A jarring thing happened during the cable-news tribute to Ted Kennedy Tuesday: American troops on the ground in Iraq got dissed.

On MSNBC Tuesday afternoon, Camelot was, understandably, taking over. Stories of the Kennedy brothers. The father. Kids. That late nephew. That niece. Kindnesses to strangers. Across-the-aisle pals. If it was someone with something nice to say about Senator Edward M. Kennedy, there was airtime for it on MSNBC.

And then the screen-frame went to the Capitol building, where Republican and Democratic senators were meeting in their separate conferences. Suddenly minority leader Mitch McConnell and his team approached the mic set-up. Prayers for Senator Kennedy were, of course, and appropriately, the first point of order.

But then McConnell started talking about, among other pre-Memorial Day priorities, troop funding. Ted Kennedy might have been appalled, if he was watching, by the Republican position. But he might also be delighted that Senate business was going on. He has been, after all, an effective member of the body for 45 years now. And he might have appreciated that, in our celebrity-obsessed culture, even a Kennedy could be a lead-in to an important conversation about war and congressional duty.

Unfortunately, MSNBC dodged. It failed to show its viewers what followed, which was the discussion of a crucial issue. Senator John Ensign of Nevada explained: “The bottom line: We are at war and our troops need the funding, and the Democrats need to put our troops first, and they’re not doing that. They’re loading up the supplemental bill with all kinds of things that are obviously inviting a veto.”

They were loading up the war-funding bill, as we explain elsewhere on National Review Online today, with illegal-immigrant amnesty, with funding for Planned Parenthood, with all kinds of inappropriate-for-a-war-funding-bill pet causes.

Ensign continued: “And we know it’s critical to get this funding to the troops and get it as soon as possible. There are going to be some problems with the war effort because of the delays that are going on. And so let’s start putting the troops first, is the bottom line.”

Senate Democrats are currently poised to continue to insist on non-war spending tacked onto the bill, which will guarantee its veto. They’re playing a legislative game with the war — a game that should trouble MSNBC watchers, even those who are opposed to the war.

We have troops in harm’s way. It is our duty to make sure our military commanders have what they need to be successful in their mission. Right now, particularly after the success of the surge, is not the time to abandon our Iraqi friends, who are increasingly laying their own blood and treasure on the line to work for their nation’s future.

As Frederick Kagan has noted, Congress is well within its rights to take this bill and:

‐ Insist that Iraq continue to improve its budget execution and prioritize spending its surplus on its own reconstruction and the development of its own armed forces;
‐ Recognize the reality that the United States is no longer in the business of building Iraqi infrastructure or otherwise “reconstructing” Iraq on a large scale;
‐ Declare its expectation that Iraq will fully fund its own military and reconstruction programs from 2008 on; and
‐ Request that Iraq continue to contribute its own money to the CERP program.

But Congress also needs to fund our military operations in Iraq. Now.

Pass it clean. Pass it now. Have debates over amnesty and Planned Parenthood and everything else later.