Normally I don't try to interpret or "translate" stories this much, but it represents I think, a previously mentioned here shift beginning to happen in even the most Pro-War press (long overdue for reflecting the change in the publics opinion instead of trying to "influence" public opinion against their own, in this case, better judgments) across the country. From today's (Sunday, April 29, 2007) the Portland Press Herald / Sunday Maine Telegram - Editorial: Blunders leave troops with no hope of success:

        "Even if the Bush administration exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam's weapons programs and hinted disingenuously at a link between Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the mission still made sense. That's because the threat of weapons of mass destruction and a potential Iraq-al-Qaida link were never the best reasons for the invasion. By themselves, the strategic advantages to be had from Saddam's ouster and the creation of a more pro-Western government in Iraq were worthy and obtainable goals."

         Read as "so even if the President openly lied about the reasons for going to war, manufactured or doctored intelligence to support bogus claims, and openly stomped on a raw nerve of fear after the 9/11 attack for falsely ralling the public to "pre-emptively" attack a country that had not attacked us and was not about to in the foreseeable future, nor training nor harboring terrorists, it was still a good idea for the real reasons he was not mentioning. That is that it would be to our advantage to place friendly governments in hostile countries based upon false claims and hope their publics would be too stupid, or as easily decieved as ours, not to be able to tell that they would be being (blanked) over."

         "Even if one believes the United States has the resources to turn things around, the president's performance has been so poor that he has lost the confidence of the American people. As such, it will be impossible for him to rally the support necessary for a costly and sustained military effort in Iraq."

         Translated to "Because the American people are failing to support Bush, his Iraq policy is bound to fail. That it is not the wrong policy, nor that it ever was wrong, but that he just isn't doing a good enough job of selling it. If only we could come up with a better packaging for a country that has been turned by us into a hell on earth, we not only could sell more of it, but at higher profit margins as well. Just need to find another and better name or slogan for this mess, then the American public would again support Bush, and all would be right on God's green Earth again."

        "We did not fall into lockstep on the march to war as many in the media are accused of doing. We did ask critical questions before the invasion. Still, we were sucked in and blinded, not by White House rhetoric, but by the tremendous upside to removing Saddam from power. We should have paused to think what it meant that the president hadn't made his best case for the war or hadn't thought about the obvious challenges going in."

         Or instead would it be that "We DID ask ourselves if it was morally right, and we obviously did and still do answer, "Hell yes!" It is not our fault our leader was not able to sell it to the public enough to write him a blank check for as long as it takes to win this morally correct and justifiable war." Sounds almost like any major Democratic Presidential candidate's (the ones hypocritical enough to be thought to have a chance of winning (except they would add "By what we were told at the time.")) stump speech.

        "Efforts by congressional Democrats to legislate a target date for withdrawal are understandable given the president's stubbornness. But those dates don't make sense from a military standpoint. It's just a bad idea to give one's enemies that information."

         So even as we, the great press pundits of the great State of Maine, announce this "bold change of direction" in our editorial policy, we will continue to criticize anyone who tries to set a date for the withdrawal that we are here supposedly advocating, and will continue to support the White House directed media and propaganda offensive against any Democrat who tries take the position that we are here now pretending to take, to decisively (sort of) talk about the need to withdraw from Iraq, and then bash the Democrats over the head with it repeatedly for pressing a date for it, and then again on the way out. The mythical "Plan B" begins to take form in this world.