Sen Nelson: "We'll Take Up The Iraq War Again And Again And Again"

At a breakfast for Nebraskans visiting Capitol Hill this morning, lawmakers cheered the high price of corn, which is up around $4 a bushel, wished their state a happy birthday -- it will be 140 tomorrow -- and were only slightly less genial about the war in Iraq.

The glass-half-full conservative Democratic Senator Ben Nelson, who has opposed all but the most non-binding, non-adhesive measures in the debate over how to redeploy, laid out his position in a way that could really be boiled down to one word: Whatever...

Of the push to set a deadline for bringing the troops home, Nelson noted that "Not everyone agrees you can set a date in advance. If you don't, you'll be criticized. But, this is a town where if you say up, somebody else says down. And they're probably both right."

He gently mocked those trying to push for action based on the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group: "The challenge, when you get a report like that, is that there are certain people who think you have to adopt every recommendation."

"We'll take up the Iraq war again and again and again," he said amiably. And get it right eventually?