OK so why would any Democrat not listen to Edwards and Kleiman (see below) ?

I am reminded of Nixon's secret strategy to end the Vietnam war. His idea was that Communists thought he was insanely anti communist (pretending to be so was his successful secret strategy to become the youngest Vice President in US history). So they would be terrified and ready to accept a compromise. Nixon being secretly sane (at the time) would agree and there you have it. Didn't work but made some logical sense and would only work if kept secret.

Now we have Bush's not secret strategy to not end the war. He really is crazy. If forced to choose between no funding or a deadline, he will choose no funding and try to blame the Democrats. They know this. Basically there is an insane man who has 160,000 American hostages. He is perfectly capable of ordering them to stay in Iraq with no funding. He is much more capable of ordering people to spend money not appropriated by congress. The constitution is in grave danger. The hostage crisis will end on January 200 2009. A couple of hundred more deaths is really a small price to pay to not find out just how crazy President Bush is.

The logic is that it does not make sense to play chicken with a rabid bull on steroids.

I support the "no timeline. no funding. no excuses." approach with one month no timeline supplementals (the proposal of the moderate Markos Moulitsas who doesn't go as far as the radical Mark Kleiman. The aim is not to get out of Iraq before Janaury 20 2009, that is impossible, the aim is to force Republican senators in blue states to choose between utterly rejecting their party line and the Presidento and voting for the war and losing their seats. I think they will vote for the war and we will have a semi decent Senate and a sane president at the same time. Of course I'm dreaming.