So just posted on Breaking Blue was this thoughtful and insightful column by David Sirota on Democratic strategy on the Iraq supplemental going forward. The column ended with:

Finally, Bush will try to seize on any distraction he can to win this confrontation. In fact, he's already doing this in his attempt to focus on the additional non-Iraq spending as "wasteful pork." Because Iraq is such a huge issue, I doubt this will work. However, there is one way for it to work: If Democratic leaders start using major issues (rather than "pork" which is not a major issue in the public's mind) as bargaining chips in this whole thing.

We can go back to 2002 for an example of this. The only way Bush got out of his flip-flop on creating the Department of Homeland Security was by focusing it on Democrats demands for union rights for Homeland Security workers. While I strongly support those rights, that issue was portrayed as "extraneous" to the bigger issue of national security - pushing Democrats into the trap of looking like they were trying to use national security to help their political allies. We can't let this happen again. If we start bringing in other - albeit very important - non-Iraq issues, we will open the door to a Bush victory and worse, to a longer war.

Coincidentally, a few minutes after this showed up in the Breaking Blue sidebar, this showed up on Google News:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Although it's been overshadowed by a fierce debate over timetables for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, House and Senate lawmakers are pushing to use the emergency war-spending bill as a vehicle for enacting the first rise in the minimum wage in 10 years and a host of tax breaks aimed at small businesses.
...
House Democrats successfully added the wage and tax language to their version of the $124.6 billion emergency war-spending bill that cleared the chamber last week. The Senate on Wednesday morning quietly added its version of the minimum-wage bill, including an expanded package of tax breaks, to its spending bill.

Buh? Whose idea was this?