Sometimes...

...You are just screwed.

Jacob Weisberg takes a look at the possible alternatives for action in Iraq and ask why no candidacy are advocating for any of them.

He comes to the obvious answer:

Reviewing these proposed strategies suggests another, less partisan reason why House and Senate candidates seem so disengaged from the question of what to do in Iraq. The situation is hopeless. The best that our leading foreign-policy minds have been able to come up with is a grim choice among forms of failure and defeat. In a country of optimists, no politician wants to deliver that message.

No kidding. We are screwed in Iraq. There is no happy ending. We are now down to a choice between bad options. We need to find the least worse course. Most of Washington hasn't come to terms with that yet. My guess is that after the election, once the pressure is off, there is going to be a huge move for withdrawal from both parties in Congress. Of course the Bush administration will be against it, and they will be all that matters. Till January of 2009.

Update: Bob Woodward:

President Bush is absolutely certain that he has the U.S. and Iraq on the right course, says Woodward. So certain is the president on this matter, Woodward says, that when Mr. Bush had key Republicans to the White House to discuss Iraq, he told them, "I will not withdraw, even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me."

Screwed.