Aimless talk of stay the course is making things worse.
I think a not addressed enough point is that there are really two choices: 1) George Bush continues to fuck things up 2) Something happens to force a change in policy.
There is no option 3), which is [Insert name here] gets to implement their fantasy plan for Iraq.
Either you, like Joe Lieberman, continue to contribute to the rhetoric which maintains the current status quo of George Bush fucking everything up, or you find a way to support concrete options which might force a change in policy.
Everybody really understands this. Signing on to Kerry's plan to get out by next July, or an alternative timetable plan, is simply signing onto a policy which will force George Bush to do something other than what he's doing. The plans themselves in their specifics are not especially important, and not carved in stone if reality changes. You can still, uh, adapt to not fuck things up so badly if necessary.
This is why it's so silly when No Show Joe whines about the specifics of this plan or that, because the plan is not the issue. The issue is whether you continue to enable George Bush to fuck things up, or whether you try to force him to do something differently.
Joe's chosen his course: let George Bush keep fucking things up. Noble Joe. What a guy. If he would start actually leading and find some other way to force George Bush to stop fucking things up that'd be fine. But he's not. It's all about George Bush fucking things up. That's what makes Joe happy.