What's happening in Iraq 2 hours before the veto...

President Bush will go on network television tonight to veto supplemental funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iraq Responsability Act, even as Republicans in Congress are warming to benchmarks.  Here's is what Reid and Pelosi are saying to the President:

"The agreement reached between the House and the Senate rejects the President's failed policies in Iraq and his open-ended commitment to keep American troops there indefinitely and forges a new direction for a responsible end to the war. 

"If the President follows through on his veto threat, he will be the one who has failed to provide our troops and our veterans with the resources they need and it will be the President who has rejected the benchmarks he announced in January to measure success in Iraq.  The bill ensures our troops are combat-ready before they are deployed to Iraq, provides our troops the resources and health care they deserve in Iraq and here at home, and responsibly winds down this war.

"Iraqis must take the tough and necessary steps to secure their nation and to forge political reconciliation.  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates understands the value of timelines in motivating the Iraqi Government to accomplish these goals.  The President should carefully consider the views of his Secretary of Defense in making a judgment on this legislation.

"An overwhelming majority of Americans, bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress, military experts and the Iraq Study Group believe that a responsible end to the war best advances our national security needs.  It is now up to the President to make a decision: continue to stay his failed course or join us to give our troops a strategy for success."

As the President prepares to veto a bill supported by a majority of Americans, his National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley is searching for a War Czar to oversee the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is getting some criticism for failing to do the job himself:

It is the kind of task — a little bit of internal diplomacy and a lot of head-knocking, fortified by direct access to the president — that would ordinarily fall to Mr. Hadley himself. After all, he oversaw the review that produced Mr. Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq. But his responsibilities encompass issues around the globe, and he has concluded that he needs someone “up close to the president” to work “full time, 24/7” to put the policy into effect. He hopes to fill the job soon...

“Steve Hadley is an intelligent, capable guy, but I don’t think this reflects very well on him,” said David J. Rothkopf, author of “Running the World,” a book about the National Security Council. “I wouldn’t even call it a Hail Mary pass. It’s kind of a desperation move.”

That is one reason the war czar proposal has left some in Washington scratching their heads. At a recent press conference, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates described it this way: “This is what Steve Hadley would do if Steve Hadley had the time.”

But Mr. Daalder, who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, was mystified. “If Hadley doesn’t have time for this,” he asked, “what does he have time for? Our policy toward Nicaragua?”

Maybe that War Czar can do a better job of administering reconstruction in Iraq:

In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success — in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections — were no longer working properly.

And while there is good news out of Anbar, with more Sunni's cooperating with US forces, there is equally bad news about the Maliki government's efforts to protect Shiite militias and force out high-ranking Sunni security officials:

A department of the Iraqi prime minister's office is playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias, according to U.S. military officials in Baghdad.

Since March 1, at least 16 army and national police commanders have been fired, detained or pressured to resign; at least nine of them are Sunnis, according to U.S. military documents shown to The Washington Post.

Although some of the officers appear to have been fired for legitimate reasons, such as poor performance or corruption, several were considered to be among the better Iraqi officers in the field. The dismissals have angered U.S. and Iraqi leaders who say the Shiite-led government is sabotaging the military to achieve sectarian goals.

And the human cost of the war remains unacceptably high.  April was the most lethal month of the war for US forces and acts of terrorism in Iraq were up 91% from 2005 to 2006. 

And in the department of Orwellian holiday's, Happy Loyalty Day everybody.  I guess the President would rather we focus on that than the 4 year anniversary of the Mission Accomplished speech.