The Senate appears to be prepared to move quickly toward a vote on the supplemental spending bill containing language about benchmarks and withdrawal from Iraq that the House passed Friday - the vote could come as early as Tuesday.

Republicans will be trying to remove all timetables from the bill - to them, even non-binding deadlines are too much an affront to Bush's power to wage endless war.  However, there is a chance the bill will pass intact:

On March 15, the Senate rejected a deadline for troop withdrawal 50-48. But one of the Republicans who opposed that measure said Sunday that he's trying to come up with ways to change U.S. policy in Iraq.

"I will not continue to support with my vote the status quo," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said on ABC's This Week.

Proponents of the troop withdrawal deadline face a lower hurdle than in earlier Senate votes. Earlier efforts to win approval for a withdrawal timetable needed 60 votes to overcome a filibuster; this time, opponents will be trying to strip a withdrawal plan that's already in legislation. That means it will require a simple 50-vote majority to keep it in.

At an event Saturday night, Representative Paul Hodes (NH-02) referred to the House's passage of this bill as a sign of commitment not to stop "until this stupid, destructive, futile exercise in presidential hubris is brought to an end."  Its passage through the Senate will force Bush either to accept, for the first time, the rebuke of a deadline, or to veto funding for the troops and wait to see how an angered Congress will respond.

All discussion of this bill must include the caveat that it is not enough, that it is just a first step toward getting the U.S. out of Iraq.  But taking that first step is desperately important.  As georgia10 writes:

But I do know that these Senate and House bills are just the opening salvos, for what has transpired is just the beginning of the end of the Iraq war.  Now, count me among the pessimists(or realists) who simply do not see an end to this war before 2008. Not with this president. Not with this Congress.  Yet the next year or so will provide ample opportunity to affect this war, to save our troops, and to change the political climate so that the next (Democratic) president can end this folly once and for all.

So call, email, or fax your Senators - Democrats and Republicans alike (contact information below) - and tell them you support language establishing benchmarks and a withdrawal deadline.  Pressure the Democrats to hold firm.  Pressure Republicans like Hagel who see how badly change is needed to vote for the bill.  Make the more-of-the-same Republicans think twice about trying to strip the deadlines from the bill.  And if you are among the many who want stronger and earlier deadlines to be established, make that clear so that that next step out of Iraq can come sooner and be bigger.