"Moving us in 10 months to where we were 10 months ago is not progress. It is the very definition of status quo.
"Not only is the President not offering us anything new; he's insulting our intelligence.
"Despite the fact that his top General is unable to say that the war is making us safer, all the President offers today is quite literally more of the same. More loss of life, more strain on our military readiness, and more degradation of our national security and our standing in the world. It is time for Congress to say 'no more.'
"What was clear to me before, and what should be abundantly clear to my colleagues after today, is that this President is not going to change course unless we force him to. There is only one way to do that - we must set a clear, hard and fast deadline for redeployment and, in order to enforce it, that deadline must be tied to funding."
Much better than this:
Obama, on the second day of a trip to Iowa, conceded that Democrats who control Congress lack the votes to cut off funding for the war or even to tie continued funding to a timetable for withdrawing troops.
The Illinois senator said the most likely scenario would be to grant troops more time at home between deployments, a politically popular step that's difficult to oppose and one that would have a practical impact.
"You have to at least give people a one-year break for every year served in Iraq," Obama said. "At least that would put a ceiling on how many troops could be sent there at any given time."
Withdrawing troops is also politically popular.