3379 of their comrades....most likely it is the Dems referring to their allies in Iraq.
The way this will play is the Senate will not even bother with this bill. There will be pre agreement in conference on what is to pass, and that will be a bill with the usual full year of funding, but some benchmarks on Iraqi progress that affects their foreign aid budget, and not military troop funding.
By the time the benchmarks are watered down, the Iraqi military and police will be fully funded and the surge will be fully funded. The Dems will hate it, and they will offer verbage to their puppet masters to make it look like victory, but in the end, Bush will get full funding for the troops and a set of reportable benchmarks that are likely to be easy to meet, or vague, or both.