All this means that we're heading into an inevitable game of troop-funding chicken -- and while that has the potential to reflect poorly on the Administration, it's hardly the safest course for us. Funding the troops is a political minefield, and the problem with the withdrawal portion of the legislation is that it gives the Administration a somewhat defensible position from which to issue the Veto.

I feel I need to clarify that last statement. I'm not saying that I support the inevitable veto of the appropriations bill.  What I'm saying is that the notion that the Executive needs to be able to wage war without the interference of Congress - as a general principle - has a lot more support than does this particular executive waging war in this particular case.  So while the public may support withdrawal, that doesn't make our position watertight if it comes to a funding standoff. While we're forcing Bush into a veto that has the potential to reflect negatively on him, we're leaving ourselves extremely exposed to allegations of cutting off funding to the troops, while at the same time not causing the veto to be as damaging as it could be to the administration.

Given the Administration's current level of hubris, there's a rather wide range of legislation that they would never sign. So why give them the veto excuse that's easily explained to a large portion of the American public when we can likely get him to veto it based on something far more obscure and inexplicable? The rhetoric for a veto based on refusing to accept conditions under which the war will be waged is a LOT stronger than the rhetoric for a veto based on some unrelated matter which nevertheless is anathema to the administration.

Let the Administration try to explain why they refused to fund the troops due to a clause which reverses the ban in federal funding for stem cell research. That's not a winning situation for them.

For us, however, forcing such a choice from the administration is win/win. We take on much less risk and either score a political win in the form of funding for stem cell research, or force a veto on grounds that are unjustifiable to the vast majority of the American public.

A veto based on the withdrawal language is too easy to defend - and the right wing media engine is eager to cast the Dems as denying funding to the troops out of an irresponsible idealism.
If we can force a veto on less defensible grounds, we get a much bigger boost from this - with substantially less risk of being blamed for the veto. If we're going to get vetoed, we should make it as costly as possible to the President and all members of Congress who are still doing his bidding, and minimize the risk to ourselves.