September

Chris Matthews show, May 6:

Ms. PARKER: Well, we have to stay the course, give it a shot. I don't think they're behind the surge, but I think everybody here is right in saying that, come September, by the end of the summer, if they don't see something, then they can say, `Look, we gave it our best shot, now we need to do something different.'


...

Mr. IGNATIUS: More than anything else, he can say, `I called for more troops three years ago. I called for support of the president's surge. It isn't working. This is not a policy that's going to succeed.' And he has the credibility to do that without appearing to crack under pressure. And we've talked on your show, Chris, about the Baghdad primary. And that's coming up in September. And in September we're going to know, is this policy failing, is it succeeding in any measure...

...

Mr. IGNATIUS: Chris, you know, we're now in the season of benchmarks. And I think that, you know, I think there's going to be a bipartisan agreement on benchmarks that will apply this fall. And there'll be a series of indices about, you know, what has the government done? Has it passed this law? Has it done this reconciliation thing?

Ms. BORGER: Mm-hmm.

Mr. IGNATIUS: If those things haven't happened, I think everybody's going to
jump ship.

...

Mr. DUFFY: I would not wait for the presidential candidates to take the lead here. You know, if leadership is going to come from Republicans on the war at--for a change of course, it's going to come from Republicans on Capitol Hill, who Democrats are going to force to vote on this three, four, five times between now and September. And they're already getting tired of voting `I'm with the president.'