Via Kos:

“We are going to bring an end to this war and I will fight hard in the United States Senate to make sure we don’t pass any funding bill that does not have a deadline,” Obama told the crowd.

Big props to Senator Obama. Hurrah!

Via atrios, Pennsylvania Democrat and ertswhile Netroots favorite Joe Sestak has caved in on Iraq:

Rep. Joe Sestak (D., Pa.) . . . said Democratic leaders should set aside their demands for immediate withdrawal "and begin to help author a comprehensive regional security plan that accepts the necessity for a deliberate redeployment."

. . . Sestak has been among those Democrats who think that setting a "date certain" for withdrawal is the best way to force Iraqis to assume more responsibility.

But he now believes the length of time needed to redeploy, and the potential for the entire Army to "unravel" unless troops are redeployed, require a compromise.

Good bargaining there Admiral. So are we going to support primarying Sestak? The Netroots/activist strategy on Iraq in 2007 has been an abject failure.

Update: Here is the text (html) of President Bush's speech.

****

President Bush will be addressing the nation on Iraq tonight at 9pm ET. Here's a preview of what he is going to say.

There are 168,000 troops currently in Iraq. His plan to bring some home will leave us at about the same level as in January, before the "surge."

That's not a withdrawal plan either party should accept. As for responses by the Democratic candidates:

Hillary Clinton sent this letter to Bush.

What you are planning to tell the American people tomorrow night is that one year from now, there will be the same number of troops in Iraq as there were one year ago. Mr. President, that is simply too little too late, and unacceptable to this Congress, and to the American people who have made clear their strong desire to bring our troops home, and end this war.

John Edwards will have a two minute ad on MSNBC on the inadequacy of Bush's Iraq plan following the speech. Excerpts from the ad are here.

More...

Kos:

There's the Dodd approach:

What was clear to me before, and what should be abundantly clear to my colleagues after today, is that this President is not going to change course unless we force him to. There is only one way to do that - we must set a clear, hard and fast deadline for redeployment and, in order to enforce it, that deadline must be tied to funding.

And then there's the Obama approach:

Despite the unpopularity of the Iraq war, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama predicted Thursday that Congress won't directly challenge President Bush's plans and will focus instead on putting a ceiling on the number of troops deployed to that country.

Which senator is showing leadership, and which one is preemptively capitulating?

I'll answer the rhetorical question - Chris Dodd is leading. Obama is preemptively capitulating.

Via Brandon Friedman at Daily Kos:

Two of the seven soldiers who wrote the New York Times op-ed piece criticizing U.S. counterinsurgency strategy 3 ½ weeks ago have been killed in Iraq.  Yance T. Gray and Omar Mora died Monday in a vehicle accident in Baghdad.   The AP has reported on Yance Gray here, and KHOU, a Houston-area TV station has reported on Omar Mora here.  Their families have been notified.

Here's the August 19 NY Times op-ed, The War as We Saw It. Some snippets:

After two days of Senate testimony by General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, Republicans are worried.

By Tuesday, it was clear that although such a drawdown would remove the nearly 30,000 reinforcements by next summer, it would leave 130,000 troops in Iraq, a force size that troubled both Republicans and Democrats.

Especially concerned were GOP senators who face reelection next year. They seemed worried by the increasing likelihood that there would be little political progress in Iraq and high levels of U.S. troops there come election day 2008.

House leader Nancy Pelosi expressed her concern this way:

More...

Joe Lieberman is not to be believed. Via Spencer Ackerman at TPM again:

"Can't we attack Iran pleeeeeeaze?" sez Joe. "No," sez Petraeus. Watch the disappointment in Lieberman's face. Priceless.

Chris Matthews is hammering this question, from Senator John Warner, and answer, from General Petraeus.

Warner asked Petraeus point blank, will the policy you are recommending make the United States safer. And General Petraeus, in my opinion, to his credit, said he did not know, that he was focused on accomplishing the mission given to him.

And you know what? It is not Petraeus' call to decide what the mission is. It is the job of the Commander in Chief, the President of the United States to argue for his own policy. But it is the job of the Congress to decide whether it will fund the policy the President recommends.

Joe Biden was on with Matthews. And he was saying we should leave Iraq. But this same Joe Biden says he will vote to fund Bush's Debacle. That is an indefensible position.

Last night in his discussion with Frank Rich about Petraeus and Iraq, Keith Olberman said (starting around the 2:30 mark):

Olbermann: . . . You said the Democrats lack the votes but the [Democratic] leadership does not need a majority to stop funding the war. Why do they do so? . . . Does it not cross your mind that the Democrats could thread the needle if they really wanted to on this. Is it too cynical to suggest that some at least are stalling almost as much as the Administration is because it sometimes seems as if there is at least the the outskirts of an either/or situation here, if they wanted to, with a supreme effort they could stop the war still fund those troops and get them home safely . . . but there are some who would rather have it continue into 2008 and [have] it as a campaign signal point?

Olbermann is alluding to the option of NOT funding the war after a date certain. His reference to an "either/or" situation is exactly right. The choice now is binary for Democrats - NOT funding is the only way Democrats can end the Debacle. And there is the question - will Democrats try to do everything they can to end the Iraq Debacle? Olbermann raises the critical question now. What Bush and the Republicans will do has never been in doubt. More.

General Petraeus speaks (his opening remarks are here. Via TPM, here is Ambassador Crocker's opening statement):

Will discuss "his recommendations to his chain of command." Insists that this is his personal statement uncleared by anyone.

"The security goals of the Surge are being met."

Second political highlight - "we can reduce forces by next summer." Does not say in any detail what that means.

More below the fold.

The Joint House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing on the Surge, featuring the testimony of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, has just commenced. You can view it online on C-Span3.

I will be live-blogging the testimony below the fold. Please add your comments.

Via Yglesias, I give O'Hanlon credit, he has stopped fibbing about being a "Iraq war and Surge critic." And he does so in an appropriate venue, National Review, where he becomes an open apologist for General Petraeus:

For those reading this after watching General David Petraeus’s Monday testimony, I strongly suspect that my main argument will have become apparent to many: General Petraeus is a straight shooter who does not and will not cook the books. . . . Some of Petraeus’s critics will argue, as they already have, that he wrote an oped in the fall of 2004 that was too optimistic about the training of Iraqi Security Forces then — and too closely timed to the American elections that November. To them, that suggests he was and is acting as an agent of White House spin. That oped may in retrospect have been somewhat too optimistic. . . . However, a possible misjudgment on this matter hardly shows Petraeus to be a spinmeister. If anything, it shows him to be human. . . .

Sure, O'Hanlon, sure. I see "Fox news analyst Michael O'Hanlon" in your future.