Her main points are that the Administration continues to refuse to define the conditions under which they would say that the US mission in Iraq had been either a success of a faliure, and that Bush is using security agreements with the Iraqi government to bypass the constitutional requirement that Congress ratify treaties. She also brings up her request — so far ignored by the Administration — that plans for disengagement of American forces be developed.

Here is her statement:

Yesterday in the Senate Armed Services Committee, I asked General Petraeus for the conditions under which he would actually support a change of course in Iraq, and to begin a drawdown of our troops, given that the surge has failed to achieve its stated goal of political reconciliation among the Iraqis. Well, he didn’t really answer me.

I also asked Ambassador Crocker if the United States Congress would have the same opportunity as the Iraqi Parliament will have to review any agreement or long-term security pact that President Bush is negotiating with the Iraqis. Ambassador Crocker said that the Congress, your representatives, would not have that chance.

I have two requests of President Bush for his speech on Thursday. First, I call on the President to answer the question that General Petraeus did not. What is our end game in Iraq given the failure of surge to achieve the objective that the president outlined for it? Second, I call on President Bush to pledge to the American people, who have sacrificed greatly for this effort that the United States Congress will have the chance to review and vote on any long-term security agreement he has negotiated with the Iraqis.

President Bush must not saddle the next president with an agreement that extends our involvement in Iraq beyond his presidency. We have lost more than 4,000 of our best sons and daughters. They have given their lives in service to our country in honor and for the objective of giving the Iraqi people the greatest gift another human being can bestow — the gift of freedom. Tens of thousands of our young men and women have suffered “wounds both visible and invisible” to their bodies, their minds and their hearts.

This war has cost more than $1 trillion — if you factor in the lifetime of care and support that is due to our returning veterans, and of course, we must. Our ongoing military involvement in Iraq has also undermined our efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week that our continued involvement in Iraq has meant we cannot deploy the forces we need to that country.

There has been a harsh and daily toll on our men and women in uniform, many of whom are on their second, third, and even fourth tours of duty.  Among combat troops sent to Iraq for the third or fourth time, more than one in four show signs of anxiety, depression or acute stress, according to an official Army survey of our soldiers’ mental health. And we cannot forget the toll on military families.  When fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives sign up to serve our country, their families sign up, too.

So it is vital for our national security — and for the health and safety of our men and women in uniform — that we begin to end the war in Iraq and rebuild our military. A great Pennsylvanian, Benjamin Franklin once said, Well done is better than well-said.

One good point from this press release — the cost of the war will include ongoing care for the soldiers who sustained serious injury. The military’s policy of discharging them before their bandages are even off will only transfer the expense to the VA or other health care agencies. Hillary estimates the total cost of the war, including this long-term care, as over a trillion dollars already.

As somebody who worked in direct care in the VA hospital system in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I can tell you that the fallout from Vietnam cast a decades-long shadow on the lives of American’s military veterans, which requires ongoing care just to deal with the acute problems. The chronic problems NEVER go away.

Second good point — the war in Iraq is hindering the war on terror — the effort we need to make in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The Administration’s justification for this intervention hasn’t gotten any better with age, but the threats persist.

In related statements today, Hillary also touched on concrete proposals which would strengthen the armed forces- John Murtha’s proposed legislation which would give troops one month at home for every month they spend in the field, end the stop loss program, restore and expand the traumatic brain injury program for injured soldiers, implement the findings of the Walter Reed commission, and the 21st Century GI Bill of Rights — expanded education, housing and entrepreneurial benefits — for all who have served in this conflict.

“We are all committed to doing everything we can to ensure that a Florida delegation is seated in Denver. We all agree that whatever the solution, it must have the support of both campaigns.  While there may be differences of opinion in how we get there, we are all committed to ensuring that Florida’s delegation is seated in Denver. We’re committed to working with both campaigns to reach a solution as soon as realistically possible. We are also laying the groundwork to ensure we win in Florida in November and spent time here today talking about how to do just that.  We will continue to work towards a solution to ensure delegates are seated and logistics are in place for a Florida delegation in Denver.”

Ok, everybody wants the delegates to go to Denver, but what they’ll do there is where it gets sticky. Remember, both campaigns have to approve the settlement. Hillary’s campaign sounded facilitative:

The Clinton campaign praised the meeting. “We have long maintained that pretending the voters of Florida and Michigan don’t exist is not fair in principle and unwise in practice,” said spokesman Phil Singer. “Chairman Dean is clearly committed to seating the Florida delegation and we urge Senator Obama to join us in calling on the rules and bylaws committee to make this a reality.”

So.. .what’s Obama joining? Well, it’s hard to tell. The Delphic utterance from Tom Daschle is below:

(FL US Rep Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) also expressed a willingness to consider a proposal that would allow the full delegation to weigh in at the convention, but for each delegate to get just half a vote.

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama, rejected that proposal, which seemed to gain traction as prospects for a new contest grew more remote.

He told CNN’s Gloria Borger that the Illinois senator would like to “give Florida the opportunity to vote” – but not in a way that would change the overall outcome.

In other words, Florida’s votes can count… but only if they don’t count.  Thanks a lot, Tom. We knew we could count on you

Dean seems to be moving; his earlier “they didn’t follow the rules, tough luck” posture has been sliding off its pedestal a bit now that the word is out on the machinations by Donna Brazile  to increase the penalty from half the delegates to all the delegates- that position seems to no longer be defensible. As the days go by and the pressure mounts, we’ll see who is working toward a solution and who’s obstructing said solution. Looks like Howard isn’t going down with the ship on this one.

A little funny business posted by Ben Smith last night with Florida adopting a solution similar to the proposed Michigan one – half the delegates being allocated by Florida’s January 29 primary, and half by “national delegate count”, whatever that is, seems to have been a false lead. Nobody’s proposing it at the meeting today.

FL Senator Bill Nelson is on record as supporting going with the original penalty from the DNC rules before Donna Brazile bumped it up to the death penalty – half the delegates. Obama’s campaign shot that one down- too… umm… representative or something. See Dashle’s statement earlier. Maybe it failed the “doesn’t affect the outcome” test.

Of course, you can’t measure this directly, and that’s for a reason. Every vote in the ballot box is the same. The only way to do this is indirectly, using exit polls. If you know the percent of  voters who identified themselves as Democrats in exit polls, and the percentage of Democrats who voted for each candidate (again using exit poll data), you can take the recorded vote totals and figure out how many Democrats in each state voted for each candidate.

Is this pure science? Oh, hell, no. You’re extrapolating from a sample of a few hundred to millions of voters. But it’s way ahead of the anecdotal evidence we have that “those people in Mississippi who voted for Hillary were really Republicans” and “I heard that Obama got a bunch of Independents to vote for him”. At least it’s real numbers… probably the best available data to answer the burning question, “Who do the DEMOCRATS want for the Democratic nominee?  We know who the Republicans want- somebody who will lose to McCain.

Onward to the numbers.

Let’s do a fast example. Say in State X, the vote totals were Obama 1,500,000 and Hillary 1,000,000. Obama won the primary, 60% to 40%. Now, suppose the exit polls said that only 60% of the voters self-identified as Democrats (in the vote total, that would be 1,500,000 of the 2,500,000 total votes), and of those Democrats in the exit polling, they favored Hillary 8 to 7 (53.3% to 46.7%).  That means that Hillary got 800,000 of the 1,500,000 Democratic votes, and Obama got 700,000. Obama won the open primary by 500,000 votes (since the 1,000,000 non-Democrats went for him, 800,000 to 200,000, or 4 to 1), but lost the Democratic vote by 100,000 votes See how it works?

Last month there were two efforts to take the primaries so far, and all the exit poll data, and calculate who was ahead in the Democratic vote. One was from Cal Lanier over at The Perfect World, and can be found here. The Slate Trailhead blog had a mention of this, which is how I found it. Paul Lukasiak had a similar analysis up on Taylor Marsh’s site here
(cootie alert for Obama supporters).

Updating the totals since February by looking at TX, OH, VT, and RI, and even including Mississippi, Cal Lanier has the primary total as Hillary 10,210,076 Obama 9,133,765. Even throwing in the Democratic vote counts from caucus states, which aren’t technically votes, but might as well count, since it’s one Democrat’s opinion, that adds another 378,613 for Hillary and 683,111 for Obama, so Obama ends up losing the total Democratic vote by 771,813 votes.

Bottom Line? Here are the total votes cast by DEMOCRATS so far…

Hillary 10,588,689, Obama 9,816,876

And people wonder why she’s fighting for the nomination. Probably because more Democrats want her to get the nomination that want Obama to get it. I know, it’s a silly thing, this majority opinion by actual party members, but I thought I’d throw it out there.

OK, you can all screech away and attack the methodology, now that you’ve decided you don’t like the results. And remember RULE ZERO, as lambert over at Corrente says:

Rule Zero: Any rule that purports to impede Obama’s selection as Democratic nominee is not really a rule.

Cross-posted at MyDD.com.

At this point, it’s no secret that the Obama campaign is in political hot water given the news stories of the last few weeks and is desperate to change the subject.

The ground is shifting away from them. And their response?

First, disenfranchise voters – Prevent new votes in Florida and Michigan .  Stop voting in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Oregon  West Virginia, Puerto Rico, Kentucky, South Dakota, Montana, West Virginia and Indiana.

Second, peddle photos of President Clinton shaking hands with Reverend Wright less than 48 hours after calling for a high-minded conversation on race. Well, President Clinton took tens of thousands of photos during his eight years as president. Stop the presses.

Third, accuse our campaign of having something to do with Senator Obama’s passport file being breached, a reckless charge that has zero merit.

Fifth, stonewall the press: no tax returns, no state records, no answers about the inconsistencies in the Rezko story.

Singer continues with a summary of the state of the race now – it’s all just words from Camp Obama.

So it’s not a pretty sight – it’s all part of a pattern of just words.

Senator Obama talks about voter participation while actively disenfranchising millions.

He calls for high minded debates while practicing lowdown politics.

He promises a different kind of campaign while attacking Hillary’s character.

He promises transparency while hiding basic info and stonewalling the press.

It’s no wonder that Americans are coming to see that for all of his lofty rhetoric, Senator Obama’s candidacy is really just words.  

It’s no surprise that Americans are expressing serious doubts about his ability to answer the 3am call.

It’s no wonder that top journalists are calling the Obama campaign desperate, saying that it’s amateur hour in Chicago.