Russ Feingold and March 31, 2008

Russ Feingold is obsessed with setting deadlines for America's defeat.

He continues to push for a magic date to end American military involvement in Iraq.

He's picked so many deadlines that it's hard to keep track.

Let's review.

On August 18, 2005, Feingold declared that American troops should be out of Iraq by December 31, 2006.

On June 19, 2006, Feingold announced that he and John Kerry would be introducing an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that would set the deadline for American troop withdrawal as July 1, 2007.

On April 2, 2007, Feingold picked yet another date for troop withdrawal, this time with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as a cosponsor, March 31, 2008.

Obviously, the December 31, 2006 deadline came and went. The July 1, 2007 deadline was also abandoned.

Feingold isn't giving up on the March 31, 2008 mark.

He released a statement today reaffirming his commitment to giving our enemies a head's up on American troop withdrawl from Iraq.

Washington D.C -- U.S. Senator Russ Feingold announced today that he will continue his effort to end the open-ended military mission in Iraq and safely redeploy U.S. troops out of the country. Feingold said he and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will offer the Feingold-Reid bill requiring troops to be redeployed by March 31, 2008, after which funding for ongoing military operations, with three narrow exceptions, would end. The bill will be offered as an amendment to Defense Department authorization legislation that the Senate is expected to consider as early as the end of June.

“Congress took a step backwards last month when it gave President Bush a blank check to continue his open-ended mission in Iraq,” Feingold said. “We need to keep the pressure on the President and supporters of his disastrous Iraq policy, and the way to do this is by voting on legislation that will end the mistake in Iraq. We should not wait until September to change course, as some have suggested, and we should not be satisfied with proposals that sound good but won’t actually end the war. The way to end this disastrous war is to pass the Feingold-Reid legislation to safely redeploy our troops. No more Americans should die unnecessarily for a war that has over-burdened our military and weakened our national security.”

Feingold won't let up on telling the world when American troops will leave Iraq.

In all his brilliance, he insists on marking the calendar with the magic date.

I'm sure Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, and all other nutjobs, terrorists, and enemies of America inside and outside of Iraq must be grateful to Feingold for pursuing a target date for them.

No doubt, they support the idea of a deadline for America's retreat from Iraq, and consider Feingold a reliable ally.

His efforts, if successful, certainly would make their planning so much easier.