Democratic Talking Points: 2006 Edition

In a series of speeches the past 10 days democrats have unleashed their campaign talking points and plan for Iraq. Much to the chagrin of the Dailykos community, their plan is essentially the Bush doctrine. The theme will center around three points (you can read Joe Biden's speech or an article on Barrack Obama's speech. (curious thing, the original headline to Obama's article was Obama: Bush should admit mistakes in Iraq, but has since been changed to Obama: Pull GIs from Iraq gradually click here for the actual speech). So, the three pronged dem plan for Iraq is as follows

Stabilize Iraq and avoid civil war

Extinguish the insurgency

bring the troops home

and more or less in that order. So what distinguishes this from what Bush has been saying all along? Here is what they are saying.

Stablization is a more pragmatic goal than Bush's abstraction about democracy and human spirit

Democrats have more credibility on the issue because they never lied about intelligence

a timetable will prevent the US propped government from dragging its feet on opening up the political process

I really wish I had blogged about this earlier, but I have said many times in conversations that I knew the democrats would jump right on board with Iraq policy right before it became clear that it would be largely successful. Since I am unusually precient about the political future (which may be just because I am conservative and they've been doing well recently) I will make the following predictions for the next year.

The December elections in Iraq will be a huge success

Zarqawi will be captured or killed

troops will be brought home just in time for 2006 campaign

democrats will try and take credit for all of this