"If President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney believe the belligerently partisan and misleading things they have been saying about Congress's war spending bill, their grip on the few options left in this disastrous war is even more tenuous than we'd guessed. The sooner Mr. Bush and his allies drop the pretense that military victory is still possible in Iraq and their charges of "defeatism" against those who know better, the closer the nation will be to rescuing what can still be rescued from the debacle.

Obviously, the White House and Congress will eventually have to arrive at some kind of compromise. But that compromise cannot be on the "my way or the highway" terms Mr. Bush is demanding. The fact is, Congress has served the country well by finally forcing open debate about how America can best extricate itself from Iraq while minimizing the long-term damage to itself and the Iraqi people.

The "dramatically different" military strategy Mr. Bush now claims to be carrying out in response to the frustrations voters expressed in last November's election is nothing fundamentally new at all. It is just an escalated version of the failed approach — 99 parts military — that the administration has clung to for the past four years. "

(TImes editorial, New York, 4-26-07)