What Addington Wrought

"'They have come around to the inevitable,' said Peter W. Galbraith, a former American diplomat whose 2006 book, 'The End of Iraq,' argued that Mr. Bush was trying to rebuild a nation that never really existed, because Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds had never adopted a common Iraqi identity. 'He has finally recognized that fact, and is now trying to work with it,' Mr. Galbraith said Tuesday.

"Still, like the other strategies Mr. Bush has embraced, this one is fraught with risks.

"There is no assurance that the willingness of Sunnis in Anbar to join in common cause with the United States against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia can be replicated elsewhere in Iraq. And as reporters who have been embedded with units working to enlist the support of the Sunni sheiks have written, in vivid accounts from the scene, there are many reasons to question how sustained the Sunnis' loyalty will be. . . .

"As he flew from Iraq to Australia on Monday, Mr. Bush cast the Sunni leaders he had met in the deserts of Anbar in the most positive light possible.

"'They were profuse in their praise for America,' he told reporters on Air Force One, according to a pool report. He said they 'had made the decision that they don't want to live under Al Qaeda,' adding that 'they got sick of them.'

"Mr. Bush, of course, has had similar public praise for just about every Iraqi leader he has met, even a few leaders now disparaged by White House officials as unreliable, powerless or two-faced."

Mark Benjamin writes for Salon: "Steven Simon, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, says the sheiks are telling U.S. leaders what they think they want to hear. 'They are not going to go to the U.S. commanders and say, "Let's strike a deal because I want you to strengthen me so that when the time comes, I can go after the Shiites,"' Simon said dryly."

Timing . . . and Compromise?

Four months ago, members of Bush's own party said that by September the president should either show signs of success in Iraq -- or admit failure.

Now Anne Flaherty writes for the Associated Press: "April may become the new September when it comes to deciding whether to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, if President Bush's senior advisers have their way. But Congress might not stand for it."

David M. Herszenhorn writes in the New York Times: "'Many of my Republican friends have long held September as the month for the policy change in Iraq,' Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, said in his opening speech on the Senate floor. 'It's September.' . . .

"Mr. Reid's speech, which included sharp criticism of President Bush, reflected an aggressive effort by the Democrats to shape the discourse over the war before General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker testify.

"Aides said Senator Reid was trying to signal a new willingness to compromise across party lines when he called on Republicans to join in finding a way 'to responsibly end this war.' Such a deal would almost certainly require Mr. Reid to drop his demand for a fixed deadline for withdrawal, which brought the Senate to an impasse on the war in July."