops wounded, the Democrats pledged to try again in July to withdraw US forces from Iraq. The debate is expected to move away from current emergency funding bill to fiscal 2008 war spending bills in July. Take your time everyone! If you plan on trying just as hard in two months as you did this month, then we’re certain nothing is going to change anyway.

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Jack Cafferty reads some righteously angry emails regarding this story. So, are any of you loyal mainstream Democrats ready to become real liberals and covert to Kucinich-ism yet? I’m trying hard to restrain my anger for the sake of readability, but please feel free to vent your own in the comments section.

Update: Olbermann is equally disgusted with the surrender of the Democratic Party as well as the secret troop increase which is coming. Luckily we have the Democrats to stop it. Oh wait, no we don’t.