There is progress in Iraq. That's the good news.

The bad news is that Democrats aren't just against the President's surge policy -- their goal, as one advocacy group put it baldly, has to do with "undermining" the President's "foreign and national security policy." It strikes me that there's a great difference between a disagreement about strategy, tactics and even goals on the one hand -- and actively trying to ensure that the U.S. fails in whatever goals have been set out by the duly elected commander-in-chief. It's analogous to the distinction between dissent and treason.

Finally, the Democrats have apparently decided on a "slow bleed" strategy for forcing defeat in the war on Iraq. It's a clearly dishonorable tactic, as its upshot is to make it impossible for the US to prevail in Iraq, while sparing the Democrats the unpopularity that would result from them pursuing the same end more transparently -- and honorably (by, e.g., withholding funding).