Where's the Leak?

But now, Sanger writes: "Mr. Bush and his aides are suddenly trying to embrace uncertainty as a virtue -- a sign of flexibility toward new ideas."

The problem, of course, is not just who to believe, but when to believe them.

As Sanger writes, Hadley on Sunday "portrayed Mr. Bush as 'interested in getting a range of new ideas' for many months now -- a period that covers the run-up to the midterm elections, when he and Vice President Dick Cheney charged that 'phased withdrawal' and timelines were just euphemisms for retreat.

"Perhaps so. But Mr. Bush himself told Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on Friday that 'this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it,' a statement that made some commission members wonder if the president was signaling that some of their ideas would be dead on arrival."

Cui Bono?

Edward Luce writes in the Financial Times: "Few people in Washington see the leaking of Donald Rumsfeld's Iraq memo as anything more than a belated and probably forlorn attempt to retrieve the outgoing defence secretary's tattered reputation.

"Yet Mr Rumsfeld's blunt rejection of continuing 'on the current path' in Iraq also reinforced the sense that George W. Bush's presidency was now more lonely than it has ever been."

Here's Howard Kurtz, on his CNN show, with Washington Post editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran:

"KURTZ: The president often denounces leaks of classified information. This Hadley memo was classified, but no denunciation this time because 'the New York Times' said it came from an administration official.

"So you see a little bit of a double standard there?

"CHANDRASEKARAN: Totally. I mean, when it suits the purposes, information is leaked out. And I think clearly here you have the administration wanting to put some pressure on Prime Minister Maliki and using 'the New York Times' to do so.

"KURTZ: So you believe this is a deliberate orchestration of putting this information out?

"CHANDRASEKARAN: I believe it was. I believe that it was the result of good, aggressive reporting by Michael Gordon at 'the New York Times,' but I think the administration also saw a political benefit from putting some pressure on Maliki in the public sphere. I think this was all calculated."