I took a whack at Obama below for "predicting" that the Senate didn't have the votes to pass a supplemental with real teeth. I took a passage from Mike Glover's AP piece as supporting material:

Despite the unpopularity of the Iraq war, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama predicted Thursday that Congress won't directly challenge President Bush's plans and will focus instead on putting a ceiling on the number of troops deployed to that country.

The Obama campaign has sent me the full remarks:

I tell you what. I think that we want to get everybody on board to bring this war to a close...I want to be honest with you about where we are in Congress right now. We are gonna' have a series of debates about funding the next phase of this war. And there are gonna' be a couple of options. One option is to just give the president a blank check, and to say 'whatever you say Mr. President here, you keep on doing what you're doing.' I don't think that is an acceptable option. Right now the question -- one way of ending the war would be to impose a timetable where we would have all our combat troops out. And I had a bill that provided that timetable of March 30 th. We passed it with a majority voting for that in the Senate and in the House but the problem was the president vetoed that bill and to overcome a veto in the senate you gotta' have 67 votes so were about 15 votes short. We were hoping to persuade enough Republican senators and Republican representatives to change their positions in order to override the President's veto. And ill be honest with you right now, it doesn't look like were going to get that many votes, but I think it's important for everybody here to put pressure on Republican congressmen and Senators who have not recognized that were on a failed course so that we can at least see more votes on that bill. The other thing that were also gonna' try to do – I don't know if everybody's aware of this but those people who have been sent to Iraq have been on the kinds of rotations without rest and without proper training that the army itself says is unacceptable. We have people who are spending more time in Iraq than they are back home retraining and getting the rest that they need. And so what we're going to try to introduce is legislation that says you have to at least give people a one year break for every year served in Iraq. And if were able to get that passed, and get sixty votes for that, then at least that would put a ceiling on how many troops could be sent there at any given time. So those are some of the approaches that were gonna' try to take even before George Bush leaves office, but all that is going to require some pressure from all of you on our senators and your congressman, you know, who are really important.

The Obama campaign has a real case that the AP lede isn't quite accurate. Obama did predict that the Senate doesn't have the votes, but also urged people to contact their congresspersons to try and change things. So it wasn't so much "resignation", as it was "help us change this."

In any case, I think the ultimate strategy isn't a choice between caving and avoiding the president's veto. I think it's between sending enough tough bills to Bush that eventually 1) he either tires of vetoing and accepts a real compromise, or 2) his Republican allies in Congress abandon him.

Update: Glover must've gotten a serious talking to, since he's fleshed out his story even more, including this bit:

Obama said Congress should at least try to reverse course on the war. "We should not wait until George Bush is out of office to start bringing this war to a close," said Obama. "I believe that Congress should not and must not give George Bush a blank check. I believe Congress should impose a timetable and some constraints." With only a thin majority in both chambers of Congress, Obama said the effort may fall short. "I cannot guarantee we can get all the Republicans we need, but we have to try," said Obama.

I should know this already, but I guess it takes the occasional reminder that we can never trust anything but a full transcript from anyone (not just traditional press, but anyone reporting a story).