Democrats and military experts and the American people know the president's current strategy is not working and we cannot wait until September to act.

It applies as of date of an enactment, and just to emphasize from all the other questions that have been taking place here, I don’t care what the report says next week. I don’t care what the report says in September. This is an amendment that needs to pass regardless of what we’re doing in the future in Iraq.

"Well it's delusional to say the least," Murtha told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "As I said earlier, and you heard me say it, it's a failed policy wrapped in illusion. Nothing's gotten better. Incidents have increased. We have had more Americans killed in the last four months than any other period during the war."

Today, a majority of the Senate sees that the surge is not working, and a majority believes there has been no progress on political reconciliation. The question I hear repeated is: Do we change course now or do we wait until September? I have heard distinguished Members of this body say: Why not wait until September? I believe the answer is clear. When you know things are moving in the wrong direction, why wait to act?

My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

"Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done," Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press...

"Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously. There are still going to be U.S. forces in the region that could intercede, with an international force, on an emergency basis," Obama said between stops on the first of two days scheduled on the New Hampshire campaign trail. "There’s no doubt there are risks of increased bloodshed in Iraq without a continuing U.S. presence there."

This is a fight and a debate, and it's going to be for the next three months between the two parties, over who lost Iraq. That's what the debate is. And the predicate being laid down by the president and his supporters is, "We were just on the cusp of victory. We were just there." And nobody I know in a rational condition believes the United States is going to have any kind of a military victory in Iraq.

President Bush's latest Potemkin village fabricated to mask his failed Iraq policy is a 'Petraeus village.' It is clear that the Petraeus village is just a facade to hide from view the continuing failure of the Bush Administration's strategy in Iraq.

We don’t need a report that wins the Nobel Prize for creative statistics or the Pulitzer for fiction. Americans are demanding the facts, an end to this open-ended commitment, a surge on the political and diplomatic front. In short, the American people want a new direction in Iraq.

By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that the violence in Iraq is decreasing, and the surge is working.

I think that the reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief.

Rose: Sen. Obama, give me your assessment of what's happened in the Congress with the testimony of Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, and do you accept their judgment about what is going on on the ground in Iraq?

Obama: Well, after hearing two days of testimony, let's be clear on exactly what they said. That after putting an additional 30,000 troops in, far longer and more troops than the president had initially said, we have gone from a horrendous situation of violence in Iraq to the same intolerable levels of violence that we had back in June of 2006. So, essentially, after all this we're back where we were 15 months ago. And what has not happened is any movement with respect to the sort of political accommodations among the various factions, the Shia, the Sunni, and Kurds that were the rationale for surge and that ultimately is going to be what stabilizes Iraq. So, I think it is fair to say that the president has simply tried to gain another six months to continue on the same course that he's been on for several years now. It is a course that will not succeed. It is a course that is exacting an enormous toll on the American people, enormous toll on our troops who have performed brilliantly and done everything that's been asked of them and is not making us more safe because it continues to put strains on our military and prevents us from tackling al-Qaida in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This is not working, it’s a war without end, there is no light at the end of the tunnel, we must reverse it.

MR. RUSSERT: You were not in the Senate in October of 2002. You did give a speech opposing the war. But Senator Clinton’s campaign will say since you’ve been a senator there’s been no difference in your record. And other critics will say that you’ve not been a leader against the war, and they point to this: In July of ‘04, Barack Obama, "I’m not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done? I don’t know," in terms of how you would have voted on the war. And then this: "There’s not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush’s position at this stage." That was July of ‘04. And this: "I think" there’s "some room for disagreement in that initial decision to vote for authorization of the war." It doesn’t seem that you are firmly wedded against the war, and that you left some wiggle room that, if you had been in the Senate, you may have voted for it.

SEN. OBAMA: Now, Tim, that first quote was made with an interview with a guy named Tim Russert on MEET THE PRESS during the convention when we had a nominee for the presidency and a vice president, both of whom had voted for the war. And so it, it probably was the wrong time for me to be making a strong case against our party’s nominees’ decisions when it came to Iraq.

Look, I was opposed to this war in 2002, 2003, four, five, six and seven. What I was very clear about, even in 2002 in my original opposition, was once we were in, we were going to have to make some decisions to see how we could stabilize the situation and act responsibly. And that’s what I did through 2004, five and six, try to see can we create a workable government in Iraq? Can we make sure that we are minimizing the humanitarian costs in Iraq? Can we make sure that our troops are safe in Iraq? And that’s what I have done. Finally, in 2006, 2007, we started to see that, even after an election, George Bush continued to want to pursue a course that didn’t withdraw troops from Iraq but actually doubled down and initiated the surge. And at that stage, I said, very clearly, not only have we not seen improvements, but we’re actually worsening, potentially, a situation there. And since that time I’ve been absolutely clear in terms of the approach that I would take. I would end this war, and I would have our troops out within 16 months.

It's not getting better, it's getting worse.

The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure.

Democrats, then, have compounded their initial bad judgment about the surge with reckless obstinacy. As ethno-sectarian violence in Iraq rapidly declined, as al Qaeda absorbed tremendous military blows, and as political accommodation and legislative achievements have emerged, Democrats, rather than welcoming the progress, grew agitated. They embraced with religious zeal the belief that the Iraq war was lost; they therefore viewed the success of the surge as a terribly inconvenient development, one they sought to deny to the point that they looked silly and out of touch. Worse, Democrats acted as if they had a vested interest in an American defeat.

Rarely has a political party been so uniformly wrong, in such an obvious way, on such an important matter. And when Americans cast their vote on November 4, they should carefully consider how Barack Obama and the entire Democratic party fought ferociously and relentlessly to undermine a policy that has worked extraordinarily well and may yet prove to be among the most successful military plans in modern times.

First, there is the political rapprochement we have managed to achieve in central Iraq. This has enabled us, above all, to pull the plug on al-Qaida. Second, there is the progress being made by our security forces. Third, there is the deep sense of abhorrence with which the population has reacted to the atrocities of al-Qaida and the militias. Finally, of course, there is the economic recovery.

So what explains the different interpretations? And if the Maliki government appears set on establishing some timetable, why did they sign on to a more ambiguous time horizon? Two possibilities suggest themselves:

1. The Iraqi leadership deep down wants a fixed timetable for a complete withdrawal, despite contradictory statements suggesting otherwise, but they were forced to agree to more ambiguous language by the Bush administration.

2. The Iraqi leadership actually wants the U.S. to transition to a support role and reduce its military footprint sooner rather than later, but it is not in favor of a fixed timetable or a complete withdrawal in the near to intermediate term. Nevertheless, to appease rising nationalist sentiment and sovereignty concerns in an Iraqi election year, the Maliki government wants to appear to be demanding some kind of schedule for U.S. withdrawal.

Explanation #2 seems much more likely given the recognition among many in Maliki’s coalition that they will require some residual military presence and support from the United States for several years to come.

Next came the news from fiercely anti-war and anti-Bush German magazine Der Spiegel that Maliki appeared to have endorsed the 16-month timeframe now pushed by Obama. This was met with predictably fatuous commentary from the Democrats suggesting that somehow Obama had been right all along:

"It's a devastating blow to the McCain campaign - not just that Maliki moved to Obama's position but that Bush did as well," said Richard Holbrooke, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations for the Clinton administration.

Of course, it's nonsense to suggest that a withdrawal by, say, May 2010 is the same as a withdrawal by March 2008. In the business world or the sports world, being wrong by a margin of more than two years is called "being wrong." Only in politics can you get away with such a thing. It's also nonsense to say that Bush is listening to Obama when Bush only got to where he is now by doing the exact opposite of what Obama was telling him to do for the past year and a half. If someone tells you, "don't eat that sandwich," and you eat the sandwich, and you stop eating when there's no sandwich left, can he then say "you followed my advice! See, you are not eating the sandwich anymore"? Obama is just stealing the credit for other people who succeeded by ignoring him.