First the Democrats -- at least most of them -- opposed the Iraq War on grounds that the enemy had won. Recall when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid proclaimed that it was time to get out because U.S. troops had been defeated by al-Qaida's fueling of the burgeoning Shiite-Sunni civil war.

Although the cut-and-runners were maniacally opposed to President Bush's "surge," they didn't have the votes to stop it, even after Democrats won control of Congress in 2006. But with more U.S. boots on the ground, the civil war violence was largely quelled, allowing a semblance of security and civil life to return to Baghdad and other parts of Iraq.

As it became increasingly clear the surge was working, the anti-war crowd shifted their line of attack, pointing out that the surge was supposed to buy time for the Nouri al-Maliki-led, Shiite-dominated government to negotiate reconciliation with balking minority Sunnis and Kurds.

Despite a temporary setback on moving forward with provincial elections in October, much reconciliation was achieved last month, with feuding sides reaching a broad understanding on economic issues and pledging cooperation in other sensitive areas, including trade and banking reform.

Now anti-war Democrats no longer contend the war is lost, or that the surge isn't working, or that reconciliation isn't happening. Instead, in the Senate's current Iraq War debate, they're attacking the war's financial cost.

Typical is U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, and his charge that the war is the "$800 billion gorilla in the room" that's swallowing up funds that could be used to ameliorate the subprime mortgage crisis or spent on other needy domestic programs.

America has spent enough, Sen. Reid says now -- "When is enough going to be enough?"

Then there's Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama complaining on the campaign trail about the "trillions of dollars" the war will cost if rival GOP candidate John McCain has his way.

Talk about exaggeration.

It's clear that no matter how often they're proved wrong about the Iraq war, Democrats' leaders always will find another reason to oppose it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), clearly got it right when he said, "The Democrats are sort of in denial. It's almost as if they're sorry things have gotten better."

They are right that the war is horrendously expensive, but it will be even more horrendously expensive if the United States follows its pull-out policy and then later has to go back and start all over to again clean up a mess that it's almost got cleaned up now.