Dubya's veto of the Iraq bill is expected on Tuesday,

While the veto will be no surprise, it will still be a historic act, a monumental snubbing of the public will as expressed by Congress.

And there will be a need to put the event in proper context, and counter the spin that the veto is somehow good for the troops.

That spin will center on funding for troops in the field. But there is no dispute about that.

No one believes that a soldier already in the field should be deprived of necessities, and the bill that Bush will veto provides those resources.

But it's not necessarily helpful to simply blame Bush for holding up those funds. It may be true, but again, that's not the dispute.

The dispute is over strategy: should we permanently occupy Iraq or not.

When Bush vetoes the bill, which includes a ban on funds for permanent bases, he should be called out for vetoing a strategy that would end the occupation.

On ABC's This Week, Secretary of State Condi Rice provided fresh material to help make that case/

Rice tried to sound as if the White House believed in benchmarks for the Iraqi "government"

But faced with the prospect of benchmarks that are actually tied to consequences if the installed Iraqi leadership can't meet them, Rice said:

The problem is that if you try and make consequences about these benchmarks, you're tying the hands of General [David] Petreaus and the hands of Ambassador [to Iraq Ryan] Crocker

In other words, we'll support benchmarks, so long as they are completely cosmetic and meaningless and don't lead to any "consequences" like troop redeployments.

If you're bending over backwards to avoid anything that opens the door to leaving Iraq militarily, the only reasonable conclusion is you don't ever want to leave Iraq militarily.

That's what the veto will show.

The public and the majority in Congress want to leave Iraq. The White House and the congressional minority do not.