. . Congress . . . pours most of its Iraq-related energy into allegations of manipulated intelligence before the war. "Those aren't irrelevant questions," says Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). "But the more they dominate the public debate, the harder it is to sustain public support for the war."

What Lieberman doesn't say is that many Democrats would view such an outcome as an advantage. Their focus on 2002 is a way to further undercut President Bush, and Bush's war, without taking the risk of offering an alternative strategy -- to satisfy their withdraw-now constituents without being accountable for a withdraw-now position.

Many of them understand that dwindling public support could force the United States into a self-defeating position, and that defeat in Iraq would be disastrous for the United States as well as for Mahdi and his countrymen. But the taste of political blood as Bush weakens, combined with their embarrassment at having supported the war in the first place, seems to override that understanding.

Hiatt basically wrote about Democrats what McCain said about Obama. Fred Hiatt remains a disgrace and a stain upon the Washington Post, which will never remove the stain and disgrace it carries until Fred Hiatt is removed as Editor of the Washington Post Editorial Page. The Washington Post does not have the moral standing to criticize John McCain for the New McCarthyism McCain is practicing. And it won't until Fred Hiatt is gone from its pages.

Speaking for me only