I'm looking forward to December 18th, when I'm hoping (though not optimistic) that we might get an answer. Joe Klein was in the "one last shot" camp before it was the cool position. He wrote:
What can the Democrats do? They can play politics or be responsible. The political option is to embrace "cut and run"; call for an immediate withdrawal, as Kerry did; and hope the public is so sick of Bush and sick of the war that it will punish the g.o.p. in the fall. But embracing defeat is a risky political strategy, especially for a party not known for its warrior ethic. In fact, the responsible path is the Democrats' only politically plausible choice: they will have to give yet another new Iraqi government one last shot to succeed. This time, U.S. military sources say, the measure of success is simple: Operation Forward Together, the massive joint military effort launched last week to finally try to secure Baghdad, has to work. If Baghdad isn't stabilized, the war is lost. "I know it's the cliche of the war," an Army counterinsurgency specialist told me last week. "But we'll know in the next six months—and this time, it'll be the last next six months we get."
Well, our last six months has just one month left. Then, maybe, we'll find out what the new "responsible path" is. Approx. 350 American troops died since Joe Klein told us what the responsible path was. What will his next responsible path lead to?