No matter what Nancy Pelosi does, she cannot grovel enough before AIPAC. For instance, Pelosi attended the latest AIPAC confab, as should be expected of all Dems worth their salt—and mindful of their careers—but when she called the Iraq “war” a “failure on several scores,” she was roundly booed by the attendees. “Pelosi said the U.S. military campaign in Iraq had to be judged on three accounts: whether it makes the U.S. safer, the U.S. military stronger and the region more stable,” notes Ian Swanson.

Pelosi, of course, is merely stating the obvious, not that she is opposed to invading small countries enfeebled by criminal sanctions for well over a decade, but rather that the unitary decider and his neocon strangeloves have left the Dems out of the warmaking loop, a situation that irks Pelosi.

It seems a neocon hysteria has washed over Congress, enveloping even Dems, who are presumably “liberal,” whatever that means. As it turns out, according to the “authoritative” Congressional Quarterly daily report, more than a few Democrats were opposed to Pelosi inserting language in an Iraq occupation spending bill that futilely attempted to prevent the neocons from launching their shock and awe campaign against the people of Iran. According to “the CQ some of the same Democrats most vehement about ending the Iraq debacle are resisting denying the President unilateral authority to go to war on Iran,” M.J. Rosenberg wrote last week. “It is worth noting that the AIPAC conference begins in Washington this weekend with thousands of citizen lobbyists are being deployed to Capitol Hill to deliver the message that Iran must be dealt with, one way or another. This battle over the Pelosi language is part of the overall Iran effort.”

In other words, “some Democrats,” enough to render Congress into little more than a bridge club, are eager to ignore Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which reads “Congress shall have Power To… declare War.”

It should really come as no surprise AIPAC was instrumental in having removed “a provision from a bill that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval for war against Iran. A number of congressional sources confirmed that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee backed dropping the provision from the Iraq war spending bill introduced Tuesday by Democrats…. AIPAC and a number of Democrats close to Israel said the provision would have hampered the president as he attempted to leverage Iran into backing down from its alleged nuclear weapon plans. Others said the provision simply reasserted the constitutional role of the U.S. Congress in declaring war that is believed to have been eroded by Bush during the Iraq war,” reports the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Naturally, AIPAC trumps the Constitution, although merely stating the obvious gets one pegged as an antisemite and a “Jew-hater,” as if attempting to prevent yet another invasion and mass slaughter of innocents, the squandering of a few hundred billion more dollars, and the as of yet untold sacrifice of American lives is analogous to hatred for Jews.

“AIPAC leaders have said about 6,000 of their members are in town for this week’s annual meeting, which ends today. Members are set to lobby individual lawmakers on the Hill for the rest of today. A priority for the group is to convince Congress to approve tougher sanctions on Iran, which is seen as a growing threat to Israel.”

Of course, AIPAC, infested with Likudniks and neocons, will never settle for mere sanctions—nothing short of decimating Iran with depleted uranium and nuclear bunker-busters will do. As we know, or should if we bother to pay attention, AIPAC is tightly integrated with the entire neocon infrastructure, from the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and beyond.

AIPAC operatives, “set to lobby individual lawmakers on the Hill,” will be pushing for an attack, not for sanctions, although the latter prints nicely in newspapers.

Finally, Dick Cheney’s speech before AIPAC, brimming with emotional nonsense about the threat of manufactured terrorism—once again eliciting the name “al-Qaeda,” the defunct database—served as a strident warning to a handful of pathetic Democrats opposed to the Iraq occupation. In essence, Dick has sicced AIPAC on the mildly dissenting Dems, who are lukewarm or weak-kneed on the idea of forever war, lasting generations, long after a blood clot has migrated to Bush’s brain.

In fact, the above mentioned lobbying of Congress at the conclusion of the AIPAC confab is all about sending a message to Democrats.

Get with the program—or find another job.