Good try, Carl, but it won't wash. The attempt to differentiate between the "good" pro-war politicians and the "bad" pro-war politicians lets you promote your political allies, while taking the rest of us along for the ride.

Schakowsky and Gutierrez, like all the rest of the Chicago area Congressional delegation, voted for the latest war appropriation. In fact, while a few years ago Schakowsky had been voting consistently against Iraq/Afghanistan war funding*, and Gutierrez had a mixed record, with the new Democratic Congress, they've been solidly in the PRO-war funding camp. So you want to reward their rightwards drift with speakers slots? Yes, what a brilliant strategy!

This isn't "left posturing," it's talking about the "awful truth" that Dem partisans don't want to hear about, especially as they attempt to get us all ga ga about the 2008 elections.

The U.S. wasn't kicked out of Vietnam due to a phantom alliance with "peace" Democrats, it was kicked out by:

1) the armed struggle of the Vietnamese,

2) a politically independent, international anti-war movement that had moved beyond symbolic peace demonstrations to direct action combined with mass marches, and

3) a direct action anti-war movement within broad sectors of the U.S. military itself.

#3 was greatly facilitated by #1 and #2. We've got a long road to hoe to get #2 back to within anywhere near the strength we saw during the Vietnam War. Arguably, we've got to do much better this time around, as Iraq and surrounding countries are much more strategic to U.S. world domination than Southeast Asia ever was.

All this suggests that we've got a lot of work ahead of us, and phantom hopes that Democratic Party power brokers are going to help get us there are a big diversion from this task, and just about the most absurd get rich quick scheme one could devise.

The leading Dems have clearly articulated their fealty to American domination of the region by saying that a Democratic presidency would ensure troops in Iraq through the end of their first term, 2013. Believing that you can ally with these people and thus get them to end the war is like believing in the Tooth Fairy.

* For those who don't know her and her voting record, Schakowsky's "anti-war" credentials were quite lousy even when she was (symbolically) voting against Iraq/Afghanistan war funding. Self-describing herself as a "proud Zionist," she has the most hawkishly pro-Israel/anti-Palestinian voting record of the entire Illinois delegation.