Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself. -Cicero

After reading the Sunday papers and watching some of the Sunday morning talk shows, I sense something of a sea change in the national discourse over Iraq. It starts with the administration, never known for admitting mistakes. And yet, Condi Rice finally submitted to reality and recently said:

“I know we’ve made tactical errors, thousands of them I’m sure.”

Even though she backtracked on that comment in a later press conference, its very utterance is indicative of just how hard reality in Iraq is pressing on the Bush regime’s ability to spin events. The situation in Iraq is so bad that Congress and the Establishment media are no longer sugar coating it. Take a look at the New York Times’s unsigned editorial.

Iraq is becoming a country that America should be ashamed to support, let alone occupy. The nation as a whole is sliding closer to open civil war. In its capital, thugs kidnap and torture innocent civilians with impunity, then murder them for their religious beliefs. The rights of women are evaporating. The head of the government is the ally of a radical anti-American cleric who leads a powerful private militia that is behind much of the sectarian terror.

The Bush administration will not acknowledge the desperate situation….

…Unfortunately, after three years of policy blunders in Iraq, Washington may no longer have the political or military capital to prevail.

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer interviewed Chuck Hagel and Evan Bayh. Their criticisms of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war were scathing. Hagel flatly stated that the Iraq was much worse off in every category than it was three years ago. He said that every decision the administration had made since the very beginning of the war had been wrong. Bayh said that, when he was recently in Iraq, he talked to a high level administration official that told him the decision to disband the Iraqi army had been ‘insane’. He also told Bayh that there was no military solution.

They both called on the Iraqi government to form a unity government, but lacking much optimism, said we must be prepared to pull out if a unity government cannot be attained.

It has been over three months since Iraq had their elections. The resulting parliament seems incapable of forming a government. And the result is an open fissure in the Washington cognoscenti’s resolve.

The wheels are coming off the cart for the President. They still have some of their set pieces in the assembly line. They are pushing the immigration issue, the faux war on Christians, and they are pre-positioning propaganda for a potential showdown with Iran. But, they have lost the support of the Washington Establishment (as measured by stalwart centrists like Bayh and Hagel, and the editorial boards of the Washington Post and New York Times) for the war effort in Iraq.

The Washington Post, today, made an effort to support the administration’s hardline on Iran. But their heart isn’t in it.

I think it is finally starting to set-in on the D.C. power brokers that this country cannot afford another three years of the Bush administration. Look to see increased levels of noise from the press and even some Republicans for Cheney and Rumsfeld to step down. And look for the administration to respond with increasing bellicosity toward Iran. Manufacturing an international foreign policy crisis is the only way for the Cheney cabal to get the capitol back on board. Without a need for a public face of unity, the neocons will get chewed up and spit out. That is what it has come to.