It's the Democrats that want to keep the troops in Iraq?

Wha?

"The bottom line is this," Bush said. "Congress's failure to fund our troops on the front lines will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines. And others could see their loved ones headed back to the war earlier than they need to. That is unacceptable to me, and I believe it is unacceptable to the American people."

There's so much to unpack just in that one paragraph alone. For one, strictly speaking it's not Congress that would be failing to fund the troops, it would be Bush's veto. Bush of course has promised to veto the bill precisely because it requires him to withdraw troops sooner than he wants, not later. And the American public is overwhelmingly in favor of such a withdrawal.

Consider also Bush's repeated assertion that the Democratic legislation substitutes "the judgment of politicians in Washington for the judgment of our commanders on the ground." It wasn't long ago that Bush replaced the commanders who wouldn't fall in line behind his plan to increase the number of troops in Iraq -- a desperate, last-ditch plan that, by most indications, does not seem to be working.

On CNN with Suzanne Malveaux yesterday afternoon, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino boiled the White House spin down to its essence: "[I]t's President Bush who is standing firm with the troops, with the Iraqis and with the troops' families. And that's a much better place to be than where the Democrats are," she said. "I think it's the Democrats who have thumbed their noses at the troops."

Truly fucking amazing.