Don't Make Me Like You!

If I vote for a Democrat in the next election, it will be because Joe Lieberman is running. I probably don't agree with much of what he supports, but at least he stays consistent and isn't afraid to go against his own party:

Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who recently visited Iraq, said Tuesday, “I’d like the president tomorrow to restate our goals and begin to let the American people know we’ve got a plan. And as I found last week, I believe the plan is working,” he said.

Lieberman also warned against withdrawing U.S. forces too soon.

According to Instapundit, he's gone into more detail elsewhere:

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn. . . .

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.