During the November 18 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, discussing efforts by congressional Democrats to begin the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Fox News Washington bureau managing editor Brit Hume asserted: “I think there is political peril for them in all of this. The American people don't like the Iraq war, they probably never will. But they're not rooting for us to lose; they don't seem invested in our losing the way the Democrats so often do.” Hume continued: “The Democrats are talking about -- the things they say are happening are not and the things they say are not happening are. That's not a good position to be in.” Hume offered no evidence that any Democrats are “invested in our losing” or “rooting for us to lose” in Iraq.

Hume's characterization echoes the rhetoric of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-CT) who, in a November 8 speech at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, claimed: “Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus' new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there.”

As Media Matters for America has documented (here, here, and here), other conservative media figures have used similar rhetoric to suggest that Democrats want the United States to lose the war in Iraq. In addition, as Media Matters documented, in August, a number of conservative commentators distorted comments by House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) in an effort to suggest that Democrats want “their country [to] lose a war because otherwise they might lose an election,” as Fox News host John Gibson put it.

From a panel discussion featuring Hume, host Chris Wallace, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, National Public Radio (NPR) national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and NPR senior correspondent Juan Williams on the November 18 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday:

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID (D-NV) [video clip]: They Army can go until late in February, and that's -- those are very conservative figures. I am confident that if they didn't get another penny they could go for another six months.

WALLACE: That was Senate Majority Leader Reid just before Congress left town for the holidays without approving more money to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And we're back now with Brit, Mara, Charles, and Juan.

So, congressional Democrats are trying again to force the president's hand on Iraq. The House passed but the Senate defeated a $50 billion measure to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but with some strings attached -- linking it to withdrawals of U.S. troops from Iraq. Now, Brit, despite complaints from the Pentagon, the Democrats say they are not going to look at these money bills again until some time next month. When does this actually affect the troops on the front lines, and do you think the Democrats will back off before it does?

HUME: Well, the first question -- the Pentagon makes it sound as if it will happen almost immediately. I don't think there's any doubt that the troops on the front lines will have what they need, but there will be some other disruptions if the Pentagon is to be believed on this, and some of them are serious enough that they could cause even some layoffs of contract personnel and so on. So that's a possibility.

The second thing that needs to be said about this, Chris, is that this whole debate has this aura of unreality about it, at least on the Democratic side, because they keep talking about events in Iraq that do not comport with the reality on the ground over there. You hear it again and again and you hear it in the attitude they have about, you know, they're going to force troop withdrawals -- impervious to the fact that troop withdrawals have already begun. It's happening. That seems to be unknown to them.

And I think there is political peril for them in all of this. The American people don't like the Iraq war, they probably never will. But they're not rooting for us to lose; they don't seem invested in our losing the way the Democrats so often do. The Democrats are talking about -- the things they say are happening are not and the things they say are not happening are. That's not a good position to be in.

WILLIAMS: You're making the case that troop withdrawals are starting now but the troop withdrawals, given that a surge was put in place this year that took the troop levels to a new high. So it's not really much of a withdrawal at all. And what the Democrats are saying is it's time to get this war over with, which is what the America people are saying.

HUME: Well, all that may be so, Juan, but the fact is they seem to be impervious even to what is happening over there. You hear again and again that there's no light at the end of the tunnel, that nothing has changed. Palpably, something has changed very much.

WILLIAMS: Which is the military aspect. But do you believe that politically that we are any further along the way, Brit?

HUME: Oh yeah. Absolutely.

WILLIAMS: Oh yeah. Why's that?

HUME: Well, because, for example, things are happening at ground level and at local levels that no one thought possible, which is one of the reasons why there was so much urgency in the calls for national reconciliation. The feeling was that if you could get national reconciliation, then the people at the lower levels and at the grassroots level, then the country might knock off the insurgency. Well it's happened at the local level, and the insurgency is subsiding dramatically.

WILLIAMS: But there is nothing happening at the local level. In fact, General [Raymond] Odierno said just this week, “You know what, unless we can't get these Shiites who are in power to actually make some progress, to deliver services, to reach some reconciliation, then the surge and all the military progress will be for naught.” That's the rationale.

WALLACE: Let me bring something else into this, and that was that there was a story in The Washington Post this week, Mara, in which a number of top military commanders were quoted, including the number two man there, General Odierno, saying they feel now that the biggest threat to the U.S. effort is not Al Qaeda, that they've got Al Qaeda if not on the run certainly on the ropes, but in fact it's the intransigence of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.