Senate democrats tried for the umpteenth time to do a back-door retreat of troops in Iraq yesterday, and for the umpteenth time they failed.

Senate Republicans yesterday blocked a bid by Democrats to restrict troop-deployment schedules for a second time, saying it would impede the ability of President Bush and generals to wage the war in Iraq.

“The majority has brought this back in order to reduce the numbers of fully trained and combat-experienced troops available to our military commanders and thus to force an accelerated drawdown of troops and units in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let’s be honest about this,” said Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and presidential aspirant.

The troop-deployment measure, which would have required troops to get “dwell time” at home equal to time deployed overseas, died 56-44, falling four votes shy of the 60 needed to pass, according to a previous agreement.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, vowed to keep pushing to end the war, even though Mr. Webb’s amendment was the lone war-related measure considered to have a chance for passage.

“We will not stop waging the hard-but-necessary fight to responsibly end the war,” he said.

OK, let’s see if we can make this clear. I’ll type slowly so maybe they can understand.

Congress has the right to declare and fund wars. The president is the Commander in Chief and has the right to decide how to deploy the troops and for how long.

If they want to end the war the only option available to them is to vote to de-fund the troops.

I learned that in ninth grade civics class. Seems pretty clear to me.