Fox Host Martha MacCallum asked Santorum what he thought of the criticism that President Bush “is just going his own way, not listening to the people, not listening to Congress.” Santorum responded, “Good for him.” Santorum also added that Bush understands, but most people aren’t aware, that we are already at war with Iran. Watch it:

Transcript:

SANTORUM: Well, I am very encouraged by not just the speech of the things he has done over the past few weeks to, I think, heighten the awareness of the gravity of the enemy we are fighting. Particularly the focus he has given to Iran and Syria, but mostly iran. I think we’ve seen in the last several days with the storming of the Iranian compound and the type of people that are captured there, the Intel people, folks who support terrorism within iran in Iraq right now, have been there, have been fighting Moqtada al-Sadr and his brigades, as well as the secret police force in Iran having a huge — having a huge presence in Iraq. It is an indication of the kind of war that we are engaged in right now, although most people do not recognize it, with Iran.

MACCALLUM: You say most people do not recognize it, and the talk you hear a lot these days is that the president is just going his own way, not listening to the people, not listening to congress. What do you have to say about that?

SANTORUM: Good for him. What i would say is that the Commander-in-Chief in the United States, in Lincoln-esque type of form, has to understand the information that he is given, the the vast — that the vast majority of which the american public do not have, and he has to act in the national security interest of this country.

The top generals on the ground are trying to keep expectations low. Yesterday, Gen. George Casey, the outgoing top U.S. military commander in Iraq, warned that it is “going to take time” and no one should evaluate the impact of the plan until “summer or Fall.” Watch it:

Transcript:

ANNOUNCER: Meanwhile, the U.S. troop surge ordered by President Bush is underway and for the if the first time, we’re hearing about a timeline.

CASEY: I think you will see a gradual evolution over the next two to three months and things get better through the summer and fall. It’s going to take time.

President Bush, however, says that he is going to send more troops to Iraq no matter what Congress does. Watch an excerpt from his 60 Minutes interview tonight:

Legal scholars on the right and left agree that Congress has the legal power to prevent an escalation or end the war completely.

Transcript:

Q: If you have the authority to put the troops in there no matter what the Congress wants to do.

BUSH: I think I’ve got, in this situation I do, yeah. I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I’ve made my decision. And we’re going forward.

HH: All right, yesterday, the President also mentioned that there will be lots of carnage on television screens. Is the administration, and especially the Pentagon, prepared to fight the new media war when that starts to happen, Tony Snow?

TS: We’ve been fighting it. I mean, it’s not that it has started to happen, it’s been going on for some time.

Snow specifically cited right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin, who is currently embedded in Iraq, as a soldier for truth in the “media war”:

What is interesting, Hugh, and you know this as well as anybody else, you’re also starting to see little glimmers of guys like Michael Yon and others who get over there and they basically embed themselves in Iraq, and Michelle Malkin’s over there now.

Several times during the interview, Tony Snow referenced Malkin’s work on the Jamil Hussein “story.”

Michelle Malkin has been obsessed in recent months claiming that Hussein — an Iraqi policeman cited as a source by the Associated Press in a story about the burning of six people during a sectarian attack — does not exist. The Iraqi government recently debunked the conspiracy theory, acknowledging that the AP’s source was in fact a police officer in Iraq.

Dan Bartlett disagreed, saying that the White House doesn’t “view Ted Kennedy as a hostile enemy” of the United States.

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Transcript:

GRETCHEN CARLSON: You talk about the hostile enemy, obviously being Iraq, but hostile enemies right here on the home front. Yesterday Senator Ted Kennedy, proposing that any kind of a troop surge should mean there should be congressional approval of that. A lot of democrats not coming to his side on this. But obviously this is not going to be an easy sell on Capitol Hill, even if it’s not an easy sell to the American Public.

BARTLETT: We don’t view Ted Kennedy as hostile enemy but we do view him to be an open and often critic of the war. He has been from the outset. I don’t think that’s anything new.

Some members have claimed that anything other than symbolic action is unconstitutional. Legal scholars on both the left and the right say that’s false. History supports their case.

A new report from the Center for American Progress details how, over the last 35 years, Congress has passed bills, enacted into law, that capped the size of military deployments, prohibited funding for existing or prospective deployment, and placed limits and conditions on the timing and nature of deployments. Some examples:

December 1970. P.L. 91-652 — Supplemental Foreign Assistance Law. The Church-Cooper amendment prohibited the use of any funds for the introduction of U.S. troops to Cambodia or provide military advisors to Cambodian forces.

December 1974. P.L. 93-559 — Foreign Assistance Act of 1974. The Congress established a personnel ceiling of 4000 Americans in Vietnam within six months of enactment and 3000 Americans within one year.

June 1983. P.L. 98-43 — The Lebanon Emergency Assistance Act of 1983. The Congress required the president to return to seek statutory authorization if he sought to expand the size of the U.S. contingent of the Multinational Force in Lebanon.

June 1984. P.L. 98-525 — The Defense Authorization Act. The Congress capped the end strength level of United States forces assigned to permanent duty in European NATO countries at 324,400.

November 1993. P.L. 103-139. The Congress limited the use of funding in Somalia for operations of U.S. military personnel only until March 31, 1994, permitting expenditure of funds for the mission thereafter only if the president sought and Congress provided specific authorization.

Read the full report for more examples.

North added that Bush’s proposal “sounds eerily like Lyndon Johnson’s plan to save Vietnam in the 60s by gradual escalation as a way not to lose.” Watch it:

Greg Sargent has more.

Transcript:

NORTH: No, I don’t. None of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and marines that I interviewed in my eighth trip told me they wanted more US boots on the ground. Nearly all expressed just the opposite. ‘We don’t need more American troops; we need more Iraqi troops’ was a common refrain. My concern is that incremental increase in US troop strength…as first suggested last summer during the congressional campaign sounds eerily like Lyndon Johnson’s plan to save Vietnam in the 60s by gradual escalation as a way not to lose.

Bush prefaced his comments by saying that, “If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them.” Last month, Gen. Abizaid revealed that he asked all the commanders on the ground and none of them wanted more troops. Shortly thereafter, Abizaid was replaced.

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Transcript:

Some Americans ask me, if completing the mission is so important, why don’t you send more troops? If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever, when we are, in fact, working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave. As we determine the right force level, our troops can know that I will continue to be guided by the advice that matters: the sober judgment of our military leaders.

Boyda is wrong on the facts. A recent Center for American Progress memo explains how Congress could — and should — prevent Bush from sending more troops into a civil war in Iraq without a clear mission. An excerpt:

Although the new Congress should not refuse to provide the funds that the troops already in Iraq and Afghanistan need, it can place an amendment on the supplemental funding bill that states that if the administration wants to increase the number of troops in Iraq above 150,000, it must provide a plan for their purpose and require an up or down vote on exceeding that number.

Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA), an Iraq war veteran, came out strongly in opposition to escalation, saying, “We need to listen to the military experts, people like Gen. Colin Powell, Gen. Abizaid, that say, ‘Listen, the surge isn’t going to work.’” Another newly elected member, Rep. Health Shuler (D-NC) was more circumspect. Shuler said he didn’t think escalation was “the solution” but would consider it if “that’s what our military leaders said.”

Transcript:

Gibson: Would you vote in favor of money to support another 20,000 to 40,000 troops in Iraq?

Boyda: I think we’re going to vote to support what the commander in chief and head of military asks to do. At least, I am certainly going to vote to support it.

Gibson: If he wants the surge, he’ll get it.

Boyda: Yes…. He is the commander in chief, Charlie. We don’t get that choice. Congress doesn’t make that decision.

Gibson: But the polls would indicate, and indeed, so many voters when they came out of the ballot box, said, “We’re voting because we want something done about the war and we want the troops home.”

Boyda: They should have thought about that before they voted for President Bush not once, but twice.

Lott’s comments are particularly significant because, as the Minority Whip, he’s responsible for bringing his caucus in line with the Senate leadership’s position. If he’s not for escalation in Iraq, it’s unlikely there will be any serious effort in the Senate to get other members of his caucus to support it.

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Transcript:

Matthews: Is there a chance you’ll say no to the surge?

Lott: There is.

Matthews: Thanks for making news here.

Watch in streaming Quicktime

UPDATE: Miers pushed out?

The White House strongly hinted that White House Counsel Harriet Miers’s departure had been encouraged. She had a “series of conversations in recent days” with Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, Snow said, and “she made her decision yesterday,” i.e. Wednesday. People close to the White House say Bolten had hoped to make a change in the counsel’s office when he took over in the spring of 2006. Miers’s style didn’t mesh well with that of the crisply organized former investment banker, people who know them say.

In an interview with Arianna Huffington, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), the chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Committee, said he intends to block funding for any escalation plan. An excerpt:

When we asked about the likelihood of the president sending additional troops to Iraq, Murtha was adamant. “The only way you can have a troop surge,” he told us, “is to extend the tours of people whose tours have already been extended, or to send back people who have just gotten back home.” He explained at length how our military forces are already stretched to the breaking point, with our strategic reserve so depleted we are unprepared to face any additional threats to the country. So does that mean there will be no surge? Murtha offered us a “with Bush anything is possible” look, then said: “Money is the only way we can stop it for sure.”…

He says he wants to “fence the funding,” denying the president the resources to escalate the war, instead using the money to take care of the soldiers as we bring them home from Iraq “as soon as we can.”

A memo from the Center for American Progress, released December 27, recommends “an amendment on the supplemental funding bill that states that if the administration wants to increase the number of troops in Iraq above 150,000, it must provide a plan for their purpose and require an up or down vote on exceeding that number.”

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Congress decided something had to be done. On Sept. 30, 2006, Congress passed the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act, which required the President to appoint a Coordinator of Policy on North Korea to “provide policy direction and leadership for negotiations with North Korea relating to nuclear weapons.”

Bush signed the act into law on Oct. 17, 2006. The law required Bush to make the appointment within 60 days. Here’s the relevant section:

The 60 days were up on Dec. 16, 2006, which was 19 days ago. The situation in North Korea continues to deteriorate, but Bush still won’t act.

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Last night on NBC News, Jim Miklaszewski reported that the new strategy will be announced next Tuesday, and that an administration official “admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one.” Watch it:

Just weeks ago, CentCom commander Gen. John Abizaid told Congress “I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the corps commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American Troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no.”

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Transcript:

WILLIAMS: First, NBC News pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski has learned that President Bush is prepared to announce a strategy of surge and accelerate in Iraq, which would involve some 20,000 additional American troops being sent to Iraq. Jim is with us from the Pentagon with more on this tonight. Jim. Good evening.

MIKLASZEWSKI: Good evening, Brian. Administration officials told us today that President Bush has now all but decided to surge those additional troops into Baghdad to try to control over the violence there and only then could they accelerate the turnover of territory to Iraqi security forces. Fact is they’re not up to the task yet. The plan would also throw more U.S. money at Iraq for reconstruction and a jobs program. Interestingly enough, one administration official admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one because the American people have run out of patience and President Bush is running out of time to achieve some kind of success in Iraq. While this plan will clearly draw some stiff opposition on Capitol Hill, the president is expected to announce it a week from today.

WILLIAMS: Jim Miklaszewski on duty for us today. Thanks for that.