What's the Plan?

"Hagel, the second-ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a prospective presidential candidate in 2008, was among several senators from both parties who used the Sunday talk shows to express mounting frustration over the administration's handling of the war and the occupation."

Grassroots vs. Establishment

Peter Baker and Shailagh Murray writes in The Washington Post: "Democrats say a long-standing rift in the party over the Iraq war has grown increasingly raw in recent days, as stay-the-course elected leaders who voted for the war three years ago confront rising impatience from activists and strategists who want to challenge President Bush aggressively to withdraw troops.

"Amid rising casualties and falling public support for the war, Democrats of all stripes have grown more vocal this summer in criticizing Bush's handling of the war. A growing chorus of Democrats, however, has said this criticism should be harnessed to a consistent message and alternative policy -- something most Democratic lawmakers have refused to offer."

Dick Polman writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "At a time when the Iraq war is draining President Bush's popularity, you might think that the Democrats would have a consensus plan of their own for ending the bloodshed and winning the peace.

"But no such plan exists - because the party's liberal grassroots base and the cautious Washington establishment are too busy warring with each other."

Conventional Wisdom?

Newsweek's "Conventional Wisdom" feature -- which calls itself "an informal distillation of the ever-changing thinking of Beltway pundits and the chattering classes" -- gives Bush a down-arrow this week: "His '9/11 link' pro-war offensive is getting offensive. What he's selling, America ain't buying."

Poll Watch

An American Research Group poll finds Bush's overall approval ratings down to 36 percent in August, from 42 percent in July.

War Analogies

Getlin and Mehren write in the Los Angeles Times: "There were few misgivings about the need to fight World War II because America had been attacked at Pearl Harbor. Most Americans also were eager to stop Hitler's Germany from taking over all of Europe.

"The same cannot be said of the Iraq war because of the debate over whether Saddam Hussein's regime had any link to the Sept. 11 attacks. The futile search for weapons of mass destruction also made skeptics of many on the home front.

" 'World War II had lots of discouraging moments, but almost everyone saw that it had to be carried out to its conclusion,' said historian Geoffrey C. Ward, whose 14 books include one on the Civil War.

" 'The difference here is that increasing numbers of people aren't sure it is worth it.'

"Vietnam may offer a better analogy, because the underlying argument for that conflict -- the need for the United States to fight communist expansion -- gradually gave way to a belief that the war was bogged down in a quagmire that was killing thousands of Americans a year. The public can rapidly lose faith in leaders if it does not think a conflict is winnable."