Intentional or no, the public discourse around American troops in Iraq has shifted from the election-time furor in which the people made plain their demand for cessation and withdrawal, to the present erstwhile debate on whether or not to send more troops into that bright nightmare.
So that winning the argument now means keeping things the way they were before the election.
So the hypocrites and mealy-mouthed millionaires in Congress can look like they oppose Bush and the vague dark thing everyone's seeing but no one knows the name of, while still greasing the skids for the seemingly unstoppable neo-Zionist empire, or whatever it is that's doing all that.